Chapter Excerpt

It's Our Home An excerpt from Chapter 1 to The Complete Idiot's Guide to Saving the Environment by Greg Pahl: What a beautiful picture! Our lovely blue and green Earth with its swirling white cloud patterns set against the stark blackness of space. It's simply breathtaking. These now-familiar views of our home planet taken from the moon have caused a lot of people to change their thinking about our society--and their place in it. From space there are no visible political boundaries. There are just huge interconnected mountain ranges, forests, rivers, and oceans. And one big, interdependent global community. But back down on Earth, things aren't so pretty. Radioactive emissions, oil spills, toxic chemical leaks; strip-mined landscapes; clear-cut rainforests; vanishing plants, birds, and animals; huge killer storms and mudslides; increasing competition for dwindling resources; famine, disease, and poverty--the unhappy list goes on and on.

All of these events are connected to a variety of environmental issues, especially over-consumption of limited resources. What's more, these issues are all related to each other in one way or another. It can get confusing pretty quickly. While you might be tempted to stand there and scratch your head in bewilderment, you don't need to hold an advanced degree in environmental studies to grasp this stuff. Actually, if you understand a few simple lessons that you probably learned in kindergarten, most of this becomes pretty clear. We'll get to those lessons a bit later in this chapter.

First, we're going to pause briefly for a birthday party. Then, I'll introduce you to the basic issues we'll be seeing throughout the rest of the book. I'll also explain some environmental lingo and show you why all of this is so important.

Happy Birthday, Earth Day!

Earth Day 2000 was quite a bash. All over the planet millions of people celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of what started out as an environmental teach-in on college campuses in the U.S. back in 1970. Since then, Earth Day has expanded across the country and around the world. This year it was marked by events, both large and small, almost everywhere.

During the month of April 2000 there were speeches and parades, and demonstrations that featured alternative energy technology, and lots of other imaginative new products, programs, and ideas to help save the environment. Many participants looked fondly back over the past three decades at the many environmental success stories that have taken place. But participants also were faced with the sobering realization that while we've made progress in some areas, we're losing ground in many others.

In this country, the original Earth Day ultimately led to strengthened national Clean Air and Clean Water legislation, among many other positive things. We've cleaned up some of our worst toxic waste sites, improved the quality of the water in many of our rivers and lakes (the Cuyahoga River in Ohio doesn't catch fire anymore), banned the use of many dangerous chemicals and pesticides, increased environmental awareness, and much more. But we've still got a long way to go--especially in the realm of over-consumption because it relates to so many other environmental issues (more on that later). So, we can't pat ourselves on the back too quickly.

In Western Europe, Earth Day participants had quite a lot more to celebrate. A number of European countries have moved far ahead of us in environmental protection, alternative energy generation, and in establishing comprehensive environmental "green plans" (more on them in Chapter 26). On the other hand, in parts of Eastern Europe, and especially in Russia, the situation is grim, but not hopeless.

But the biggest challenges of all are probably in many parts of the Third World, where huge numbers of impoverished people are struggling to simply survive. And in many cases, they're stripping what few natural resources remain to try to do that. This, of course, makes survival even harder. So, on a global level it's a real mixed bag. Consequently, Earth Day was both a celebration and a call for redoubled efforts to tackle the many difficult environmental problems that remain.

The Environmental Century

At the very least, the Earth Day anniversary has helped to refocus our attention on the continuing damage we're causing to the very resources that provide us with our food, clothing, shelter, and fuel. And we're beginning to run out of time to make the fundamental changes needed to reverse these trends.

Although environmentalists have been warning about this situation for decades, many other people are finally beginning to realize that if we don't act soon it will be too late. The good news is that more and more businesses and governments are beginning to understand that without a healthy environment the global economy and everything that depends on it will be seriously endangered. And they are beginning to take positive action. We'll focus on the good news later on in the book.

One way or another, this is unquestionably going to be the Environmental Century. We'll either tackle these problems head on and begin to resolve them, or Mother Nature will do it for us. And, as you've probably heard, it's not a good idea to mess with Mother Nature. But that's exactly what we have been doing for a very long time. Now she's beginning to get really irritated....