Every Little Bit Counts

So as you may know, my name is Lindsey. I am originally from a very small town in central Pennsylvania. In fact, I'm not actually from a "town" at all; I still had a rural route box number address until about 2 months ago. My house was 2 miles outside of the town of 500 people. While I didn't grow up on a farm, I think the fact that I spent 17 of my first 18 years living next door to a cornfield (or soybeans depending on the year) was very influential in my passion for environmental issues. I love having the opportunity to just get outside and enjoy the fresh mountain air while I am at home. Junior year of high school, I spent a year abroad in the Philippines as an exchange student. While there, I got to experience beautiful beaches, exotic flora, and wildlife not found anywhere else in the world. It is quite disheartening to know that if we keep going the way we are going now, some of these amazing things may disappear within my lifetime.

While these are only a few factors that have brought me to this class, I really look forward to learning more about the environmental problems that we all face and ways to go about fixing them. As an International Studies major, with a concentration on Peace and Conflict Resolution, I really hope to be able to better connect environmental justice with creating and keeping peace for those who may not be as fortune. I also hope that I can bring some of my own rural "country girl" upbringing to those in the class who may have never had to wait for a cow to cross the road before they could continue driving.

There were a lot of things that just didn't quite sit well with me in Fish's article I Am, Therefore I Pollute. I believe that his view in general was much too fatalistic; he believes that changing one little thing isn't worth it because it doesn't change the big picture enough. Now don't get me wrong, I believe that we need more education about the "big picture" issues in environmental change, such as global warming, ozone depletion, and loss of biodiversity. But how can we go about actually changing anything?

During class, Professor Nicholson brought up that he doesn't think that caring for the environment should or really even could be put back on the individual. While I agree with this, I think that until there is widespread regulation from governments across the globe, these small things are what can get us going in the right direction. I am a vegetarian, mostly for environmental reasons. Does it make a huge difference that I have decided to eat a salad instead of a steak for dinner? No, probably not. If there are 100,000 people who decide to stop eating meat for similar reasons, will it make a difference? Possibly.

Every step, no matter how small, can make a difference in the long run. With ever increasing population numbers, every step that we each make can mean the difference between sustaining the Earth and creating disaster.