Photo by Shah Rifat Alam Bhuiyan
by Shah Rifat Alam Bhuiyan
Brian Cole, 13, has nightmares about waking up to find the “Greek Goddess of earth, Gaia,” wreaking havoc on land because mankind has not been nice to her. “We need to care more about the environment, or else the world might not look so pretty in the future,” said Brian, who lives in Central Brooklyn.
Even though Brian’s thoughts about the environment are seeping into his subconscious, he, like many of the teens The Ditmas Examiner interviewed, said they rarely contribute to conservation. They say the problem is that they don’t know what to do.
For a Brooklyn resident, Hasibul Islam, 15, the environment is a bigger issue than what he can fix. “I do not care much about recycling or disposing garbage properly and neither do most of my friends,” he said. “There are other people for that job.”
Another teenager thinks that it is quite natural and instinctive that the youth care less about the environment. “We teenagers are impulsive and it is hard for us to always think about the greater good. We’re young and that’s just how our brains are wired,” said Theana Brooks, 19, a student at Erasmus Hall High School. “For example, I leave the water running while brushing my teeth even though I know I should not do it.”
President Donald Trump announced that he will withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change. It was adopted in 2015 by 195 nations, with 147 ratifying it- including the United States, which is the world’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter.
While they not be familiar with the Paris Agreement, Ditmas teens agree it will take a concerted effort to change the actions of teens.
“I do not think we emphasize it enough in schools. We talk about it in schools but I do not see any promising initiatives,” said Kelly Clarkson, 23, an assistant teacher at Brooklyn College.
School involvement is key for Towana Kelly, 17, too. “School curriculum should include mandatory classes, trips, campaigns, and clubs focusing on the environment,” she said. “Students may also be graded on such activities which will push them to take saving the earth as seriously as anything else.”
But school might be at the core of the problem. In 2015 humanities scholar Diego Román of Southern Methodist University found that the wordings and the contents in science books often provide misleading information around global warming, “We found that climate change is presented as a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions,” said Román in a statement about the research. “Climate skeptics and climate deniers are given equal time and treated with equal weight as scientists and scientific facts- even though scientists who refute global warming total a miniscule number.”
Moreover, not everything can be taught in the classroom. “Our parents play a great role is teaching us the right things to do,” said Faeza Khalid, 13. “If a father does not stop to recycle or save water, why will his son do it? My parents taught me not to pollute the environment and I try my best to be as ‘green’ as possible. I always follow the 3 R’s- recycle, reduce, and reuse.”
One idea Kelly had would be to incentivize the process. “When we recycle cans and bottles, we get 5 cents. However, when we recycle paper or save water, we do not get anything,” she said. “Little rewards would go a long way in motivating people to recycle even more.”
To Brooks, the Erasmus student, young people need to be more connected with nature in order to appreciate it. “We should all go out once a while and amass ourselves in the beauty of nature,” she said. “To be able to save the earth, first we need to love it.”