Cool environmental stuff I said

Apologies for how rough this is going to be. I'm too tired to do editing, and I'm trying to recall events from weeks ago.


I was visiting an open house for my old environmental leadership class (run by this semester's kids), when a politician came in. He asked a lot about the program and was very interested in what we were learning. After speaking with him for 10 or so minutes, he asked us all one question. "Why do you think the environment is important?"

None of the new kids knew what to say (they had only been there for two weeks), so I saved them and spoke.
I can't recall my exact words, but I said something along the lines of...

We need to stop thinking about it as us and the environment. When we think about the environment, we see something completely different from us.
You've got us, living in massive cities with amazing technology, and you've got nature, which is just dirty plants and animals. Because we're almost in completely different worlds, we think we can destroy nature without any consequence to us.

But that is not so. When we hurt the environment, we hurt ourselves. When we destroy nature's waterways, our homes and lands suffer from flooding and erosion. When we pump chemicals into the environment, it gets in our air, water, and soil, and makes us ill.

What happens to the environment affects us. We are a part of the environment. We need to keep it healthy so that we can be healthy.

Click to expand...

What I originally said was far better (it was probably one of the smartest things I had ever said), but I still think the message is important and I wanted to share it.

That sparked a lovely conversation about the importance of the environment, and we all shared many new ways of thinking which taught us a lot.

Anyways, that's about it. See ya'.