Melchior Huijts
This morning, I read in a British newspaper that a small town in the US has rejected a proposal to build a solar farm, with solar panels.[1] The reason that the newspapers shows for not wanting this solar farm, is that it would use a lot of the sun’s energy in the neighbourhood. This would results in lower plant growing rates or even let them die. It had also not yet been proved that solar cells do not cause cancer, arguing against the installation of the farm. Even though it is unsure whether or not these are the real reasons why the locals do not want the solar farms, such arguments are not rare. Within the US Senate, one of the senators disproved global warming because it was snowing outside. To prove this he had taken a snowball inside onto the Senate floor, in mid-February.[2]
If it is ignorance, people are uneducated or if it is denial, in all cases it most certainly is dangerous for sustainability transitions. It is unacceptable these days in the western world, to not know about climate change. The coverage is so large these days and the scientific evidence completely overrules any suggestions that would deny it. I find it frustrating to see how certain people have either not been educated or just have not had the interest themselves to see how some basic physics work. Many beautiful documentaries have been made on the topic that give hard evidence proving that climate change is already happening. They show in a very understandable manner the consequences our daily lifestyle has for the environment and indirectly also human kind.
Although, people that do not know about a problem can dangerous, but even more dangerous are the people that do know about it, but preach against it for their own interest. These are the people that deliberately choose to not care about a certain problem. They are also the people that others can take as an example for educating themselves and thus will really make them think that a certain problem is non-existing. Whereas if they would do their own research they would see that their preacher is wrong.
As said in earlier columns. Change can be pushed or steered by the government. Companies can tactically implement their product to drive change, but in the end if people do not believe in it, justly or not, it has little chance of happening. This can be dangerous, if other people see this and think it is correct. I think it is therefore very important to keep showing the world the effects and results of our impact, to educate the people. This can be done via scientific reports and articles, but also very much trough documentaries and works of art.
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/26/senate-james-inhofe-snowball-climate-change