Seminar 1
Looking back on this semester, I really enjoyed listening to many of the speakers and learning more about some of the issues at hand. Although difficult to choose, I think that the speakers that impacted me the most was Mark Farmer’s talk on overpopulation, hearing about Kristen Baskin’s journey about how she came to be involved with composting, and seeing the only LEED certified house in Athens. I did not think that overpopulation was as big of an issue as it clearly is due to us having plenty of physical capacity to hold people, but Dr. Farmer opened up my eyes to the fact that we cannot possibly sustain the human population at the rate that it is currently growing. I really liked his exercise where he had us guess the sustainable world population as well and I thought his lecture as a whole was captivating and really made me realize the urgency of overpopulation. I also liked hearing about Mrs. Baskin’s journey to coming to compost for a living. It was really interesting and inspiring to me that she did not come from a background (as many of the other speakers) of sustainability necessarily, and that she just simply cared and wanted to help. I thought that was really beautiful and I was glad to know that so many different kinds of people could become interested in sustainable practices and regardless of where you come from or if you are an expert. It was really endearing to see that when people open up their hearts and minds, they can make a difference. She seemed very determined, especially when she talked about the story of building the children’s library, she said that “the first step to yes is no”. It inspired me to push for what I believe in and not give up. I also really loved getting to see the LEED certified house. It was so beautiful and amazing to experience it first-hand instead of just talking about it. Just by being inside of it I could tell it was so carefully and thoughtfully designed and it made me really appreciate people who do sustainable building designs. Although it is likely quite pricey to do now, I have hope that people will more thoughtfully design or renovate their houses to become more sustainable, even in small ways. I think that if sustainable building designs become more popular, they will become the default and hopefully make people more aware of the benefits of sustainable design.
With the learning from this seminar, I really think that I might be able to incorporate sustainability into my career or at least my personal life and community. I hope that I might become a researcher for environmental psychology to better understand human interactions with their environment and why people perform certain behaviors in relation to the environment. I want to understand why people act and make the decisions they do in relation to their sustainable or unsustainable choices so that I can help people ultimately become more environmentally conscious. I think that my learning from this seminar has helped me to be more informed so that I can make logical arguments and be able to understand people with different viewpoints. In terms of personal life and community, I feel like I have come up with better ways to approach people with views that might be aggressively anti-environmentalist. I also feel better equip in general to be a good example for how to live sustainably, and I think that people will naturally imitate people they admire and respect so they can become more like them. I hope to be someone like that and serve as an inspiration to others. I think that I will start doing this better with the people who are close to me, like friends and family, since they are probably the ones I can impact most by being a good example. I would like to both perform sustainable actions in my everyday life as well as in community through volunteering projects. I feel like through this class I see that there are many things that I can do to help out my community, especially in Athens. I now have been informed and would like to participate in more sustainable events such as the clubs mentioned in class as well as activities like river cleanups.
Looking inward, I have many different sources of hope and motivation to move forward. Being in this class helped show me that I am not alone and that I am certainly not the only person who cares about sustaining our planet. It gives me so much hope and happiness to know that the sustainability certificate program is growing each and every year, resembling the greater recognition and care for our environment and helping our earth. I have been in instances where it seems like people do not understand that anthropogenic environmental degradation is happening all around us and now I feel like I am better able to address this. From friends and people from the sustainability community, I feel like I have more strength and courage to stand up for what I
believe in and not be afraid of possible ridicule or opinions of others. Seeing as there is a whole community at UGA dedicated to sustainability, I have hope that there must be many more people across the world that care about it too. I have been less afraid to just be a good sustainable example publicly and people have noticed, and I like to think that even this small bit of awareness is a first step to becoming more conscious of our everyday actions and whether they are sustainable. Seeing that people recognize my actions inspires me to continue acting sustainably and making a difference in small ways, day by day.
Seminar 2
This semester I really loved and took the time to appreciate the different things we learned from the speakers and how it all related to sustainability. I feel as though not only has knowledge expanded but also my understanding and appreciation for the good work being done in the real world.
Particularly, I was impacted by the speaker Anne Alexis talking about the EcoIncubator. It was truly amazing to hear about how actual projects relating to sustainability were being implemented. I loved the focus on how the EcoIncubator served as a space that not only made the community part of the effort in physically building the space, but also would continue to teach people how to live more sustainable lives once built. It is a great example of fostering a culture of sustainability by implementing such practices from the conception of the building onward. It also was extremely impressive to me because of how direct a method it is to have a space to teach people practically anything they would want to know to live more sustainably, all that is needed to actually put it into action was interest from community members. The existence and success of the EcoIncubator project creates hope for the future, because it gives people who care about environmental issues guidance in how to start changing their lifestyles. It demonstrates that there is demand for sustainability through seeing that a population exists that are interested and want to help become part of a solution for a more sustainable future. The other speaker I really enjoyed was Jenn Thompson on changing our diet to fight climate change. It particularly impacted me because in the last year I have gone vegetarian and am so much more conscious now about my food choices. I liked how much the video she had us watch emphasized that individuals possess the power to make a difference in the world, and that our individual differences can come together to make bigger changes. The video, instead of making people feel guilty or to blame for the impact of our diet on the climate, showed that it is not about giving up meat consumption altogether. Rather, it showed how just little changes like reducing meat in our diet can have a large impact in helping the planet. I think it is extremely important to become conscious about food and all the components of it that we do not witness before it ends up in the supermarkets where we purchase it.
In my personal future role in sustainability, I see myself incorporating it in all that I do as much as possible. I now ask myself questions on a daily basis about the choices I am making, and if I do not feel informed on a subject I will go seek out the knowledge so that I can make better, more sustainable decisions. The environment has become very important to me, and although we do not interact with it every day in a direct way, I think that we should. I am hoping to be able to incorporate sustainability in a career by focusing on environmental psychology (the interaction of humans and their environment). I have actually begun my journey in this by doing a thesis project this semester in which people are exposed to either a video of an urban or natural setting and measuring how these different environments impact various aspects of mental health afterwards. So far, there have been tremendous differences in participants coming up to tell me after the study how relaxed and more at peace they felt after watching the nature video, and I think that is extremely telling. I would love to help both increase the quality of life for humans by bringing us back to connecting with our natural environment as well as helping people to feel motivated to live more sustainably, and I think those things may go hand in hand as I continue to pursue future research in this domain.
I have much hope for our future after being in this seminar. I see how much the certificate program is growing each semester and it shows how younger generations care and are thoughtful about the planet. I feel very motivated witnessing people of all backgrounds interested in issues concerning the environment and it is truly inspiring. Before, I think I felt as though I was part of a disparate effort of a few individuals who would be considered part of the minority and who could not make strides in helping the environment. Now that I have met so many more people to this day who care, it not only makes me more comfortable to speak up for the things that are important to me, but it also gives me optimism as I think that we as communities actually can stand together and have our voices be heard and have a real impact on our earth.