Chattanooga Pulse

Written by Mary Duffy
Wednesday, 28 January 2009 18:40

The Chattanooga Green Committee released their report-the Climate Action Plan-last week, as reported in The Pulse 1/22/09. The Climate Action Plan is the result of a year’s worth of work by the Green Committee, a 14-person team appointed by the mayor.

Like everything else in Chattanooga, this report’s genesis was a “visioning” session, this one held last April. The public were asked to rank the topics they discussed. Predictably, recycling topped the list, while sustainable industry was number 15. The public’s ranking of the importance of these factors in creating a better environment and smaller carbon footprint shows how out of touch with reality we are. Or perhaps it just shows that it’s easier to just recycle our bottles and cans and feel we’re doing our part.

My cynicism about the environmental impact of Chattanooga’s major employers aside, the report hits all the right notes: We can shrink our carbon footprint if we recycle, find ways to lower our use of gasoline-powered vehicles, make green building and energy efficiency the norm in homes and businesses, decrease sprawl, protect the existing natural resources, educate ourselves and create public policy on green issues. That’s the report in a nutshell, and none of it is very controversial.

The only thing that is controversial is that dramatic change will have to take place in order to achieve the goals of this report. Those changes are dramatic because frankly, they are as much cultural as they are physical. It’s easy to quote, as the report does, recycling participation at 90 percent in Portland, Oregon, with 63 percent of waste materials being recycled. It’s not easy to expect Chattanooga to achieve anything like that.

Those numbers are not from diligent advertising and environmental education in Oregon, but because recycling is part of the culture in the Pacific Northwest, just as barbeque and Gothic short stories are part of Southern culture. I hope Chattanooga can achieve a recycling rate like that, and perhaps more curbside pickup would increase recycling, but it will mean cultural changes.

What do I mean by cultural change? Having spent half of my life below the Mason-Dixon (the rest of it everywhere else, including overseas) I’ll try to be polite about what I mean, since manners is one thing we value in the South. Cultural change means that motorists don’t harass cyclists, and are aware that bicycles have a right to be on the road. Cultural change means that you don’t find empty shells, beer cans, old appliances and trash on the trails of the North Chickamauga Pocket Wilderness.

Cultural change means that we spend our money on educating our young in the ways of being green and everything else in public schools, so that the wealthy in this community send their children there rather than GPS, McCallie, or Baylor. Cultural change means hammering our swords into ploughshares, or whatever the green equivalent might be.

I hope that the ideas and topics you find in this column help you green your life, but change does not come from the outside. I believe the report’s most important recommendation is the creation of an Office of Sustainability in Chattanooga. This alone would help galvanize several different organizations that are working in the community to bring about environmental awareness and change.

Establishing such an office would represent a real commitment from the city to making the changes we need, and that the public has asked for. As stated in the report, many suggestions from the public won’t necessarily shrink our city’s carbon footprint, but they will help bring about the needed cultural changes.