Sustainability Final Post

Sustainability is the way we, as humans, interact with the environment and use its resources to meet our needs while trying to keep the environment stable at the same time. At the beginning of the school year, sustainability was something simple that I thought basically meant trying to conserve resources. Now, I realize that it expands on that idea so much more. I never knew that so many things affected the sustainability of our world. The most shocking thing to me was the fact that poverty actually hurt the environment. I figured that people didn’t have any money to afford nice things, so they couldn’t overconsume and buy too much junk. I see now that they don’t have the money to be able to watch out for the area around them. For example, they dispose of things wherever it is convenient because they can’t afford to have their trash hauled to a landfill. People that live in poverty can’t always afford to help the environment and themselves at the same time. Another thing that I think is a big problem is that the cost of an object does not reflect its environmental cost, or the cost of the degradation of the environment. To be honest, I never thought about that kind of stuff before I learned about it in class. I just bought the product. However, if that cost was included in the current price of any object, we might not have to worry as much about waste or greenhouse gas emissions. When I buy products now, especially ones made with plastic, I think about how making that one tiny piece of plastic caused a bigger greenhouse gas effect due to the fact that it’s made from oil. This loops to the biggest problem of them all. People aren’t educated about stuff like this unless they take a class, read things on the environment, etc. They have no idea that what they buy causes a huge positive feedback loop that can go in many different directions. I hope that in the future, kids are required to take an environmental science course, so they can live a sustainable lifestyle, and keep the environment’s resources around for future generations.

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Plastic bags are a huge problem. People just throw them around anywhere. They can choke animals, or they can float around in the environment. The video we watched in class about the ocean garbage patch really opened my eyes because I had no idea that existed. If people would invest in these cloth bags, the plastic bag problem could be greatly reduced.
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Women need to be able to have the option of certain contraceptives, such as birth control, because it would really help to control the population. Overpopulation is a problem because earth doesn’t have an infinite supply of resources. People want the best for their children, so they need to make sure they are educated about environmental problems, such as a lack of education for women, so they can have the best.
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Deforestation is one of my big concerns for various reasons. Animals need their habitats just like humans need their homes. The trees also help to lessen the greenhouse effect because they act as carbon sinks. It’s alright to cut down trees as long as more are planted and some are saved on a reserve, so they can continue to be carbon sinks and habitats for animals.