This course has been amazing! I really appreciate that most of the pre-class work is to watch documentaries. They are definitely much more fun compared to the pre-class assignments in my other courses, and yet the videos were all very informative and had a lot to learn. As for the course content, I really liked how the environmental issues were taught together with their social impacts. Compared to learning them only from a scientific perspective, which is how I mostly learnt before, I think ENVR 430 helped give me a better grasp of issues in general. I also really enjoyed the Cosphere forum where I was able to see the posts from all classmates. I have always been aware of the fact that, because the course time is limited and some people may not feel comfortable speaking in front of people (including me), lots of great ideas were probably hidden behind during class time. The Cosphere forum is a fantastic space for us to share our thoughts freely and I really enjoyed reading all the posts. Thanks everyone for sharing great posts throughout the whole term! 🙂

Recalling the documentary A Life on This Planet, I am absolutely fascinated about David Attenborough’s life story where he got to experience drastic changes of the environment and biodiversity throughout his lifetime. I was very impressed by one scene in this documentary where humans had a large scale of whale hunting. But when people started to hear the sound of the whales and realize whale populations are becoming smaller and smaller, hunting whales started to become a crime instead of harvest. Thus I envision a world where we could learn more about the animals before we hunt them for certain purposes, so as to make the least impact of human intervention to the natural environment. We have the intelligence of making drastic changes to the environment, but we also need the wisdom to be able to coexist with it. In order to do that, I hope we could learn more from the communities including Indigenous people on how to live in a more sustainable way.

I envision a world where the waste packages are properly recycled and each country is responsible for its own waste. Recalling the video Recycling Myth, I was a bit shocked about the fact that countries actually transport their garbage to other Asian countries, and clearly it is impacting the environment in those countries. It is just sad to see that. Furthermore I believe there is more vulnerability of dealing with waste in between, such as the company Terracycle, if we allow transporting waste between countries. I also hope there could be expertise from some government departments that actively assess the process of recycling waste. Only the packages that got approved by them will have a sign on them, so that the customers will know those packages are reliable and recyclable.

I envision a world where donations from the billionaires are transparent and are actually put into good use. I believe transparency is rather important in philanthropy, and it should be ensured by the whole society. Having a lower donation tax rate is still fine, but I hope the billionaires or organizations will share the process of their donation and true data about where the donation goes. There could be a third party or government group to assess the transparency or efficiency of the donation, and only those who pass a certain standard could receive a lower tax rate. I hope in this way, the billionaires can aim for the ‘real’ donations under public supervision. Of course it still might be difficult for this to happen, since we still need to make sure the billionaires don’t use their power again to skip these regulations or assessment, but we have to take some actions to the donation system.

I envision a world where we are able to better predict wildfires and control them, so that there is less damage in the economy as well as natural resources, and we could all have fresh air to breathe. We will need lots of data in order to be able to predict wildfires. Recalling from the video Ice and Fire, there are technologies such as LIDAR to have 3D scans on the dead trees to predict the potential fuel of the wildfires. I hope more funds could be put to those types of technologies, and more institutions could launch similar projects, so more potential areas of wildfires can be covered. But for places where scientists might not be able to have research soon, we could also start data collection by starting public projects which encourage people to share data of the environment around them to the organization and government. We could have rewards for people who have provided many data so people can be more motivated to share the information.

Recalling the documentary Cowspiracy, I am absolutely surprised by the huge effect animal farming is having on climate change and how silent the major organizations are to speak about this issue. As discussed in class, the ecosystem integrates a bunch of processes and there just cannot be a single cause of the environmental issue. Thus while burning fossil fuels has been identified as one of the main issues of climate change, we should also pay more attention to other causes. I envision a world where climate and environment related organizations could provide more access to the public so that people could acknowledge the various factors of climate changes, instead of only paying attention to burning fossil fuels. In order to mitigate the effect of animal farming, I would try to reduce my consumption of meat products and practice more vegan meals, and also spread this idea to people around me. On a bigger scale, I hope there would be enough funds to support an organization or project for it to be willing to speak up about this issue. For example, the government could use some of the budget to educate the public about the huge water consumption behind the meat product and its significant effect on climate change.

I envision a world where individuals and organizations value the importance of water and protect water voluntarily. Recalling from the documentary “The World’s Water Crisis, Explained”, water outage and its day zero could be much closer than we expected, and water is not treated as much as how important it is to humans. Aside from what has been discussed in the video such as changing the water pricing, I also hope there could be an annual event to raise the awareness of the need to protect water. Just like there is an Earth Day happening every year and many people participate in the event by turning off the light, there could also be an explicit “Water Day” where people can consciously pay attention to how much water we use/waste on a single day. Actually after I have composed the post, I found there is already a World Water Day held on March 22 every year and the theme of this year is “Groundwater - Making the invisible visible” as it is hidden underground but its impact is literally everywhere. I felt a bit ashamed not knowing this event, and I do hope it can be recognized by more people like me and actually bringing into actions, so that the value of water can be appreciated at a wider scale among the whole society.

I envision a world where more voices will be heard in decision making. Recalling from the reading, there is a term of top-down approach which describes a decision-making process where decisions are all made by the highest authority. It seems to be the current situation for many of the environment-related decision makings, and therefore unfortunately many local/marginalized groups who are closely related to the issue are excluded. Therefore I’m hoping for a world where a down-top approach can be taken more often. More information and knowledge should be collected from those groups - it can be opening consultation sessions with Indigenous people, inviting representatives from local groups to be part of the decision making process, or be an open platform for all people to share their ideas, so that there is a way to make sure more voices are heard.

I believe that less stuff brings more happiness. Minimalism in many aspects can help to have more meaningful time for more meaningful relationships, be less distracted to actually live your life and experience nature. I envision a world where people consider every consumption based on their real needs, which overall leads to a world with less waste and pollution from industry production. But more importantly, the government or the economy system should have more management on industrial production so that things that are available to the public can actually last long and generate less waste. Nowadays most people would still buy fast fashion clothing as it is more affordable, so the management in production would play a significant role to provide more affordable and also more long-lasting products to the market. That way I believe people would be more willing to buy environmental friendly products. Otherwise, like what we have mentioned in the first class, it would be too much responsibility for individuals on environment protection. I hope people as well the government can mind the concept of sustainability and believe that every action in our lives does matter. I want to start the movement by stopping buying fast fashion products and also spreading the idea to people around me. At the same time, as I am living on campus, I noticed that there are many donation boxes around residence area for us to put items that we no longer need. I thought it is also a good way to produce less waste. I hope more people will donate instead of just throwing aways thing, and also that more donation boxed can appear in communities. #unleashvalues

Hi I'm Danielle and I'm a 4th year student in combined major of computer science and environmental sciences. I'm enrolled at ENVR 430 at UBC this term and I am very excited to learn more about taking actions for sustainability as an individual and also as a part of a community. If you are interested in hearing more youth voice about sustainability solutions and the future on Earth, follow #UnleashValues and join the movement!