Reaction Paper

Submitted By mason20213
Words: 623
Pages: 3

When thinking about sustainability, I believe a major concept that has to be focused on is having a strong sense of value to everything natural around you. The simple and obvious truth about the environment and all the natural resources is we are quickly running out of natural resources that we desperately need, and we are also having a very negative effect on the environment. We as a community need to have a much strong sense of value to everything that we take for granted. It is difficult to remember at time living here in the Puget Sound, but as a planet we are running out of everything remarkably fast, and people are going to have to start thinking in more sustainable ways to make a positive impact of the environment. In class we had speakers present on the topics of climate change, and food systems and all brought up good points on why it is so important to thinking sustainably.
Having a strong sense of value when it comes to the environment will have positive effects, but many people today live very unsustainable lifestyles. They use up as many materials and resources as they want, because they either do not know the repercussions their actions will have in the future. Or they simply do not care enough and believe their personal impact on the environment will not do anything. It is true that one person does not damage the environment very significantly, but the problem is the very large amounts of people who do not think sustainably. This meaning, they do not recycle materials, constantly buying new goods that are not necessary, wasting natural resources like food and water, and many more.
A concept my professor brought up in her lecture was having a sense of belonging to items, instead of having a sense of ownership. This is important because if we all have only a sense of ownership, we aren’t thinking about who is going to get this object after me, but the only thing that matters is you have this now. Taking better care of personal items can make it so they can be passed down are more are not created, which would use up more resources. This concept can also be applied to Earth. Your generation has had a sense of ownership of Earth and it did not matter the