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Environmental Education: School of Crock

By Harold Brown

If there is anything worse than Americans’ knowledge about the environment, it is their perception of it. Ask the experts. “Most Americans believe they know more about the environment than they actually do,” the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation concluded from a Roper poll in 2003.

The poll found that:

120 million Americans think spray cans still have CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) in them. But CFCs were banned in 1978.
120 million think disposable diapers are the leading problem with landfills. They actually represent about 1 percent of the problem.
130 million believe that hydropower is America's top energy source. In fact, it accounts for just 10 percent of the total.

In spite of this, the foundation concluded that, “The pursuit of environmental literacy in America is widespread and popular.” It should have added, “but not effective.”

If Americans are confused, it’s because they are spoonfed by sources with little information, but with alternative agendas. Consider where the average American gets that “information” on the environment. About 60 percent of respondents in Roper polls cited mostly television and newspapers; about 25 percent credited the government and 33 percent said radio or environmental groups. (More than one source could be chosen.)

Don’t be duped into believing that governmental agencies given charge of the environment lack bias in what they share with the public. Consider these examples of selling an agenda:

The Connecticut Council on Environmental Quality in its 2001 Annual Report, “Driving a car is probably the most environmentally damaging activity a Connecticut resident will engage in.”

From a journal article by staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “With their vast asphalt parking areas and treeless streets, these (sprawling) cities coddle the automobile while denying children the opportunity to experience the wonder and joy of the natural world.”

The environment, like so many other topics, has become a vehicle for cultural and political agendas. Former Greenpeace director Patrick Moore told John Stossel in an ABC-TV program in 2001 that the environmental movement has been hijacked by political activists. “They're using environmental rhetoric to cloak agendas like class warfare and anti-corporatism that, in fact, have almost nothing to do with ecology.”

The lack of objective and accurate views characterizes most reports by interest groups, government agencies and even educational enterprises. Visitors to a Duke University Web site on its environmental experts see this: (www.nicholas.duke.edu/crossroads/georgia.html): “America’s Environmental Outlook for 2006 Isn’t Sunny. Global warming clouds our future. Pollution degrades our air, soil and water. Environmental toxins compromise the health of our children. Misuse threatens the sustainability of our forests, fisheries, wetlands and coasts, and the health of species that live there.” Why such a dreary prospect, when our environment has improved dramatically in the last 30 or 40 years?

Students are often subjected to unwarranted indoctrination. The syllabus for Ecology 1000 at the University of Georgia says, “Finally we ask the students to make an environmentally defensible change in their life style, and to quantify its potential impact on creating a sustainable future.” The report makes up 20 percent of the laboratory grade and is discussed in two lab periods. So, it is not enough to educate students about the environment; they must change their lives! Imagine the uproar from such a requirement in religion or political science.

Bias is also obvious in the choice of books for a required report in that course. Of the nine listed for Fall semester 2005, not one told of progress; all were pessimistic about the future. Among the titles: “And the Waters Turned to Blood,” “Our Stolen Future,” and “Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy.” Another, “The Boiling Point,” about global warming, says “Under the administration of George W. Bush, the White House has become the East Coast branch office of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal…”

Students need contrasting viewpoints, but where is the contrast? Not in these books. This course is probably not typical, but it is safe to say that most are neither complimentary of environmental progress nor optimistic about future solutions. If professional environmentalists are so negative, how can the public get a balanced view?

Americans’ need education about the environment, not distorted pessimism. A Yale University poll in 2005 found that 52 percent of Americans believe the environment in the United States is getting worse and only 15 percent think it is getting better. The majority in the Yale poll surely didn’t know that the number of days of unhealthy air has decreased by 60 percent since 1980 (see graph), or that the federal ozone standard was not exceeded a single time in Illinois in 2004, down from thousands of times each year in the mid-1970s. They also couldn’t have known that a 2000 EPA study of sewage treatment and restoration of rivers concluded, “tremendous progress has been made in improving water quality, restoring valuable fisheries and other biological resources, and creating extensive recreational opportunities in all nine case study sites.”

It is fairly clear why Americans are so pessimistic and know so little of environmental progress. Environmental education in America is misdirected and failing.

Air Quality graph

University of Georgia Professor Emeritus R. Harold Brown is an Adjunct Scholar with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and author of “The Greening of Georgia: The Improvement of the Environment in the Twentieth Century.” The Georgia Public Policy Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.