Visit with Mitchell Thomashow

Mitchell Thomashow was at Williams yesterday talking about inspiring a sense of wonder in the world around us and how that makes people start to care about the environment and climate change. His book is called Bringing the Biosphere Home.

From his talk, a few things were brought home to me. Our education does not teach kids about space and time. We don't learn what a million means, when the ice ages were compared to the dinosaurs, and how to conceive of how many people and species there are on earth. In part this is because these concepts are culturally very new. It was only 150 years ago that people began to think of evolution, think that the earth was more than 6000 years old, and some people still don't think that way. That change in thinking hasn't come down to the basic levels of education.

Just as we don't learn how to think of very large numbers, we also learn nothing about the immediate world. How many people know off the top of their heads what species live in their nearby woods, which birds migrate through, when the next full moon is, where our water comes from or what the place looked like before European settlement? If we are not aware of what is around us, how can we possibly be concerned when these things change?

But people live indoor lives and for some it is not feasible to get outside enough to really learn about it. But indoors are also unique environments which we know little about. There is just as much to learn about buildings as backyards. Where does our electricity come from? Our heat? Our disposable products? Where does it all go? How much head escapes through leaky windows as opposed to constantly opening doors as opposed to too little insulation in the ceiling? Again, if we are not aware of these things, then how can we care about what happens to them?

We can make that information part of how we build buildings. They should be accessible to learning in such ways that casual users can know how they work. Maybe it's just a plaque near the front door with some basic numbers, or maybe its glass doors around the mechanical rooms, or maybe manual controls for ventilation and instructions on how much ventilation is needed for certain numbers of occupants. In many ways we are talking about putting the controls in the hands of people, and it is possible that it can lead to wasteful practices like leaving everything on. But there is no shortage of waste in the way it currently works. What there is a shortage of is wonder and awareness of what is going on in front of our eyes.