During this evening\u2019s seminar, one student mentioned something that involved the idea of humans being selfish, and, on the individual level, not thinking they can make a difference in the world. This got me thinking of my own life and behaviors, my friends, my family and the people I interact with on a daily basis. I am not an Environmental Studies major, a Geology major, a Science and Technology major, or any other major that deals fundamentally with the earth and the issues regarding human\/nature interactions or studies the evolution of our planet. I am a psych major who, to be totally honest, could use a little more education about how I as an individual can slow our world from heading off of a cliff (as a line in today\u2019s the presentation said). On a personal level, when I think about my own experience of thinking about living a more earth-friendly lifestyle, it feels like a hopeless situation to me because one person recycling or one person planting trees, gardens, etc. isn\u2019t going to change the world by doing that. The way to change the world is to teach more people how to take care of the earth. I think about the (unfortunately too many) times I never recycled because I was just being too lazy and didn\u2019t think that my trash would matter, or that my one piece of plastic in my trashcan would end up killing an animal like the chicken today. But then I think about how many people are having the same or similar thoughts to mine, and are taking the easy way out (the easy way out being just throwing all items into one pile of garbage). Obviously this is one small piece of the puzzle that makes up the predicted demise of the planet, but it\u2019s still a piece. If every person who has thought like me would consider changing their own ways of thinking and acting, that would make a difference. So it\u2019s important to realize that my own actions are really important on some level. Hopefully the people who are passionate about protecting the earth can inspire everyone around them to be a little more conscious about how we treat our environment. Whether it\u2019s walking to class rather than driving, recycling more, or teaching others, change always starts somewhere. I think that denying the end of our worlds is denying our children, grandchildren, etc. of a world as plentiful, green, and \u201cnot red\u201d as our own. I realize all of this sounds very cheesy, but I do really think that the idea that we as individuals can make tiny impacts is true. And I commend the efforts that many Colby students do make to \u201cGo Green.\u201d certainly hoping to become more like you guys! What do you think? Are our efforts useless? REALISTICALLY, what can the average person who doesn\u2019t want to ignore the problem do? (500w)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During this evening\u2019s seminar, one student mentioned something that involved the idea of humans being selfish, and, on the individual level, not thinking they can make a difference in the world. This got me thinking of my own life and… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4852,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[156948],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4852"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}