Researching about the environment for these articles can be depressing. I also struggle when I see how much disaster and tragedy dominates the media.
Wouldn't it be great if everyone decided that, instead of being infatuated with doom, gloom and the problems that we face (which I readily admit I have been guilty of before), they started to focus more on positive thoughts that would bring us solutions?
To achieve this, we need to change people's behaviour (as I have said here in the past). There are gateways that can be used to spark people's interest and start them on a path towards treating the rest of the world better. For example, we use the beach (a place that most people love) as the emotional touch-point to change littering behaviour on the streets.
Working out these touch-points is where making a difference in environmental and social work becomes very much entwined.
This week we had a 40-strong group of school students from Manurewa South School come out to Waiheke Island to clean up the beach. Eight of them had never been to a beach before. Yes. Eight school-aged Kiwi kids had never spent a day at the beach.