My first experience in understanding sustainability was while I was working on a project in elementary school. We each had to choose a household item and trace back every step on how it went from raw resources to the final product. I chose a pencil, an item I used everyday but had never thought about how it came to be in my hand. That project was a kind of awakening which has been important in my understanding that every purchase I make and product I use has an impact on many people and resources all over the world.

I have always tried to be conscious of my carbon footprint and do my best to implement sustainable habits in my life. However, I am hypocritical very often. I try to use a reusable bottle every chance I can, but I often buy plastic. I eat meat and animal products, even though I am aware that they are a huge contributor to global warming. Many of my everyday practices contradict the values and morals I believe in.

I hope that through seeing physical numbers in this course which represent some of my less-sustainable habits, I can be more conscious about my impact on the globe and be more prompted to make small changes to better the world around me.

In my opinion, a sustainable environment is an environment in which individuals are cautious about their impact on the planet for not only the present day, but for future generations. I was not particularly familiar with sustainability issues until my term in Washington, DC this past spring. As an intern on the Hill, I worked closely with the SEEC (Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition) director to create innovative ideas in which the government could help lessen our environmental hazards through the implementation of a variety of programs. We looked at ways to enhance United States’ infrastructure to conserve energy, and analyzed a variety of bills in support of our ideals. For example, we uncovered that the current electric grid needs to be updated and modernized because it wastes valuable energy due to its out-of-date transmission. If clean energy technologies were used in place of the current system, it would improve efficiency, lower emissions, and even withstand climate impacts. We also looked at how federal investment can help support local governments by allowing them to improve their water systems to ensure clean water across the country. Through my work with SEEC, I was able to understand how sustainability efforts cover an assortment of topics, and how individuals can contribute to these efforts in a positive manner.

I became aware of the importance of environmental sustainability in middle school when I was on an alpine ski team. I love ski racing, but our competition was limited by our environment. If we had an unusually warm day in the middle of January, the ice on the race course would melt, leaving the course slushy and slow. If we had an unusually warm winter, we could lose weeks of practice and races due to the lacking snow conditions. Although I stopped skiing competitively, I still live with the lessons I learned about why environmental sustainability is so important. Today, I try to reduce by carbon footprint in whatever small ways I can, such as by taking shorter showers and separating my trash and recycling. However, I believe I could do, and should do, much more to reduce my carbon footprint. I hope to learn more about how I can do so in this course, Mathematics of Sustainability.

It is important to me to understand sustainability because our everyday personal choices both affect and depend on our environment. The decisions we make on a daily basis can have an impact on our surroundings, for better or for worse. In this course, I hope to learn how to combine quantitative reasoning skills with my knowledge of sustainability and the environment in order to help me make the best choices for myself and my planet. By learning how to interpret, analyze, and understand the environment quantitatively, I believe I can learn to make more socially-just decisions and reduce my carbon footprint.

My definition of sustainability is the ability to avoid resource depletion in order to maintain the world’s equilibrium and benefit future generations. Ways to do this has been introduced to me since I was in grade school, but recently I feel as if issues regarding sustainability are more prominent as ever due to rising awareness of  issues such as climate change, pollution, food production, and overuse of materials. The general consensus is that humans are using resources at a pace that we will never be able to maintain. Earth Overshoot Day touches upon how we would basically need another two planets to account for the natural resources used along with our rapidly growing population. The article also states that our carbon footprint has the largest impact yet. I am very interested in learning about the effects of carbon dioxide emission and the numbers that provide insight regarding the damage that has already occurred, projected damage, and what we can do to make changes.

As an Environmental Policy major and environmentalist I am extremely passionate about how the preserve the benefits that our natural world provides for us.  So far what that has meant to me is educating myself and others in the best way I know: talking.  Communication across all different interest groups and demographics is an integral and unavoidable step in the fight against climate change but it also tends to be one of the largest barriers that exists in our world today.  Not only in cultural and economic instances but also in political and academic instances, communication about climate change needs to be more inclusive and cohesive.  My personal motivation for taking this class is to learn skills and techniques to make me a more well-rounded environmentalist so I have the ability to connect people through knowledge.

New Zealand Mini-Term Winter 2017