News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
An Environmental Activist will visit the Upper Cumberland Tuesday to discuss how residents can protect the region’s natural wonders.
Student Conservation Association Member Byric Savage will discuss options for advocating for the environment. Statewide Organizing for Community Empowerment Facilitator Brian Paddock said the meeting will provide real-life examples.
“Folks that say they care about the earth and the clean air and clean water and this is the way to work with some people who understand what doing that day by day and on the ground really looks like and feels like.”
Paddock said SOCM is a 50-year-old organization based out of East Tennessee, teaching people how to defend their communities from environmental attacks and also tries to accomplish more economic justice in our communities. Paddock said more efforts to conserve our environment here in the Upper Cumberland as more problems will come due to the population growing.
Paddock said there are more opportunities now as we have done a lot of damage to our environment.
“The way we live puts pressure on the resources of Mother Nature and we’ve got to figure out ways that we mitigate that,” Paddock said. “Because Mother Nature can’t service all as well as we would like unless we are also conservative and respectful in the way that we use resources.”
Paddock said air quality and water quality are already being affected by the increase in population.
“We are running into problems already where we don’t have enough places to put our waste in landfills,” Paddock said. “We have to recycle water in order to have enough that is clean and available. We can’t always just get fresh water from a roadside spring the way we used to.”
Paddock said the meeting will also teach advocates how to talk with public officials and how to make sure public buildings are energy efficient. Paddock said from his experience energy efficiency has oftentimes been looked over by local governments.
“I have never seen a discussion of building a new school where the life cycle cost of the energy and usage in that school was under consideration,” Paddock said. “If we just leave that to future school boards and future taxpayers without any awareness of how efficiency in the buildings could make a difference in those costs.”
Paddock said if that is not taken seriously, future generations will have to take on the burden that our generation failed to address. The event will be located on the first floor of the Putnam County Library and will begins Tuesday at 5pm.
