What I've learned....

This class has definitely been one of the most eye-opening classes I have taken at this University. As a senior, and a Journalism major, I have not had the chance to take many science themed courses. The two science classes I had to take were, in my opinion, boring, mostly because I was forced to take them. This class, however, was a choice I made. The title intrigued me enough. With growing talk about global warming and destruction of the planet, I wanted to take a course that would hopefully educate me on issues such as these.

What I learned in this course is that being green is a complex issue. There were several issues that were brought to light in this class, issues that I never thought had anything to do with the environment. Issues like education, consumerism, politics, all affect our views on going green. Up until now, I believe that recycling was good enough to save our planet. After this class, I'm not even sure if saving our planet is even a plausible idea.

One of the things I liked most about this class was that there were always two sides to everything. While we talked about statistics that clearly show that human activity is negatively impacting the planet, then we read an article where the writer states that scientists have been known to cherry pick information to prove their ideas. So who is there to believe? The class always kept me thinking, just when I agreed with one thing, a reading or someone's comment would make me think something else.

More importantly, one of the main things I have learned is that you need to research information for yourself. Do not take other people's information, no matter what official position they are in, at face value. People are filled with prejudices and opinions, it is up to us to seek information, make what we want of it, and make our own informed decisions. Saving the planet is an unfathomable task. After all the time we have manipulating the environment and doing as we please, we are realizing that there are effects to that. Being green is a task that requires constant attention. If you do not think about where that bottle of water is going to go, where those bananas came from, then we will never be able to protect our planet. As I mentioned, these things have become second nature to us, and it is easy to forget how beef is processed, easy to forget that years ago eating meat was not as commonplace as it is today.

As a global community, if we just mentally engage ourselves I believe that we can save ourselves and each other. But in an age where attention span is only as long as a 30-second commercial, that task seems impossibly impossible.