6/5/13

6/5/13, 8:00pm, The Beijing Center

Today in class we talked about environmental sustainability in general and then applied it to China. 

The two principles of encironmental sustainability are:

1)Don't consume natural resources faster than they are replenished

2)Don't overload the the ecosystems with wastes and pollutants. 

There are different components of what our environment is and we should be maintaining each component individually. Except, when we look at them, we are not managing any of them sustainably. Different components include the air, water, soil, energy, and biodiversity. These things are all necessary for our survival and are currently being depleted or polluted.

After class I went with some other students to the Yaxiu market. It's multiple floors of stands selling all sorts of stuff. I felt like the entire place just embodied the consumerism that we're all sucked into. There were so many things that no one actually needs. Especially after thinking about how all the stuff we buy has so much that goes into it - labor, materials, chemicals, etc. I want to try to stop buying things I don't need.