Thanksgiving at Home

I went home for Thanksgiving but I wasn’t able to think of someone to talk to that had environmental views that were very different from mine. Generally my friends don’t think about the environment in their day to day activities, but when asked their opinion of a certain issue, they usually have a pro-environment stance, unless they are just completely unaware of the issue.
I spent most of the break with my immediate family anyway. My sister has yet to develop many political opinions and my dad dislikes talking about politics of any sort, so that left my mom.

I’ve talked to my mom about environmental issues before so this conversation wasn’t anything new really. While she finds the state of the environment rather concerning, she does not think about it constantly and has expressed her dislike for the fatalism of many environmentalists and the make-you-feel-guilty tactics that are often used. Essentially she said she doesn’t like being preached to. In this respect, I agree with her entirely. Constant pessimism and environmentalists speaking about restricting waste, etc. in a condescending manner turns people off from environmental issues quickly. This is something we’ve talked about in class a lot and I do think that talking optimistically about solutions that are obtainable (like the Cradle to Cradle idea) will keep people’s attention better.

My mom, however, is one of the people who tends to fall into the trap of small actions rather than large ones. She says that she recycles, uses a reusable water bottle, etc. and from the way she discusses it she seems to think that in doing this she is doing her part environmentally. While these actions are a step in the right direction, I have tried to express to her the enormity of problems and how there needs to be change in many established systems, not just small individual actions. My mom is a vegetarian, though this is for animal rights reasons, rather than environmental ones. Still, it helps.

local thanksgiving!

I didn't go home for thanksgiving, I spent the long weekend with my boyfriend and his family, who are very liberal. So they didn't need me preaching at them. In fact, his mom just bought each member of the family a reusable water bottles thanks to me.

I did have an interesting email conversation with my mother on the topic of buying a locally grown turkey for the family. I'm sorry to say that economics ruled this thanksgiving, and she bought the regular old Butterball from the supermarket. I did a little research and emailed her a list of the steroids they use to produce those turkeys just to gross her out though.

Not Exactly Table Conversation...

Because the environment is a relatively new area of interest to me, I did not have any idea what my views actually were. I talked to my dad over the break and, since he always has as opinion on everything, I knew it would be an interesting conversation.

I started by (during dinner on Thanksgiving) asking what people thought of the environment and was it in trouble and how to fix it? I had several reactions ranging from "it's just getting a couple of degrees warmer" to "we are all in trouble".

My dad is an accountant and is very interested in the economy. His views are that the market should make corrections to the system and that, when consumers wanted change or there was a disaster, that was when we should make changes. I discussed my point with the need for a change in policy from the top down in addition to a bottom up approach from grassroots organisations. The only part that is negotiable is the implementation of the policy and that should be discussed and somewhat regulated to ensure the most effective and efficient outcome (like the Big 3 discussion below).

I'm not sure how but the discussion ended up very similar to our last discussion in class before the holiday. We ended up on the topic of fuel standards in cars and whether the government should bail out the Big 3. My dad said no, they should file for bankruptcy and fail so that the lobour contracts could be renegotiated . I pointed out that, if the Big 3 failed, millions of jobs would be lost and that, as a condition of the bailout, contracts would need to be renegotiated to make the companies more competitive with Toyota, etc.