Full of Hope :)

First off, I'm really impressed with everyone's posts so far! I'm super excited to be sharing a class with such insightful people!

Much of my personal understanding of sustainability stems from my knowledge of our not sustainable practices. Being vegan has really opened my eyes to things that I did on a regular basis without realizing their impact on the world. For example, while I realized my diet did have an impact on the environment, I never took it the next level. What I ate had an impact on the environment, the environmental changes impacted animal and human populations, those populations inhabit the same Earth I'm living on, and their doings sooner or later came back to impact me. I could rattle of statistics that impressed me about how changing to a vegan diet is so much less damaging to our world, but I don't want to turn this blog and/or class into a "Emily Advocates Being Vegan" lecture. That never works out too well, haha. Also, my awareness of my diet is only a portion of what I think I should be doing to be more sustainable. As the time for this class to start approached, my daily activities became more noticable in just how not sustainable they were. I know turning off the lights is a respectable practice, but I realized how often I decide to be lazy and turn my back to my light switch across the room. I was taught in kindergarten to turn off the water while I'm brushing my teeth, but as my roommate and I do our nightly routine together, I saw the gallons of water running down our constantly flowing sink. Sustainability to me is our fight to preserve the environment that we still have, and our attempts to reverse the damage that we have done in our past. I have much hope for the future though. Even though I think this whole "green" movement is relatively shallow for in of the public, it's a deeper puddle than it's been in the past. And with this, more jobs have been created in which we really can make a legitimate difference.