Native Entertainment
A couple of days ago, I took the MTS Route 30 down to La Jolla and went for a pleasant snorkeling trip at the La Jolla Underwater Park Ecological Preserve. The Preserve has a bunch of really cool fish, including tons of large phlegmatic orange ones, and accordingly there are many people in the water at any one time, so it’s also a fairly safe place to swim around.
The trip made me think about the environmental impact of how we entertain ourselves. It seems to me that activities appropriate and unique to one’s region can have a smaller environmental footprint (and cost less) than those activities that attempt to be as general as possible. For example, movies are the quintessential generalizable entertainment experience. No matter where one is or which theater one sees a movie in, the content and overall experience are essentially the same. On the other hand, going for a walk or a swim can take on vastly different dimensions depending on one’s location. In order to create a movie experience, gobs of energy and resources must be used in the production and the subsequent display of a film. In contrast, going snorkeling or bodyboarding or taking a hike in the mountains has no real energy cost outside of transportation, and if one lives nearby there really is no substantial energy cost to the activity (except for the up front costs of fabricating a snorkel, bodyboard or backpack).
In a way, these thoughts remind me of the native gardening trend, where only native plants are used in one’s garden in order to reduce water and pesticide use. By exploiting the properties of one’s region, one saves time, energy and effort while creating something unique compared to more idealized (and generalized) cookie-cutter lawns and gardens.
For these reasons, over the next few weeks I will continue to explore entertainment possibilities that are low-environmental-impact and appropriate to the San Diego area. I’ll mark them under the “Local” and “Entertainment” categories along the right hand side of this page.
July 24th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Movie theaters are generally much closer to people than a “native entertainment” location. I live very close to a state park (about 20 minutes drive), but it’s still twice as far as the nearest movie theater (10 minutes or less). Does the per person energy cost of the movie really outweigh the extra 10 minutes of driving?
July 24th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Certainly not, I’d imagine. That fact is a product of where one chooses to (or is able to) live, and the way that communities are planned. The more exurbs that are built in deserts with nothing to recommend them but price and marginal proximity to a city, the more the energy equation will appear to tilt towards seeing a movie in this narrow example put forth in my post. Overall, though, those communities where commuting for long stretches and driving to entertainment is a necessity will likely result in higher energy use than those where native entertainment is abundant. I definitely agree that the energy saving value of native entertainment is going to vary wildly based on one’s location, however.