Heyo, SuperForesters!
We’ve all noticed how more and more people are taking action toward becoming environmentally friendly. Just last night, many of us participated in Earth Hour as a way to demonstrate our global desire to respect our mother earth and when I flicked off the kitchen lights last night, I couldn’t help but take a look outside to see if there were any neighbors out there who were participating, as well. An interesting phenomenon, no? Taking action and immediately turning to see if anybody else was doing it…
This behavior isn’t anything new, and academics at the University of Minnesota conducted an interesting study to try and gain a better understanding of the “Green to Be Seen” concept. Though I, personally, would’ve participated in Earth Hour regardless of what everybody else was doing, they found that a lot of people behave differently. According to the study, it was found that people will often give up luxury in order to be more environmentally friendly or in order to be ethically responsible–but only when others are looking.
This is a conundrum I’ve often struggled with internally. Environmental awareness is something that’s considered to be “in” right now. The question of the matter is, is this a good thing?
On the negative side, trends are just that, trends. And they tend to fade away as quickly as they fade in. On top of that, there also seem to be a bunch of individuals that would be willing to take advantage of this trend as a way of making profit putting the question of intent and sincerity into play. On the plus side, trendiness brings awareness and as a result of all of the attention, ideally some of it would stick. But does the good outweigh the bad?
What do you think? I’m on the fence, help me out.
Spill all!
-C
(And of course, love to SuperForester Anastasiya and Cosmetically Conscious for the tip!)
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