Hey Everyone,

Just to let you all know a little bit about me, I am a senior here at AU and am studying International Relations with a minor in Spanish. Like Lauren, I am from Colorado and I definitely agree with her that living there has influenced my feelings about the importance of environmental protection. I grew up on a farm and am very interested in the development of sustainable food/agriculture policy and am hoping that I can find a career that combines those interests with my academic pursuits in international studies, trade and law. I am in this class for several reasons but one element that I am most interested in is the link between th environment and economic activity. Last year, I took International Economic Policy and Global Political Economy and that issue was discussed but not in any sort of extensive terms.

When I read what Lauren wrote about the person from the EPA who does not believe in global warming, I thought it was a funny coincidence because I was planning on sharing a similar story. This summer, I was in the car with several friends and one of them started talking about how global warming is not man made in any way---and everyone else agreed and had their own annecdotal stories about things they had read in the past refuted claims that humans have had any impact on global warming. I was so lost for words - I didn't think anyone still really thought that---and I started to wonder how their college education experience had been so dramatically different than mine that this was what they thought. I would like to leave this class able to understand both sides of this argument and be able to clearly explain how humans are impacting the global climate and what we can do to change the effect.

In relation to the article, I was struck most by the extent to which this man's wife went in order to be environmentally friendly. The simple things such as recycling, using cloth instead of paper napkins and buying local, organic food all seem easy enough, even if most Americans still are not doing this on a regular basis. However, finding the most eco-friendly toilet paper and reordering wood, glue and paint in order to ensure that their kitchen would hurt the environment as little as possible? That is dedication. I can't help but wonder if all Americans took enough time as this woman to consider how every action, every piece of toilet paper or can of paint would impact the earth, how much better off would we be? If everyone was as thoughtful as she is, maybe we wouldn't be in the environmental mess that we are in now. Never the less, the likelyhood that every, or even most, Americans will adapt to think like her before it is too late seems pretty slim to me. Maybe a variety of policies at the corporate level would be better? Could policies that ensure that products are made in an eco-friendly way be more effective than simply hoping that every person like the man who wrote this article has an environmentally consciencious spouse to reel them in? I really liked the last line in the article in which he said, "I am on the losing side of history," in his battle to remain stagnant in his habits. To me, this is a way of saying that his mentality as a whole is fading out and he represents a diminishing minority.