This weekend I participated in Power Shift 2007, a youth summit discussing issues related to global climate change. I was amazed to find that more than 6,000 youth from college campuses across the country came to this university for the summit. Though initially skeptical of any benefit I would gain from the summit, I find myself changed after listening to the speakers and attending the panels and workshops. To be surrounded by a group of such passionate, motivated, excited people was a humbling and eye-opening experience. I found their passion contagious, and, although I started out thinking of how much time I have wasted in my life by not accomplishing the great feats that others have, I began to think about my future and all the time I have ahead of me to initiate change.
The summit gave me big ideas: to organize a trip to the Appalachian Mountains to show others the destruction that mountain-top removal has caused to communities, to urge peers to sign petitions and speak with politicians about clean energy and sustainable practices, to help create a market for fair trade products on the campus and to host screenings of documentaries that reveal the perilous situation our planet faces without our help, our action and our voices. I stopped to think a little more, however, and realized action needs to be taken on a smaller scale first.
When I walk to classes at this university, I am frequently appalled by the carelessness of my fellow students. As we make our way through each day, connected to ourselves by earphones, cell phones, etc., do we ever consider how much we have disconnected from the rest of the world? During my lunch break one day, I watched a girl talking on her phone neatly place her empty drink bottle in the nearest plant rather than make the 5-foot trek to the nearest trash can. Before the homecoming comedy show, I couldn’t turn away as I saw two girls exit Cole Field House, throw trash on the ground and walk back in. I have seen people buy plates of food they never eat and throw away silverware in the the dining halls because they think it’s too tedious to walk to the conveyer belt across the room. I have seen unused lights left on for an entire day. Now a resident of an apartment, I have heard friends remark that they run the dishwasher with only a few dishes in it and turn on the laundry machine to wash just a few clothes.
We have become so lazy that we cannot put trash where it belongs, so self-centered that we do not consider that someone, certainly not us, will be responsible for cleaning up our messes. We think ourselves so worthy and deserving that we can waste resources others fight and die for. Our messes don’t end here, and get much, much bigger.
I feel as though many people today have an entirely incorrect way of thinking. Me first. Me, me, me. Unfortunately, we are not the only ones who matter and, in fact, we may be the ones who matter the least. We are only as significant as the changes we make and the improvements and safeguards we create for the future. Our lack of consideration for others and for our planet will be the bane of us if we do not change. This message was sounded loud and clear by every speaker I heard at Power Shift.
Certainly everyone attending this university comes from a unique background. We do not all have the money to donate to charities or to buy organic and “green” products. One thing we all have in common is an opportunity to educate ourselves and to make changes today that will benefit everyone in the future. It is in our best interest to force ourselves to adhere to the minimum common-sense considerations. If we could all just remember to clean up after ourselves, not to be wasteful, to recycle rather than trash products that can be reused and to buy only what we need and to use what we buy, we could do a lot of good. If we could remember there are people in the world who will never have the opportunity to be as wasteful as we are, we might think twice before we waste our resources and energy. As college students, we need to take responsibility for our own actions.
This is not a bunch of hippies crying out to take care of the environment, or extremists claiming that the world is in trouble and needs your help to save it from irreversible destruction. It is a group of your peers, and it should be you, too, realizing that our generation has a large task upon it. If we do not begin to change, to take matters into our own hands, no one else will, and we will be out of time.
Leslie Wells is a junior environmental science and policy major. She can be reached at lwells87@umd.edu.
