Reflecting on Class

Looking back on this summer class, I came to the decision that I really enjoyed Colloquium.  I came into the class with a bad mentality.  I thought that as soon as I walked through the door I was going to get bombarded with a naturalist preaching that we must be sustainable or else the world is going to be coming to an end. Oh, how was I wrong.  Dr. Morris was a good teacher, he gave us the information that the course prescribed to us but did not try and force his own opinion on us.  He let us read the books, go on the field trips, participate in the class discussions, and then through that create our own opinions on what this whole "sustainability" thing is all about.

The conclusion that I came to was that there is not anything that one person can do.  A single individual can grow their own food, bike to work, car pool whenever their in a car, and recycle every little thing they can find, but in the end there's going to be two others that are even less environmentally aware and offsetting that persons hard work.  To truly create a cleaner planet we need to educate the people.  The more people know about how they are effecting the environment the more likely that they will do something about it.  Granted, there will always be the people that don't care about saving the environment for future generations but those of us that do want to provide a livable planet for our children need to try and reverse this mentality of not caring about the environment.

China's Shortened Life Expectancy

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/07/130708-coal-burning-shortens-lives-in-china/

This article from national geographic was about how in Northern China the life expectancy has decreased by 5.5 years since last year.  This is due to the coal emissions in that area.  This really opened my eyes to how much we as humans are effecting the environment we live in.  The everyday life that we live destroys so much of the world that we live in but no one does much to change things.  Americans in particular are bad about this.  We drive the biggest cars we can find and have minimal to no long distance public transportation, forcing everyone to drive everywhere they want to go.  This creates more and more toxic emissions that are melting our polar ice caps, which in turn are raising sea levels.  This creates a large problem for myself since I live in Florida, the state that has the majority of its land only a few feet above sea level.  Personally, I can't do much about this at the moment, but one thing that I will do in the future is buy a more gas efficient car to hopefully make my own environmental footprint smaller.

Falling in love with Nature

Last week Andy and I went back to ECHO to do our service learning project.  To cut a long story short, we were stuck in the lobby waiting for the rain to stop to make our videos for class.  While we were waiting we were sitting in the rocking chairs watching the rain fall that's when I began thinking how beautiful nature truly is.  While the rain was falling I was really able to begin to start embracing nature.  With the rain coming down in a torrential downpour the ECHO nursery really came to life with bright and vibrant colors of the plants and flowers.  While I was taking all this in I decided that I needed to become more environmentally friendly.  Later that day, when I got back home I signed my self up for a beach clean up.  Also, since that time I have attempted to begin recycling.  It is difficult, my roommates only see it as more work but I have been making progress with them slowly but surely.  Hopefully at some point in my life I'll be able to own my own garden where I can grow my own fruits and vegetables.

Downtown Fort Myers

For the last field trip of the class we went into downtown Fort Myers for the day.  We started out by walking around a local farmers market where local vendors had set up their stands to sell all sort of interesting things, ranging from different kinds of jelly to snow cones.  After our little shopping spree the class gathered around a statue of three men in the middle of the walk way.  The statue is named "Uncommon Friends" because it is representations of Edison, Ford, and Firestone who were all the fathers of the American Industrial 20th Century.  This sculpture was based off the friendship, not the fame, that these men shared.  It is a very relaxing scene for tourists to walk past as they are entering downtown.

The part of the trip that sparked my interest the most was at the end when Dr. Morris showed us the mural that had been created outside the Indigo hotel.  It was a portrait of the history of Fort Myers.  Ranging back to the Seminole Indians and how they were shipped off west by train to how the creation of the actual Fort Myers fort was created to after the Civil War was over and the railroad was created.