Hi! Welcome back to my blog! This week, I’m going to be talking about sustainability. Recently in school, we have been doing an IDU, otherwise known as an interdisciplinary unit. We’ve been talking a lot about different aspects of sustainability, which is what I want to share with you today. There are several definitions of sustainability, but I think of sustainability as a goal for us to meet the needs of the present while ensuring a safe future for future generations. I think this is important to know, because sustainability is such an important part of our lives, and it will definitely impact our future.
When talking about sustainability, you should have an idea of four aspects of sustainability, which are also the four points of the sustainability compass. These are nature, economy, society and wellbeing. Nature represents our world’s ecosystems, biodiversity, and our environments. Economy represents money, jobs, social class and more. Society represents us as a community, a whole. It represents everyone in unity. Finally, wellbeing represents happiness, physical health and quality of life.
My view is that these are really important to recognise because they are all linked to sustainability. These four points really help connect our world and the present to sustainability. It also helps us see how sustainability is everywhere in our lives, and is represented in just about everything.
For example, let’s consider a hospital. This can be related to almost all four aspects of the compass. It relates to the economy because the hospital has to make a profit to continue to operate. Also, it’s an opportunity to create jobs, which also relates to the economy. It is linked to society because this hospital serves a community, people who are part of a society as a whole. Finally, wellbeing because people are at a hospital to help their physical health and condition, and also one’s happiness, since that can also depend on physical health and wellbeing.
I think that it’s really important to be sustainable, and be aware of our actions. Humans have had a huge impact on the environment, and not all of them are positive. Firstly, think about climate change. The Earth is getting hotter, but it’s mainly because of our impact on the world. Burning fossil fuels and deforestation are two of the most powerful reasons why climate change has been getting more intense recently. When we are burning fossil fuels, greenhouse gases rise into the atmosphere. However, greenhouse gases are also heat-trapping. This means that they actually trap heat when it is usually supposed to rise into the atmosphere. Thus, our world becomes hotter as more heat gets trapped into the atmosphere.
Deforestation is also contributing to this. This is because trees take in tons of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) when going through a process called photosynthesis. When the trees are cut down, the carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere. Even driving cars contributes to climate change! When cars emit carbon dioxide, that rises to the atmosphere and also causes air pollution. This also relates to several other forms of transportation. However, there are solutions.
Firstly, we can all help by saving energy. Over 90% of our energy is sourced by oil, coal and gas. These energy sources are not sustainable, and have a negative impact on our environment. Until we switch to more sustainable energy sources, we should try our best to save energy.
Secondly, using more sustainable transportation can significantly help our world. By doing so, we can ultimately reduce our carbon emissions. This can also lead to preventing global temperatures from rising.
There are so many solutions we can work on to help the environment and it’s important that we play a role to help make our world a better place.
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