The Inconvenience of Convenience

Convenience might just lead to the downfall of the human race. We, as humans, hate to change our lifestyles even if it is inadvertently killing us. Polluting the water we drink, the air we breathe, the land we have to live, we don't even think about the consequences of just using bottled water. We continue to drive large cars knowing that they use a resource we will run out of in the near future! We grow up thinking things like water, food, even oil are unlimited and we'll always be safe from losing these resources. It seems like humans just want to consume as much as we can and then panic when there's no more left. Then we consume something else, get used to doing so, and then we relax until we run out again. It's a never ending cycle that seems to go on until we just consume the entire planet.

As humans out amazing ability to adapt to almost any environment so well that we figuratively and sometimes literally "dry up the well" that is supporting us and we move onto the next area. An example of this is using the underground water in the Midwestern U.S. and the observed drying of areas over time from us using too much of it. We get used to our surrounding and the things we have around us become a convenience so we tend to relax.

This would all be avoided if we treated the world with respect. If we don't use up the resources around us and instead live within the cycles that regulate the rest of organic and inorganic life we could live a much more ecologically friendly life. All we need to do is think more of what we are doing to the environment and we can expect to live a much healthier life. I'm very appreciative of this class because I feel that it is exactly what we need to survive our own ignorance... we need knowledge.