Class Dismayed

by Angela Perkins
New Haven Advocate
June 22, 2006

Editor’s note: Last Saturday, the main branch of the New Haven Free Public Library hosted a youth-oriented consortium on global warming and oil addiction, sponsored by Americans for An Informed Democracy. Attendees from high schools and colleges from around the country got together to figure out how they plan to save the world. We asked conference participants to write an essay about the experience and about the generational questions surrounding global warming. Angela Perkins, a political science and psychology major at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, contributed the winning essay. For her efforts she gets $50, an Advocate t-shirt, and a planet to save.

On a recent trip to the gas station, a friend of mine put $5 worth of gas in her SUV, only to find her tank empty again by the time we drove to our apartment across town.

For once I was thankful that I am spending the summer separated from my car, relying instead on carpooling and public transportation. Like most people, I have a sincere interest in protecting the environment, but when environmentally friendly actions clash with my lifestyle, convenience tends to win out over going out of my way to produce results that I cannot see.

With another surge in gas prices and recent media attention focused on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth , Americans are finally paying attention to climate change and oil dependence. Gore stresses what the Baby Boomer generation can do to fight global warming, but the younger generation has more opportunity and more of a stake in overcoming oil dependence and climate change. As the generation that will be affected by long-term global warming trends, young Americans need to ensure that something is done about climate change before it is too late.

I recently attended a conference entitled “Oil Dependence and Climate Change: We Do Have a Choice,” hosted by Americans for Informed Democracy, a nonpartisan organization that gives young people a forum to discuss global issues. The conference brought together a group of passionate, energetic young leaders to engage in a constructive dialogue on how students can organize to make a difference in environmental issues.

Many of my peers think these problems must be solved by the government, and that citizens should get involved by working to influence our elected officials to support both local programs such as the Urban Environmental Accords and transnational agreements like the Kyoto Protocol that would reduce harmful emissions that cause global warming.

These efforts to alter policy are undoubtedly important, but I am excited to see my peers thinking about another kind of activism, a more involved kind that requires altering personal routines and believing in the impact of the individual.

Along with policy changes, consumer power is fundamental. If consumers demonstrate that they are willing to make sacrifices for greener products, businesses will meet the demand. Cities will add bus routes only when citizens demonstrate a desire for them by utilizing existing public transportation, and automobile manufacturers will use existing technology to reduce emissions and increase mileage once consumers buy environmentally friendly vehicles.

Young people possess one distinct quality that gives us an advantage in developing environmentally friendly lifestyles: We have yet to form long-term habits and are just now shaping our lifestyles.

We have information that generations before ours did not have and we have the power to impact global climate trends. By taking advantage of the opportunity to form greener habits now, we will be the generation that makes the transition to environmentally sound practices a reality.

—Angela Perkins