Deforestation, fracking, climate change, drought, wars, and corruption are all caused by people with their eyes closed. For hundreds of years, humans have been disrespecting the earth and Paul Fleischman is trying to open the eyes of Homo sapiens from self-destruction.

Paul Fleischman is an award winning children’s book author who has won Newbery Medal, California Young Reader Medal, and the International Hans Christian Andersen Award. Fleischman lived in little Aromas, California, but currently resides in Santa Cruz, California. Fleischman is currently trying to raise awareness on environmental problems and encourage young readers to make a difference in his forthcoming book, Eyes Wide Open. In Eyes Wide Open, Fleischman provides many examples of how our population is the cause for the majority of our environmental problems.

Fleischman visited Lincoln on April 30th to give students an insight of his new book about the environment. He spoke about the effects of population growth, one of which is a demand for faster, cheaper products. Being green now-a-days demands high wages, this causes the middle class to support non-green industries.

During Fleischman’s presentation, he spoke about the huge consequences that follow from the high demands for quick and easy energy. The population’s excessive use of fossil fuels and natural gases emit carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases. In some cases, it is costly to the environment to harvest these resources. Many people worry about green energy’s cost. It is too expensive to install the units. Another problem is that our technology  is not up to date. We cannot store the energy in high amounts for a long period of time.

The consequences that come with our over population and energy consumption leads up to the more obvious problem; climate change. Our climate is changing for the worse. It’s horrible for the Earth and its plants, animals, and even humans. We need to encourage peers to go green, use clean energy, and support environmentally safe products. Fleichman encourages students to visit his website at www.paulfleischman.net, to share their experiences of environment change that they see in their communities.

“People don’t want to hear what you have to say. People want to hear what they want to hear. We don’t like doubt,” Fleischman  said when referring to our generation’s media. He added, “everything is biased.” Whether they are newsrooms, documentaries, books or magazines, they all have a significant influence on the population, but the media has become extremely biased due to influences from major corporations. Money plays an important role in what we do towards our environment and often is the reason problems aren’t acted upon.

Eyes Wide Open doesn’t list what we should or shouldn’t do. It only provides us with the information to make informed decisions. The power of that information then guides our actions because, after all, the adolescent of today is the adult of tomorrow, responsible and able to see this problem with wide open eyes.