Journal 4

After reading the segment in the book it does open my eyes to things. Yet I can also see where some things I still find hard to believe. The cultural norms are something that will be nearly impossible to get over. Yes the things we do are using earth’s resources are depleting them, and we do need to find alternative methods, but the people who run these experiments are not using primitive methods that save resources, they are using the top of the line equipment to run these experiments, so without us depleting these resources they could not do their experiments, so even the critics are adding to the problem.
I do agree we need to find a way to conserve resources and cut our carbon footprint, which is something though that will be a hard sell to people when you tell them they must reduce what they are used to. It would be like asking someone to go back in time. Many things have come from this and health care being a major thing, what would happen if we stopped developing technology and using these resources? Yes the earth will begin to regenerate these, but people will still die from the possible lack of health care technology, or from not using daily conveniences which keep us safe. So this is a catch 22 do we reduce our usage and consumption of things and allow the earth to slowly regenerate or do we live in comfort. I think a great way to cut our usage would be education, instead of slowing technology teach people the small and large things. Show them how yes recycling is something small when done by one person but if millions of people recycle we will cut a lot of waste out, or show people that alternative fuels exist and promote those. Give options to people so that they see they can still live a comfortable lifestyle but they learn how to do their part. It is like they say every vote counts, if every person did one thing each day to help the environment we would be on the way to recovery.
If the media pushed these things I think that would really help people for some reason believe things entirely too easily and don’t do their own research, so I think if the media was pushing to do this more people would since they trust what they see on television. If all these things would go on the earth would start to recover, it would be to drastic of a change to ask people to change their lifestyle completely, so yes it may not be what is right for the earth, but it may be what makes people happy, most people would rather live a comfortable life and die happy then change their lifestyle from what they know. That is our problem and when that mindset is changed I feel people will start to do more to protect the environment.