Thanks for sharing your takeaways! It's so great that you feel more prepared to have hard conversations - honest and respectful communication like this can be so difficult but so impactful and I think can strengthen relations.

Great to hear the things you have taken away from the course! I was also worried about how the class would be structured given it was 3 hours long, but found that time went by very quickly!

I agree that not having to memorize things for tests definitely takes some of the pressure off of learning and incorporates more room for exploration into the course! Also enjoyed not having to pay for extra course materials:)

Really like your point on social media being oversaturated - though it can be a powerful tool it can also just turn into an echo chamber that results in no meaningful changes or societal shifts. Fostering connections through conversations has a different kind of potential.

Thanks for sharing! In line with your idea about showing nature through using social media, I think it is so important that people recognize the nature in their own cities/homes - that it is not just seen as something that is remote and removed from humankind, but rather inherently connected.

I like the idea of information on the environmental impact of a burial service - I don't think that this is something people don't care about, they just don't think about it because conversations are burials/after death practices aren't normalized.

Thanks for sharing these thoughts! Definitely very interesting to think about what cities could look like if they weren't just designed with the needs of humans in mind. If we were able to see more animals and nature on the day to day, we would also likely feel a lot more connected and invested in nature.

Great vision! In line with your idea about sanitizing practices being too extreme, I wonder if the continuing trend of hyper sanitation following COVID could be worrying in the long-term, or if it won't make a significant enough difference on immunity.

Love these thoughts! Especially considering that encouraging children to spend more time interacting with dirt, animals, etc has the added benefit of increasing their time in nature, and thus strengthening their connection with it as well.

We definitely need more innovation into solutions for reducing plastic consumption - I'm curious as to whether it would be possible for concepts such as grocery stores where you use reusable jars can be scaled up.

Great post! very true that the strive for greatest efficiency has resulted in unnecessary plastic waste. I think this can be traced back to our culture of constantly over scheduling/overworking, so that any time "wasted" is seen as detrimental to progress.

Interesting point on not manufacturing guilt into consumption. in an ideal world, I see people consuming a lot less and getting greater joy out of what they do consume (and thus providing part of the end to the cycle of feeling bad = consuming more).

Good thoughts! Your point on not looking at this from a binary of plastic/no plastic reminds me of the sentiment that we don't need a few people doing zero-waste perfectly... we need millions doing it imperfectly.

Interesting post! I think credit systems hold a lot of potential if legislated/managed correctly. it would be interesting trying to figure out how to allocate these credits - ex in terms of deciding which corporations are more necessary and therefore more deserving of credits than others.

Good points! It's interesting how businesses often like to most publicly support causes in the name of optics yet won't take any meaningful action to further them (ex. when banks say they are Pride friendly yet do not actually financially support any aspect of the Pride movement)

Great points! While a lot of responsibility needs to be put on governments and corporations, some onus must be put on the consumer as well. It's definitely not the only resource out there, but lately I've been using this website https://goodonyou.eco/ to search up brands before I buy from them to get a better understanding of their ethical and environmental impact.

Thanks for sharing this story! I've always found it interesting how quickly society was able to pivot to phase out CFCs when the ozone layer was dramatically at stake and wondered why we haven't been able to do the same with the climate crisis - likely it's due to the scale of climate change, and how much more dramatically we would have to restructure our economies and societies than we did with CFC's, but this case still gives some hope in terms of our ability to adapt.

Great points! I like your idea of a business upholding the same values you would expect of an individual. This is definitely a lot easier for local and co-op style businesses to do than big corporations, which is a reminder of why we should be supporting them whenever possible.

I agree that our current economic structures would make the removal of billionaires difficult, and like your point on taxing the rich more. I am interested in hearing you expand more on your point about emphasizing with billionaires because they have created key innovations that have generational impacts. What about the fact that many of these key innovations have exacerbated or created significant new problems in the world? ex. some of the examples given of billionaires in the article you shared include men who have gained their wealth through conquest, slavery, oil, and automobiles. Are people who have accumulated wealth through the subjugation and exploitation of people and the environment really that deserving of our empathy and this wealth?

Great post! I love your argument that the destructive situation we are in is a result of us fighting nature. The colonial mindsets that dictate our current forestry practices see nature not as something to work with, but rather to work against and control, and this is what has gotten us into this situation. There needs to be a societal level shift in mindset towards relations with nature if the wildfire problem is to be truly resolved.