The Failure of Environmental Education (And How We Can Fix It). Charles Saylan

      CHAPTER THREE

      What Went Wrong

      The Oxford American Dictionary defines denial as the refusal to accept that something unpleasant or distressing is true. In a generic sense, we of the industrialized nations of Earth are a populace in denial about impending environmental impacts to our collective well-being. We have blatantly ignored the bad news for decades, all the while refusing to acknowledge the unsustainable nature and long-term ramifications of our runaway, fossil-fuel-powered consumption. If only 30 percent of the scientific predictions about global warming and resource depletion come to pass, humanity will soon face profound changes in our surroundings, our security, and our standards of living. If the predictions are 80 percent right, humanity will face the new reality of an uncertain future characterized by an unprecedented population crash.

      Denial and inaction on such a grand scale is not the fault of any one element. It is perhaps a side effect of how our societies regard themselves, a complex combination of factors that include our individual motivations, how our public policy is shaped, shortcomings in our educational institutions, and the profound effects of media. To say that environmental education, of and by itself, could have changed the situation in which we now find ourselves would be naive. To gain insight into how and where environmental education may fit in to a possible solution, we need to look not only at its design, implementation, and purpose but also outside its scope to understand some of the other potential causes of our collective denial.

      In his prophetic, yet ill-received “crisis of confidence” speech to the nation in July of 1979, President Jimmy Carter pointed out that “human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.”¹ He went on to describe what he believed was the most pervasive threat to democracy, “the erosion of our confidence in the future.” Carter believed that Americans were losing their faith not only in government but also in education, news media, and other institutions of democracy. One manifestation of this, he said, was the fact that two-thirds of Americans didn't even bother to vote.

      President Carter was speaking to a discontented nation saddled with inflation, high unemployment, and a major energy crisis. The crisis was the result of a panic triggered by increasing oil prices when supply was temporarily interrupted by the Iranian revolution and the fall of Shah Reza Pahlavi. This crisis followed on the heels of the 1973 oil crisis, which occurred during the Nixon administration when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed a politically motivated oil embargo that sparked massive increases in crude oil prices coupled with cuts in OPEC oil production and exports.

      Interestingly, these energy crises stimulated legislation like the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act of 1974, which imposed mandatory conservation in the form of reduced national speed limits, and the Energy Policy Conservation Act of 1975, which, among other things, established fuel economy standards for automobiles. High gasoline prices stimulated public interest in subcompact and economy cars that were smaller and more fuel-efficient than their heavy, gas-guzzling predecessors. By the late 1970s, muscle cars like those of the 1950s and 1960s were all but gone from the American marketplace. Car-pooling, increased public transportation, and high-occupancy vehicle lanes burgeoned as a matter of need. The development of alternative energy sources like solar power was encouraged by government through subsidies and the opening, in 1977, of the Solar Energy Research Institute. It was a time when public environmental awareness was growing, at least at the grassroots level. It was a time, perhaps the last time, in which our leaders spoke openly and regularly of conservation and individual sacrifice for the common good. But it is worth asking ourselves why our society abandoned the roots of conservation mentality. We had it, but we lost it.

      When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he did so on a platform that promised economic growth and prosperity coupled with reductions in government-imposed regulations as the answer to America's energy problems. Conservation, he said, was not the sole answer to America's energy needs.² Under Reagan, the budget for solar energy development was slashed and tax credits for solar installations were allowed to lapse, thereby ending any significant governmental support for alternative energy development. Reagan went so far as to remove the solar panels that Carter had installed on the White House. The politicization of environmentalism took a sharp upward turn during the Reagan years, with the appointment of James G. Watt as secretary of the interior and Anne Gorsuch as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, both of whom were known for their antien-vironmentalist views and policies.

      Oil prices began to decline in the 1980s as a result of a weakening of OPEC and the availability of oil from sources other than OPEC producers. U.S. energy consumption, which had decreased in the late 1970s, turned upward once again. Evidently, the message that Carter had hoped to impart in his speech had not taken hold. It seemed that Americans did not like to be told they needed to give something up, something they believed was rightfully theirs. Never again did a mainstream politician suggest the public use less of something. Even today, in what seems superficially to be a kind of “green renaissance,” our leaders speak of developing sources of alternative and sustainable energy, but not of reducing demand and consumption. Perhaps the real lesson of the Carter era was the one learned by our politicians: if one wants to remain in office, it is best not to ask voters to sacrifice anything, ever.

      As America forgot about the lean times of the 1970s, consumerism began to grow exponentially. There was a growing sense of entitlement that spurred an increased demand for larger, more powerful automobiles, cooler air-conditioning, hotter heat, bigger homes, and more of everything. High-powered muscle cars returned, followed by an invasion of sport utility vehicles, culminating in the popularity of oversize gas-guzzlers like the Cadillac Escalade and the consumer version of the military transport vehicle the Hummer.

      American homes got bigger as average residential square footage more than doubled between 1950 and 2005. Where 34 percent of new homes built in 1970 had central air conditioning, in 2004 that number was 90 percent.³ The term McMansion has found its way into our modern vocabulary, used to describe the emerging trend in supersized middle-class homes. Oddly, trends show that household sizes have steadily decreased in America,⁴ so it seems we have convinced ourselves we need more living space for fewer people, instead of sensibly learning how to get more out of less.

      The loss of confidence Carter warned America about has indeed happened. The Reagan era ushered in a prolonged period of prosperity, but neither confidence in government nor a unity of purpose has returned. Over the last half century, the American legislative process has undergone a metamorphosis, making law makers more likely to listen to lobbyists or special interest groups than the will of the people, further exacerbating our frustration and alienation. In allowing this to occur, Americans have abdicated their rights and responsibilities as citizens of an important experiment in free democracy. Today, the importance of participating in the process of government is not taught in a meaningful way in American schools.

      As we retain less and less sense of community, we tend to focus more and more on our individual well-being. Procuring the outward manifestations of success has become more important to us than developing our place as integral members of society. The accumulation of wealth, and the trappings that go along with it, have taken precedence in our lives, and we do not feel complete without money and things. We no longer strive toward moderation, nor are we developing skills for determining how much is enough to live a good life. Our surroundings, our role models, our media, all reinforce in us the ever-present message that more is always better, that wealth and the power it commands are paramount. We live in a society that has trouble accepting itself, where any sense of belonging to a common effort is muddled or lost entirely in our collective rush toward affluence.

      Perhaps this is a good time to reflect on the recent wave of financial Ponzi schemes,⁵ investment swindles that pay unusually high returns to investors, and whose payouts either come from the investor's original money or are funded with money from new investors. Ponzi schemes depend on continual growth to draw investors in, but they are doomed to eventual collapse. Collapsing financial Ponzi schemes offer a preview of what happens when the