Planetary Footprint of a Purdue Student - Caleb Nash, Shujing Peng, Vani Singhania (Group 23)4/15/2018 We as students, are constantly interacting with the environment, and we can affect it in many ways. We affect it by our actions, habits, and even our influence. Because we live on earth, essentially anything we do will affect the planet in some way. Staying up late to finish an assignment will use more electricity and shopping online requires processing and shipping, which requires energy and fuel to do. When it comes to habits things like turning off the faucet when brushing your teeth or taking quicker showers can help save water. Finally, when it comes to influence, our actions, habits, and words can influence others around us into taking positive action. If someone were to throw out an aluminum can simply say, “You know you can recycle those?”, can have an influence. As Purdue students we interact with our environment in many ways. When in the classroom we use things like laptops, phones, and textbooks, which require energy and paper to use. Walking to class we see squirrels and take pictures of them to post on the Purdue Squirrels twitter page. (https://twitter.com/purduesquirrels?lang=en) When it’s cold outside we turn on heaters to stay warm. Weather these interactions have an adverse effect on our environment or not, it is obvious that we need these environments for our daily life. Making these environments sustainable is important to keeping these environments around. Moving to a more sustainable Purdue won’t be easy, but is possible. Doing things like using e-texts (with devices that run on renewable energy) to use less paper, planting trees to keep the squirrel population thriving, and maybe turning the thermostat down a few degrees during the winter are all ways to be more sustainable and protect our and others environments. When one starts to calculate their planetary impact or footprint, it is hard to find a starting point. There are so many ways in which we consume earth’s resources that it is almost impossible to calculate an exact figure. Most Purdue students love the taste of avocados. It only costs a dollar to add some to your sandwich at Potbelly. What they don’t realize is that it is not locally grown. They do not realize the amount of fuel that is used to transport the fruit to Indiana from Mexico or California where is it produced. While calculating the planetary footprint of an average Purdue student, we need to consider the natural resources that are used to produce commodities that are consumed by them. Some of them include food and wood from plants and trees, livestock and fish products land for infrastructure. We also need to consider the impact on the environment while “taking care of” waste. The biggest impact on the planet occurs from carbon emissions from such productions and waste management. A study conducted at Purdue University in 2007 showed that the entire university’s carbon footprint is 182,400 metric tons. The per capita carbon footprint was less than the national average. Based on these results, one would say that Purdue students are more eco-friendlily than other universities. However, this study was conducted in 2007. With the advancement of technology, the increase in the carbon footprint is inevitable. On calculating my own carbon footprint, I got a shocking number of 12 metric tons. It is safe to say, it is a matter of concern. With the increase in global population and increase in consumption of natural resources, there is a clear increase in the emissions. This trend can only seem to get worse. The rate at which we are going, we need resources from almost “1.5 Earths” to sustain us. In the near future, we will require “5 Earths” to sustain us. The harm has been done. Now the real question is, how do we improve our condition? I often hear students say, “What is the point of me recycling one plastic bottle, there are millions of people out there who do not recycle.” What these students do not realize is every bottle counts, every contribution is vital. The little things we do can help save the Earth. These deeds can also help save money especially for a college student. A basic task of turning off the light on leaving the room can help reduce the electricity bills. Switching from bottled water to tap water can save enough for a meal at Chipotle. Using public transportation instead of driving a car can help save money on insurance and gas. Needless to say it saves the trouble of finding parking on campus. Our relationship to planet earth is long being viewed as son and mother. Indeed, Earth has been nurturing human along with other species. For millions of year, it made us evolve from some simple animal to complicate life form full of sentiments and creativity. To that, we should always remain grateful. But in recent centuries, human technology has rapidly developed, the result is the deep detriment to our mother nature. It is ungrateful that us human keep asking from planet earth, and in exchange? We left all the waste and pollution back to our mother nature. It’s getting harder and harder to access to fresh air and forest as our society urbanizes. as We cannot anymore take advantage of a selfless “mother” because she is slowly dying. We have grown old enough to realize that we should start to give something positive back. Throughout the course of study, I have learned various good ways of interacting with our planet earth. Recycling waste, reducing carbon emission etc. are principles we can follow in our daily basis. But a lot of people just do it whenever they feel like, therefore making these principles not sustainable. The main problem is that there is no Moral or ethical boundary when it comes to the problem of our deleterious environment. Some of the environmental problems we covered in this class like global warming, rising sea levels, and active diastrophism still seem to be too minor for people or countries that have not been suffering those problems. Some of those problems like global warming, as a matter of fact, is hard to realize the severity now because it doesn’t harm the majority of the people, and therefore people will try their best to minimize the severity of the environmental problems because they do not want some “fictional problems” or “hoax” to get in the way of their comfortable lifestyle. What people nowadays lack of are cognitions of the penetrance that their activities they are doing right now will harm the well-being of our future generation in both direct and indirect ways. People have to have a set of ethical principle that will alarm them that doing such things is no difference like murdering people, that their lifestyle is destroying the future our generation. People should be required to have ethical principle for the sake our future. On the positive side, there are still a good amount of people that has kept such principles. In Purdue, I have seen numerous students who got rid of their cars to ride bikes in order to create a low-carbon community for other students and people. I see people resisting using plastic bags in Walmart, and I see even little kids bring their own bags for grocery. Such determination is priceless for our environment, and when I see those little kids are doing what’s right for our community, I start wondering what’s the excuse for adults? Those principles are really not that hard to follow, you just need to do it from your heart. References:
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AuthorsThese blog posts are written by students in the POL 327 Spring 2017 class. Archives |