Final Posting

Sustainable living means living in a way that coexists with the Earth without exploiting it's resources to the point that a crisis comes about. In much of recent history, the world's population has been living far from sustainably. Industrialization and Westernization have implemented non-sustainable practices that have cemented themselves in modern life. These practices that exploit the Earth's resources have gone on without any sort of apprehension or hint of conscience for our planet. One of these practices is that of allowing fossil fuels to burn relentlessly for the sake of the growth of industry. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the main goal of the Western World was to create industries that created wealth. Everyone was working towards wealth with no consideration for what they were actually doing. This is still the case today. However, there is more of a sense of environmental consciousness today than there was many years ago. At least, we say there is. However, many businesses continue to create a ridiculous amount of solid wastes and release detrimental amounts of greenhouse gas emissions with the sole intent of making more money at the expense of the planet. They lobby against any sort of environmental regulations that may be placed on them (i.e. Cap and Trade) and usually prevail in these battles because of the large sums of money that they are able to donate. This business model and lack of ethics is leading to a tremendous environmental crisis that hopefully our generation will be able to handle with a little bit more competence than the current generation that is in power. Along the same lines, another problem is the way the American corporations are able to wiggle their way out of environmental regulation and ethical treatment of their blue collar workforce. What these corporations do is build divisions in foreign countries, like China and India, and hire a workforce that is paid horrible wages and forced to work under harsh conditions all for the benefit of those in corporate positions in the company--because the less they pay the labour, the more money there is to rack in on their paychecks. The main concern, though, is how these countries have little to no environmental regulation. So, the products being manufactured here are polluting far more than they would be if they were made in the US, and they are more likely to contain harmful toxins. This practice is unlikely to stop anytime soon, because it is much cheaper for the company to manufacture goods overseas than it is to do it in America. This is a real tragedy. Especially because America encourages other countries to act as they do. In the Kyoto Protocol, it was astonishing to me that developing countries were not required to sign this treaty because they had not yet acheived the Western standard of living. What is so ironic about that is that the "Western Way" is the entire reason that the Kyoto Protocol even had to be written--yet we are encouraging other countries to follow in our giant carbon footsteps? This seems to be counterproductive. Another issue is that of water quality. Water quality is a major issue in most countries. In the photo below, a very toxic body of water is shown. A major fish kill has just occured, as you can see by the multitude of dead fish. The toxicity of the water could have been caused by a number of things. (i.e. mining, agriculture, businesses polluting, etc.) The poor water quality in many countries is surely an issue that needs to be addressed very soon.

This class has developed a sense of awareness in me that is stronger than before. I already had some opinions, which are now backed by facts. There is a broad spectrum of issues to be explored in environmental science and I am hoping to see our generation address them more than any previous generation has attempted to do.