The
Division of Environmental Geosciences
is in the business of keeping you awash in information about environmental
geoscientific topics -- and while we do not want to inundate you
with even more information, we will be expanding the amount of information
available to you.
Currently,
we are doing this through our peer-reviewed journal articles, convention
sessions and an extensive set of links to news and employment resources
through our Web site.
I am frequently
overwhelmed at the amount of material I want to read but cannot
seem to find the time to read. To me, the implications of not reading
means falling behind in my career through lack of current knowledge
about my field of interest (water resources). But the implications
of reading in my free time to keep current means that I do not have
time to exercise.
I recently
managed to read an interesting paper that incidentally helped solve
both problems.
The paper
aimed at explaining -- or, at least, analyzing -- pro-environmental
behavior.
The authors,
Anja Kollmuss and Julian Agyeman, in "Environmental Education Research"
(Vol.8, No.3, 2002) propose a new model that tries to incorporate
both internal and external factors that have been found to have
influence -- positive or negative -- on pro-environmental behavior.
This new
model, in simple terms, identifies old behavior patterns as being
a very strong but often overlooked barrier to pro-environmental
behavior.
Three other
external barriers were identified as well:
- Lack
of external possibilities and incentives.
- Lack
of internal incentives.
- Lack
of environmental consciousness combined with lack of internal
incentives.
After the
pro-environmental behavior is enacted, negative or insufficient
feedback about behavior is also listed as an additional barrier.
In their
model, they list the internal factors as including knowledge along
with feelings/fear/emotional involvement, and values/attitudes.
External factors included infrastructure, political, social and
cultural factors, economic situation, etc.
There was
a lot of intriguing information in this article for those of us
working in the environmental business. For someone, this article
could ignite a creative solution to environmental sustainability
that plagues responsible energy companies exploring and producing
in places like Brazil and Indonesia.
I hope you
do not feel obligated to keep up with every single new article about
your area of expertise or interest. But if you do, consider this:
I developed an incentive-based plan that fights against my old behavior
patterns and allows me to read more and exercise!
So what
shall I do about the stacks of papers, journals -- and even EXPLORERS!
-- that are neatly piled under my bed, ready for perusal and eventual
recycling?
Here is
my plan: I will keep adding to the stacks, but once a week I will
grab the nearest stack and walk to the Upper Crust Bakery. I will
allow myself to skim through each item and only read the good articles
as I devour a buttery French chocolate croissant.
The pseudo-academic
ambience and relevant reading will allow me to take positive steps
in keeping intellectually engaged in my expertise -- and reduce
my backlog of information. My old identifiable behavior pattern
of stacking up papers until there is too much to read will be eliminated.
I will use an external incentive (walking rather than driving to
burn my calories), so I can eat more chocolate croissants, and an
internal incentive (eating tasty chocolate croissants), to change
my behavior.
At least,
that is my plan ... TO BE CONTINUED.