The Hoosier state was named 43rd for environmental quality and 47th for eco-friendly behaviors in a recent study conducted by the financial website WalletHub. Indiana also came in 47th for median air quality.
“I knew it would be bad, but I guess I wanted to be optimistic and think we weren’t that terrible,” junior Meg Owens said about the rankings. “I think a lot of people wouldn’t know just how bad it is. I feel like that’s a job for our government and other people in power to make it known that it’s a pressing issue.”
For the environmental quality calculations, all states were evaluated based on factors such as municipal solid waste per capita, public exposure to particulate matter, water quality, the median pH of soil and carbon dioxide emissions.
“I think in terms of air quality, that’s related to our fuel mix, which is very high in carbon content,” IU Director of Sustainability Bill Brown said. “So the states that burn a lot of coal are going to be ranked pretty low in terms of air pollution because of that, whereas the states that have hydro or a lot of renewable energy are going to have less air ?pollution.”
Brown said he also feels economic and cultural norms in Indiana might have influenced the ranking.
“There is a lot of manufacturing in Indiana,” he explained. “States with more manufacturing use the most electricity and burn the most fuel. We’re also more rural, so people can’t walk everywhere. We drive long distances and also use a lot of gasoline for agriculture.”
To determine the most eco-friendly states, the researchers looked at indicators such as the number of Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design certified buildings per capita, energy consumption, gasoline consumption, water consumption, green transportation and recycling rates. Brown was less confident about using this set of ?criteria.
“There’s a lot of different variables in all of those things,” he said. “Any kind of metric or ranking is open to interpretation, so I think you have to be careful about extrapolating behavior from numbers like that. In terms of environmental quality, though, that’s something you can measure so that part of it is pretty clear.”
Climate change is already effecting the state. In fact, Indiana climatologists are predicting that by 2050, Hoosiers will likely walk out of their doors and into a climate much like that of Alabama or Texas today.
“The idea is known as spatial analog and is based on the expectation that Indiana’s climate will become warmer over the coming decades,” said Scott Robeson, a climatologist in the Department of Geography. He explained that, along with increased temperatures from higher greenhouse gas concentrations, Hoosiers should also expect heavier rainfalls.
“The temperature changes will likely increase the length of the growing season, but increases in precipitation are expected to occur in winter and spring and therefore may not coincide with crop and residential needs,” Robeson said.
Experts do not think it’s too late for Indiana to turn its sustainability performance around.
“We’re one of the leading wind states in terms of new wind production, so that’s an option,” Brown said. “Bloomington also happens to have one of the highest concentrations of residential renewable energy in the state, so locally our renewable energy mix is probably higher than statewide.”
Owens said he felt studies such as the WalletHub report are good for motivating people to take action.
“It’s just embarrassing,” she said. “It’s like us being the fourth fattest state, too. It’s those kinds of statistics that make people ashamed and make them want to try and change things.”
