Introduction
Issues of energy and the environment are not new to the scope of problems facing concerned humans in the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries. Now, however, there is a desensitization of those of us in the general public as the issue has become passé, greatly confined to sound-bites, headlines, rhetoric, campaign platforms, and bumper stickers. There is a preponderance of doom, gloom, assigning blame, and "passing the buck" in most discussions on the state of the environment, particularly in dealing with those issues with which modern human societies must contend as a result of carelessness and a lack of foresight on the part of past human actions.
Remediation is slow and expensive, if possible at all. Wherever we turn, we are exposed to a multitude of unseen toxins with unknown implications for our health. Species are destined for extinction, as habitat is consumed by human development at the prerogative property values. The government is either paralyzed or crippled by special interest groups and share-holders in the private sector. The public feels disenfranchised, deceived, manipulated, misinformed, uninformed, unaware, powerless or down-right apathetic. There is a limited and unequal distribution of resources to meet the demands of a burgeoning world population, yet many of us continue to buy the biggest and fastest petroleum fueled automobiles and just can't wait for the next generation of our mobile device to be introduced to the market so we can throw our antiquated two-year-old model into a landfill. And, in a world of unprecedented technological advances and access to information and communications, the citizens of the world and super-power nations are further from solutions to resource depletion than we were four decades ago, and we still can't seem to agree on a unified path to positive global change on the environmental front.
But, that's not the full story. The success stories are out there; the world's innovators and environmentally conscious investors are already making considerable progress. Environmental awareness has expanded beyond the realm of a concerned few and well into the general public. Where issues of public health are concerned, there have been notable changes in regulation and the production of persistent toxic chemicals, including cases in point of DDT, pesticides, heavy metals, and a recognition of the chemical complexity of the built environment. The history of nuclear weapons atmospheric testing also saw success in bringing that practice to a halt. 1 States and municipalities have set goals of energy conservation and renewable resource implementation. The future holds great promise for innovation and progress toward solving complex environmental problems, and it is a goal of this unit to inspire students to be a part of those solutions.
However, much of that progress is still "behind the scenes" and accessible only to those with the intellectual and industry experience as well as the capital and social mobility to make headway in the quagmire of human-induced environmental issues. I, for one, need to hear a story of hope for the pedestrian consumer; I need to believe that we can get it right. I need to have faith that human ingenuity will overcome more than a century of myopic and ill-fated technological, regulative, policy, and manufacturing decisions. Although I would never consider myself a pessimist, I need to indulge, on occasion, in a little good ole shameless optimism. And, so do the young people of the new generation, our children, our students. They have heard that we humans are to blame for the myriad environmental problems facing the nations of the world today; that they must strive to remedy the folly of those who paved so much before them, and that the pursuit of the American Dream is responsible for the nightmares we all now face. However, they also have it within them to seek answers and solutions and must also hear that the wealth of human resourcefulness and inspiration is far from bankrupt; we do not need to be victims of our own circumstance; we can create our own destiny and follow our own path to global environmental redemption. It is important to realize the power of the individual in taking actions to mitigate the host of environmental problems that stem from a disproportionate reliance on petroleum energy sources.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. 2
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