Round 2, Match 2! Reducing and Reusing tag team Wildlife Conservation!
Reducing/Reusing
Reducing and Reusing (R/R) are back again and ready for action!
Green Pride (16/20)
This one's really tricky because it covers such a broad range of different activities. R/R can be as simple as a child turning an old egg carton into a flower planter or it can be as complex as a graduate student preparing a thesis that could reduce the energy use of a hospital by several hundred megawatt-hours per year. For the sake of this blog, I'm going to shoot for something in the middle, and base it off a homeowner that just got a utility bill and seen the results of all the conservation efforts she's put in over the past month.
People are pretty proud to cut back or reuse. I can imagine people bragging at parties how they were able to cut their water bill in half with a new shower head or how they were able to build a golf cart from parts they salvaged from a junk yard. So, yeah. People are pretty proud of R/R.
Green Guilt (4/20)
Sorry humanity. I understand how you are. Everything else just seems to be a bit more important. "Oh, I meant to build that picnic table of wood we salvaged from the neighbor's shed, but I've just been too busy now that I have lung cancer." Right, like lung cancer has ever been a good excuse to get out of doing things.
Reader Comments (0/10)
I couldn't decide either. Maybe next time!
Wildlife Conservation
Wildlife Conservation is probably more important than Wetland Conservation but people don't realize that. Let's do an example. Let's say we didn't figure out that DDT killed baby bald eagles until it was too late. All the bald eagles are now dead. Aw, that's a shame. Most people would be thinking about whether the US should replace it as the official bird or to honor its memory by leaving it. But what they should be worried about is what's going to happen to all those mice that the birds are now not eating. Those mice will be eating all of our crops and carrying diseases that may or may not decimate the human race. I guess eagles are pretty important after all, right?
Green Pride (17/20)
Everyone loves a good story that talks about how some bug or bird or type of tree was saved by some group's conservation efforts. Yay for saving wildlife! These stories make everyone feel proud that their society is on the right track and is doing the right thing for once. And we can all sleep well at night!
(Does anyone else have a weird sense of deja vu? Oh, right, that's what I wrote for yesterday's Pride about Wetland Conservation. But really, most people don't see the difference)
Green Guilt (5/20)
I don't really see any need to change the score for this section either. People won't be guilty if they didn't see a need for it in the first place. Let me tell you a story of the Baiji. They were a species of dolphin that used to live in the fresh water rivers of China. Well, you know how good China is at keeping their rivers clean, right? So, anyway, these dolphins are now extinct as of 2006-ish due to pollution and overfishing and building dams and who knows what else. They probably eat dolphins in China... Gross...
Anyway, my point is that I'm sure you've never heard of the Baiji, even though the first aquatic mammal to go extinct in more than 50 years should be a big news story. But it's not because people like to advertise their successes (bald eagles) and hide their failures (Baiji). And everyone can sleep well at night because they don't want to know these things.
Reader Comments (0/10)
They're worth double now, so make sure you comment!
Time to tally the scores!
Reducing and Reusing: 20
Wildlife Conservation: 22
For some reason, I can't get the colors to change, but Wildlife Conservation did win. Just think, one comment could have tied the whole thing! But now Reducing and Reusing is gone forever, just like the Baiji.
Come on back on Friday and see how (1) Bikes and (5) Trains do against one another.
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