 We’ve seen the impact of the “Average” American footprint on the planet, it doesn’t look good.
We’ve hiked to Chautauqua to begin to learn our natural world, and to look at the environmental issues faced by Open Space and Mountain Parks in Boulder
We’ve read a report on Boulder County’s environmental strengths and weaknesses.
We’ve also begun to examine our place in the natural world and ask some challenging questions: how do humans fit into the picture? What are our responsibilities? How do we make change? Should we?
For your first Web Journal please use your notes from our class discussion, What Does it All Mean? To answer the following questions:
1. What does it all mean to you?
- Do you feel inspired, hopeful, overwhelmed?
- Use specific examples from what we have done in class to give an idea of what you are thinking about all this information.Â
Keelan Sears
well, I think that this is showing how we as people abuse our privileges to a point where we are using much more then needed. Clearly, from many cultural examples, we can survive on significantly lower portions then we do. But unlike many people around the world, we have the choice to use as much as we want. And on a certain level, I think that it is human instinct to grab what we can while we can. so this whole “I might need this later” train of thought could be a lot more natural than we think. We want to make it easier on ourselves despite the less apparent toll it takes on the planet. I smell the problem…
So yes, I do feel overwhelmed, knowing that it is human instinct that is delivering the final blows to the natural world. Acknowledging the fact that we have to change the way we think puts a few pounds on the shoulders.
Alexandra Swisher
In todays discussion i was very passionate about the amount of hope that this earth still has. As one of my peers said The industrial revolution was a mid hundred years ago, if you’ve watched any history channel you’d know that our time on this earth is a meer hair length in the timeline of our exhistence, If we can do as much damage as we have done now we can change our ways and see what the percentage is from that prospective. we cannot say that what humans are doing is irreversable until we try. It is REDICULOUS how much the rich countries such as United States and the United Kingdom pollute CO2 emmissions each year. Yet, those that are getting burned by our climate change are the poor and lowest CO2 polluting countries.
We need to take responsibility for what we have created and what we do today.
Aleyna Porreca
I look at all these articles and pictures and what initially comes to mind is how bad it all seems. Although there are efforts for change they all seem very minimal in scale to the big sceme of things. I feel like there are so many people abusing the information they have about our information failing to see how we can prevent the disasters coming our way. Because we will never know the true outcome of our actions we all need to take a deep breath and plunge into this pool of options and take a look around. The lack in motivation to better our country to help better the world is becoming what I think is our largest enemy. If people were motivated to do something good, they would. It’s like doing your homework, your not going to do it unless you understand it, and your teacher gives you a reason to do it (like getting credit). People need to be more educated about their surroundings and how they are being affected, and need to be shown reasons for stopping what is in their near future. So hello America, take a look up from your blackberry, step out of your gas guzzler, and take a look around. Say hello to the world you’ve created and then challenge yourself to say “Goodbye” and help change it for the better. We have the resources to be succesful in this attempt to heal the Earth’s wounds, now lets take them and use them. Let’s do this together!
Charles Shanahan
From what we have gone through and learned so far about the class I feel as if I should have made better choice in the community that we call Earth. Today we looked at some pictures of people with no food to the people (thats us) with so much money that we don’t even use it because we have to no we use it because we have no better use for it. I saw in this one picture of people in Africa that had little food and were practically starving cause they don’t have the money or even the resources to get food. Than there is us Americans with piles, shelfs, tables, counters, cars, and even truck loads of food that would last a family in Africa up to 1.5 years of food as to us it is a mirror 1/2 year of food which probably costs us $1000 maybe even more. All I’m saying is that we treat money like our land (CRAPPY).
Aleyna Porreca
I look at all these articles and pictures and what initially comes to mind is how bad it all seems. Although there are efforts for change they all seem very minimal in scale to the big sceme of things. I feel like there are so many people abusing the information they have about our enviornment and are failing to see how we can prevent the disasters coming our way. Because we will never know the true outcome of our actions we all need to take a deep breath and plunge into this pool of options and take a look around. The lack in motivation to better our country to help better the world is becoming what I think is our largest enemy. If people were motivated to do something good, they would. It’s like doing your homework, your not going to do it unless you understand it, and your teacher gives you a reason to do it (like getting credit). People need to be more educated about their surroundings and how they are being affected, and need to be shown reasons for stopping what is in their near future. So hello America, take a look up from your blackberry, step out of your gas guzzler, and take a look around. Say hello to the world you’ve created and then challenge yourself to say “Goodbye” and help change it for the better. We have the resources to be succesful in this attempt to heal the Earth’s wounds, now lets take them and use them. Let’s do this together!
Olive
Seeing “The Human Footprint” was overwhelming to me and did not inspire me to feel like I could change something in the world because it was an expression of what people all over America are doing and seemed like what they are going to CONTINUE doing whether I’m involved or not. The film did activate my adrenaline through anger though, which is valuable for the motivation needed to do anything for the environment.
I feel like change starts in the most basic of levels, and the simple overlooking or misunderstanding details plays a big part in what we can do for the environment. Nobody needs a big screen TV or to have their heater or lights on all the time, and it’s not a big deal to bring your own bags to the store. I think it’s really a very simple task to be more eco-friendly. And even if it’s NOT all that simple, it’s best to look at it simply because the big picture of earthly destruction does not inspire, it only makes me feel trapped. We can do a lot better in our hearts and for the earth if we can be gentle with ourselves but also be reasonable with our desires.
Aren
I feel hopeful with everything going on. For example, awareness is spreading through out all communities and schools. Environmental issues are commonly heard now, not just with adults, but also with teens and youth. I believe education plays a huge role in creating change effectively and positevely. When we discuss environmental issues, ideas and opinions spring up of how we can fix the problem.
When we look at the media, its mostly negative and not helpful. It creates an image in someones head of fear. What the media should be is a balance of positive and negative. That way we are informed of our problems and we can create solutions, but also we must be informed of positive things so that we can see change happening. It makes us feel energetic and want to help. Change is inevitable and unavoidable, its how we make that change that will make up our future for better or for worse.
Brynn Reiff
I think that, as a race, we are fairly pathetic: we look down on all of the dumb animals, yet we ourselves are animals, and not particularly bright ones at that. What makes us the smartest animals? Is it our logical minds and great memory? Or our amazing Technology? Well, the brain of an octopus is much better at puzzle solving and deductive reasoning than our own, and the technology we love so much is destroying the planet. So our great acheivement: breaking things. Personally, I think that not taking more than we need/can be replaced is the smart course of action, and not too long ago that’s what we did. Unfortunately, we decided that we needed more, and more, so we took it. No thought given to the side-effects. Only recently has our collective mind begun to think about how to fix what we broke. Sadly, even now we only choose to fix what is easy; we haven’t stopped burning polluting fuel for our cars, we haven’t realized that it is not necessary to light our caves using electricity (no matter how efficient the bulb is) much more than required. But I do have hope that we can change.