The key to making our world’s population more aware of the impact of the individual is to expose it. In general, we need to have higher standards and we need to do a better job to promote global learning from all three aspects: global awareness, global perspective, and global engagement.
In terms of resources, if a person was to cut his or her shower down from twelve minutes to four minutes, he or she would be saving sixteen gallons of water per shower, or 5,840 gallons per year. This could save a person up to $100 a year on water usage. It is these kinds of mathematics that provide people with the incentive to change their unsustainable ways. But the big issue is getting this information out to the public, and actually making people relate the issue back to themselves.
Water consumption is a huge concern for today’s population due to how wasteful we tend to be. More water consumed results in higher energy costs and possible shortages in areas where water is not easily accessible. Certain cultures, simply by geographic location, are naturally bound to have a smaller water supply and a higher demand from the population. A huge part of global learning is having that perspective that just because you have a faucet with running water, doesn’t mean another person across the globe has the same luxury.
Below is one way we can start to spread more information to the public.
I really enjoyed your post, and I found there to be a lot of correlation with Janet’s post. I think it’s clear that with more education and awareness of the issues, both at-large and on the individual level, change would be significantly easier to implement and would thus be more widespread. When people more thoroughly understand the issues at hand, they’re in a better position to tackle them.
I also agree that educating people on the issues would make it much easier to implement ways to fix global climate change. Also, if students start learning about ways to live sustainably at a young age, they will be able to use what they’ve learned to make little changes that could potentially alter the future of our planet!
I agree with everything you said! Water waste is a huge problem that I think many Americans are unaware of, especially since our culture is so wasteful in general. I think what you said about perspective and how some of us can run a faucet for as long as we want without consequences and others do not have enough water is an important point.