I love your intervention! I tend to have a similar attitude lately towards social media and it being so saturated as you said. I also think having hard conversations in your personal life will help you feel more rewarded because it feels good to see the change happening in front of you with the person you're talking to, rather than to the people you're reaching behind a screen on social media.

Love this!!! I am also sad, but your post made me laugh :). I can totally relate to that post-class feeling of hope and excitement for the future.

I love this post!!! I love your vision for the future because I think it's so relatable. We all felt supported and empowered in this course and I felt like it had such a lasting impact and wish it could be available to everyone. In that sense, I think it's amazing that Kai had us visit some younger students with our workshops to help inspire them as well!

I totally agree Sophia! I really appreciated ending classes with solutions and an #UnleashValues post. I think it's a great practice to continue into the future when looking at environmental problems so that we don't get overwhelmed by the doom and gloom of it all and can come away from them feeling hopeful and with some actions to take!

Hi Destinie! I also can't believe how fast this class went by! I hadn't thought about how much we learnt through the process of our hard conversations, but you're right! That was such a new experience for me personally and although it ended up being a difficult conversation (as the name suggests lol), I learnt a lot about how I can approach this type of interaction and I'm really glad that this class gave us the opportunity to practice this type of skill when other classes haven't! It's important because we need to be able to communicate why these problems, that we learn about in school, should be important to people in our lives and our communities who aren't learning about these things everyday like we are!

I love this idea Suragan! It seems simple, but bringing awareness to people about the wildlife around them can have really far-reaching impacts. People already plant certain species of plants when they know hummingbirds or bees in their region would benefit from them, so imagine how people might change other aspects of their lives/how they share their space with nature if they were made aware of all the different species that they share their urban areas with! As Clare mentioned in class, most people have no idea that coyotes share our urban areas with us and that this is normal!

Hi Amy, I have the same thoughts. I actually didn't know about aquamation or natural burials because this week's class! And now that I do know, I feel like those are two options I would pursue once I die. I had no idea they were available. Like you said, more people need to be made aware of these options through conversation and acceptance, and more governments need to make this option available to people!

Haha but I like the Nicki Minaj Woolly Mammoth!!! In all seriousness, I love your points! I love how you frame rewilding in the context of our everyday lives. It sheds light on how easily we can incorporate the concept of rewilding in every sector of our society. It takes a lot of educating and awareness to get people to realize that we are currently functioning as a society that creates a world that excludes the needs of every other organism but ourselves, and that this needs to change. We aren't, and shouldn't be, the center of everything!

Hi Allison, I totally agree with your post, and I think it's really powerful to parallel physical health with mental health, and the importance of having meaningful and playful encounters with nature that isn't circumvented by the imposed need to sanitize everything. I totally agree that we need to have widespread outreach campaigns that help to debunk these myths, and that they should be done by public health officials (whom people tend to trust) and in places where people where encounter the signage easily, like parks!

Hi Anna, I love your post! I think it really reflects the way I've been feeling about this topic as well. I think your interventions make a lot of sense. I think the notion that dirt, or anything touched by the natural word (like insects and other animals), makes something unusable or not OK to be in contact with, has been perpetuated by certain companies and industries, and we need to have broader, more accessible messaging about how this is not the case for everything. The people who created this messy messaging should be the same ones to dismantle it!

Hi Eunee, I love your reflection on what schools have taught us about recycling and our impact as individual actors. It makes me think about how, even if large masses of people try to do the right thing perfectly, ultimately it will only do so much if the large companies and corporations of the world continue to control the ways we consume. It also makes me think about how the plastic documentary highlighted the flaws and gaps within current recycling programs. Humans are capable of change, and they are motivated, but the current systems we have are not ready to help us achieve the change we want. We need to change systems so that we can have effective recycling programs. We need to change systems so that corporations are forced to reduce their plastic production and use. I find it really interesting that schools teach so much about individual action, like recycling. I think we need to start teaching youth about the flaws within the systems and how we need to change those as well.

Hi Anonymous Polar Bear. I love that you mentioned how big companies ship their waste to countries in Asia. It makes me think a lot about the social and economic inequities that 'poorer' countries face as climate change progresses. I feel like the shipment of waste to these countries speaks to a larger issue of how countries in the global north have exploited the resources and people of countries of the global south, controlled their economies, and continue to perpetuate the climate and pollution problems that we also pledge to help them resolve?? As if they inflicted these issues on themselves..:/

Hi Kevin, such a good observation. I have also noticed this. I also think you raise such an interesting point about Patagonia's packaging, because you would think they'd use something more 'sustainable'. Right away, I would think that if their goal was to protect the garment during shipment, perhaps they could wrap it in thin paper/tissue paper instead? At least paper is very recyclable...but I also wonder about what Kai said in class about how making paper is more energy (and waste? cant remember) intensive than making plastic...so it's hard to weight the two options against each other.

Hi Tyson! I love your idea of implementing laws that limit the use of plastic, but allow its use for certain situations. I think that is totally reasonable because plastics used in the scenarios you provided would be for the greater good and in some cases, would not be single use plastics, which is good. I wonder though, if we were to replace plastics with other materials like bamboo, what could be some of the externalities that come from shifting demanding from oil (to make plastics) to bamboo? Would we have to clear land to grow bamboo? Would we be changing landscape structures? I think solutions are great but lately I always worry about how the externalities of the solution would compare to that of the problem.

Hi Katie! I love your vision for the future. I definitely resonated with your statement about how nobody wants to feel restricted to never use single use plastics ever or go full zero waste overnight. I think it's important to identify that "better" is still progress and we don't have to aim for perfection in order to make gains in this movement in ending the use of plastics!

Hi Robert, I think your reflection of what it would be like to be a billionaire is both thought provoking and also very necessary! How are we to change the way things are if we don't first begin to understand what motivates billionaires and how maybe it's not entirely due to pure selfishness but that they also have commitments and ties to large entities like nations and political groups, which is definitely something to consider if we are to dismantle the systems that are perpetuating this problem.

Hi Helen, love your post! It reflects some of the same visions I've seen written by other classmates this week as well. I think it's crazy that taxing billionaires based on their income is something that is entirely possible within our current systems but that we haven't done it yet. It's so frustrating and I think if we all keep putting pressure to make this happen, it just might!

Hi Amy, I really like the reflection you've had in this post. We definitely need to start thinking twice about what it means for an NGO to put a company under the microscope and label them as bad actors. This course is teaching me a lot about how most issues are much more complex than any petition or campaign could be capable of communicating. It's clear that more research is needed from everyone in general in order to understand these issues on a deeper level and make decisions based on our values only after this research has been done.

Hi Katie, I really like your idea of putting a limit on companies like Apple from putting out a certain amount of phones and chargers. This would force the companies to think about other ways to remain profitable that don't produce excess waste and make their products last longer (reducing planned obsolescence?). I also really like the idea of implementing rules about what grocery stores can do with their excess products. Maybe we can force them to track how much they throw out and tax them based on the amount, that way they are forced to think about reducing the amount of food they prepare for sale in their stores, maybe we can even extend this idea to retailers who are known for throwing out their excess product that goes 'out of season'. These are achievable goals so I love that!

Hi Vy, I really like your intervention idea. Taxing the rich at a rate that is proportional to their profits is something that is entirely fair AND is actually attainable within the systems we current have, which means this wouldn't have to be a transformative system change, which usually requires more work to put into effect. I think this is a great place to start and is literally the bare minimum and something we can achieve right NOW!