Paul Steury Admits his Hypocrisy

I’m a hypocrite.

I admit it.

I preach lessening your electricity use, but I love my stereo system. I teach organic gardening to 2nd graders, but I eat imported food laced with DDT exported by the U.S. I exhort bioregionalism, but I drink coffee not grown in my community but in a Third World nation. I commute to work knowing the more I drive the more greenhouse gases I emit, the more non-renewable resources I consume.  I…

But at least I try. At least I ask myself as my father asked me, “Do I need it, or do I just want it?” I have personally expanded to, “How will it affect me and my community? Am I treating the earth as I would want them to do unto me?”

That’s what the celebration Earth Day asks. How can we inform people about the concern of our planet? Grassroots organizations held rallies in the 70”s to move the nation, to provoke political actions, to get people to think. And it worked. But did you know that Earth Day actually started as a dream in 1963? Senator Gaylord Nelson persuaded President Kennedy to do a nationwide conservation tour addressing the deterioration of America’s environment. Only after people started witnessing Rachel Carson’s silent spring, which condemned pesticide poisoning and disappearance of birds, was the flame ignited.

As an environmental educator, I try to keep my personal version of Earth Day daily. Each day I witness kids wade through Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College’s wetland, climb remnants of glaciers, tap sugar maples, or squeeze apple cider. Child-like inquisition inspires me, investigating issues incites me, and the innocence gives me HOPE for this planet, FAITH in the future, and PROMISE that we can be responsible stewards.

Now I’m not evangelizing forfeiture of desired things in life. As eco-philosopher Theodore Roszak put it, “Environmentalists will never achieve their ends by creating a sense of deprivation, which can lead to hostility against those who are seen to be censoring people’s real needs.” I’m just saying we need to think about being stewards of our future. We need to think of our children’s children, as the Native American’s believe, seven generations ahead. We need to think.

And take more quality time to “listen to stars and birds, babies and sages, with open hearts” as William Henry Channing instructs.

-Reprinted from Rhubarb, Summer 2008. Paul Steury is a father who wants his sons to be able to see standing redwoods, mountain goats, and black bears; to swim in clean water; to fish and then eat the catch. That is why he’s trying his darnest to inform people about how to be good stewards on this Earth. He is a faculty member at Goshen College who teaches Environmental Education to future elementary education teachers and to the graduate students at Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center. He is also the board president of the Goshen Farmers Market, a canoeist, a tee-ball coach and a love of good, local, slow food.