The Loma Prietan
March/April 2001
Help Start an Environmental Education Group
What’s the most critical environmental issue we face? It’s none of those on our conservation committee list, yet hopefully it serves all of them. It’s environmental education. I’d like to put it on the list by finding other chapter members who would like to start a public education group.
Why is public education so important? We live in an artificial world almost completely separated from the sources of our sustenance. To us, water comes out of a tap; electric power to fuel an unimaginable variety of electronic servants comes out of an outlet in the wall. Our only connection with the real sources of our clean water and abundant food—water systems and agriculture—typically is what we learn through the popular media; yet those media exist primarily to sell products. They have a vested interest in publicizing consumer-oriented news, not environmental information. So the average American citizen finds out through those media about one-thousandth of what he or she needs to know to make informed environmental decisions; the rest is product promotion information. Even further, we are trained from birth to shop as if there were no consequences except our own satisfaction. It’s not a conspiracy; it’s cultural.
We need to find ways to persuade the commercial media to act more as environmental educators, and we need to present environmental information in packages they will want to publish.
Here are some of the things a public education committee could do:
• Assist chapter issue committees in reaching the media.
• As issue committees negotiate for changes in programs, assist leaders to get a public education component into the terms—a la the tobacco initiative, which included anti-smoking television advertising.
• When Loma Prietan articles are published, seek other venues to disseminate the stories.
• Urge other chapters to form similar committees, and work together.
• Design and place environmental public service announcements in the media ourselves.
• Solicit citizen financial support specifically for environmental public education. Private donations finance advertising space or time for the public service announcements we create.
• Educate the media to see how vital their role in environmental education is and provide them with newsworthy material.
• Devise alternative venues for reaching the public, such as a speakers’ bureau.
• Campaign to have the public request more environmental news from the media.
• Lobby for including environmental costs in economic news.
If you have skills and talents in public relations, media relations, journalism or video production, this could be an opportunity to make a difference in the future of our planet. Please contact Dale Mead at dfmead1@home.com or
408/446-4435.