{"id":5665,"date":"2011-08-11T14:27:40","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T18:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=5665"},"modified":"2011-08-11T14:27:40","modified_gmt":"2011-08-11T18:27:40","slug":"psychologist-green-building-manager-religious-leader-urge-ecologists-to-move-beyond-their-own-scientific-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2011\/08\/11\/psychologist-green-building-manager-religious-leader-urge-ecologists-to-move-beyond-their-own-scientific-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychologist, green building manager, religious leader urge ecologists to move beyond their own scientific community"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Ecological Society of America\u2019s 96th<\/sup> Annual Meeting is taking place in Austin, Texas and kicked off on Sunday, August 7 with an Opening Plenary Panel featuring Richard Morgan, Austin Energy\u2019s Green Building and Sustainability Manager, social psychologist, Susan Clayton of the College of Wooster, and the Executive Director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, Matthew Anderson-Stembridge.\u00a0 Joining the trio, was ecologist Laura Huenneke, ESA Vice President for Public Affairs, who moderated the discussion. \u00a0The group explored the management, psychological, and religious and moral aspects of ensuring that Earth\u2019s life support systems remain resilient in the face of human demands.<\/p>\n

In her opening remarks, Huennke said that the ecological community understands it has much to learn from other communities and that advancing the goal of stewardship of the planet will require multiple efforts by many different communities. \u00a0She said that ecologists should \u201clisten very deeply\u201d and work collaboratively with others.<\/p>\n

Richard Morgan explained that because Austin Energy is a city-owned electric utility, it must be responsive to its citizens, who want to see the utility take environmentally responsible actions.\u00a0 Increasing energy efficiency and reducing waste are a key part of Earth stewardship, said Morgan.\u00a0 The old fashioned way in which building permits are still issued, he said, are holding back the degree of progress that would be possible if these were updated.\u00a0 The same prescriptive codes used in the 1980s are still in effect; if the real impact of a building in a community were taken fully into account, said Morgan, it would dramatically reduce energy consumption using already-existing technology.<\/p>\n

Matthew Anderson-Stembridge expressed his gratitude to ESA in inviting him to the Plenary and said that the open letter <\/a>members of the scientific community send to religious leaders in 1990, set a course for many communities of faith to embrace care for the environment as part of their charge.\u00a0 He said the term \u2018steward\u2019 is particularly meaningful to communities of faith and helps define our relationship to each other and to the environment.\u00a0 Anderson-Stembridge encouraged ecologists to use the \u201cuniversal human venue\u201d of storytelling and then provide the facts.<\/p>\n

Susan Clayton recommended that ecological scientists be mindful of language choices in speaking about environmental issues.\u00a0 She reminded the audience that because many people react negatively to well-known but politically affiliated people such as Al Gore, one should avoid associating such people with an issue because doing so can prevent an audience hostile to someone such as Gore from hearing your message.\u00a0 It\u2019s important to learn something about your audience and find a way to connect with their values, said Clayton; find language that resonates with where they are at.\u00a0 Anderson-Stembridge echoed her comments by noting that scientists can be just as likely as others to have personal biases\u2014for example, sometimes in their view of people of faith, and that keeping such biases in check can help improve productive interactions with other communities.<\/p>\n

Clayton said that ecologists and others should recognize that it can be okay for someone not to accept that climate change is happening, for example, but to still embrace energy saving steps; changing behavior not attitude can be a much more effective goal.<\/p>\n

All three speakers agreed on the critical nature of the Earth Stewardship challenge.\u00a0 In their final comments, Morgan encouraged ecologists to take time to share their information with communities outside of ecology and to demonstrate the relevance of their work in accessible ways.\u00a0\u00a0 Clayton said that sometimes ecologists and other scientists focus so single-mindedly on their \u201cone thing\u201d that they neglect to see other issues that are important to people.\u00a0 As a result they can be perceived by others as impatient or other negative characteristics that can impede good communication.\u00a0 Anderson-Stembridge echoed their remarks by also encouraging ecologists to make themselves available to other communities, to take the initiative, for example, to have lunch with their local pastor, begin to build a relationship and open a dialogue.\u00a0 \u201cThat would be a tremendous boon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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The Ecological Society of America\u2019s 96th Annual Meeting is taking place in Austin, Texas and kicked off on Sunday, August 7 with an Opening Plenary Panel featuring Richard Morgan, Austin Energy\u2019s Green Building and Sustainability Manager, social psychologist, Susan Clayton of the College of Wooster, and the Executive Director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, Matthew Anderson-Stembridge.\u00a0 Joining…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,48],"tags":[300,60,657,1005,538,132,92,473,905,108,1050,426,558],"class_list":["post-5665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecology-in-policy","category-ecology-and-society","tag-annual-meeting","tag-climate-change","tag-communication","tag-earth-stewardship","tag-ecology","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-esa","tag-green-building","tag-nature","tag-public","tag-religious-leader","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}