Reflections: Weeks 3 and 4

Hello health environmentalists!!! Wow, what a busy couple weeks we’ve had. Dr. V sure is keeping us busy. Her advice about paying attention to Google Reader has really paid off. I am now more on top of keeping up with my fellow bloggers. It looks like we're getting the hang of the blog concepts. Everyone's blogs look amazing. Way to go everyone!

My Ecological Footprint:

The ecological footprint challenge was my favorite activity so far. We were asked to complete quizzes that involve our interactions with the environment around us. I took part in three quizzes that popped out at me. My favorite of these quizzes was definitely the Travel Calculator. By the looks of it, I have a lot of work to do to change my habits. My goals are to start car pooling more often and to take the bus more frequently. In the ecological footprint quiz, I couldn’t believe that it takes 4.4 planet Earths to provide the resources for my lifestyle. That is crazy!! I am obviously taking advantage of the resources around me. I did a little research on my car to calculate my miles per gallon. I found a really neat website called Fuel Economy that helped me compare my gas mileage to other individuals' vehicles as well. My car's average miles per gallon amounts to 23.6 miles in city driving and upper 20's on the freeway.

Inconvenient truth:

We had the opportunity of watching “The Inconvenient Truth” all week as well. This is one of Al Gore’s most famous projects that he’s presented over 1000 times. It really opened my eyes to the troubles we’re facing and what’s yet to come. I didn’t realize that global warming was becoming this big of problem until now.

I really enjoyed the film. You can tell that Al Gore is very passionate about his solutions in declining pollution sources to save our environment. Another thing that I liked about the video was his sense of humor. He made the video fun to watch. I’m not going to lie, I usually don’t like watching speakers on TV, but it really caught my attention. My favorite thing on the video was the methods of determining the carbon levels in the ice. I never would’ve thought that something like that was even possible. It just goes to show how far technology has come. After watching the film, I began to wonder what things would be like if Al Gore would've become president. Could he have made a difference in our carbon levels? I think that he had a lot of interesting information that should create a change.


Christen’s Thoughts:

I really am learning a lot through taking this course. I’m opening my mind to so many things and am really interested in making a difference. I am very encouraged on taking Al Gore’s challenge. It takes teamwork to overcome some of these battles we’re going to be faced with. It may be a lot of work, but in the end it's our life.
Take the challenge, and make a difference.