In this decade, one of the biggest problems that environmentalists face is that many of us still believe that environmental issues are an aesthetic and moral issue — not problems that will affect our personal wellbeing. Climate change is the first dent in this traditional perspective — it has shown many of us that destabilization of natural ecosystems can be bad for the world community. However, even the climate debate has been extremely tough to imprint on people; the fact that a big snow storm in Washington, D.C., and along the East Coast had many people doubting climate scientists shows that experts are not doing a good job explaining the issues. Climate change means a global destabilization that increases sever weather events like the snowstorm in Washington — this should have been clear, even to Fox News, before the snow made it an issue.

 

To get the issues straight, we need to stop talking about the fate of the polar bears and focus on the facts that clearly point to systematic change in our own economic, political and social environments because of poor planning in our use of natural resources and ecosystem services. An emerging group of economists and scientists have been working to develop this field.

 

Chris Martenson is a former Fortune 300 VP who is doing his part to explain the relationship between environment and humans to people around the country. His "Crash Course" short video series uses statistics, math and common sense to show why we should look at how we live in a different way. The full crash course is just under 3.5 hours in total, but he also offers a 45-minute version split into six 5-10 minute clips. It's a great way to learn some hard information about this tough issue.

 

Many others are crunching numbers in attempt to calculate the dollar value of ecosystem services like clean water and natural waste management so that they can be properly valued in the world economy. This valuation is a key component in the growing field of ecological economics.