Sustainability

I'm not sure where my ideology comes from or how exactly I came to have a Deep Ecology Worldview., but I'm not one to particularly care about the money or the politics of something. All I care about is keeping the planet that we rely on for life happy and healthy, which includes many aspects ranging from protecting endangered species, like the bumblebee, all the way up to creating new ideas to diminish poverty and feed those in need. I don't think the health of our planet should be debated by politicians who have no background in science, or should be argued over because people can't seem to distinguish fact from emotion. It doesn't matter WHY the climate is changing...the

reality and the fact is, that it is. We can't really reverse it at this point, all we can do it mitigate the changes so that we can continue to live. Science isn't politics, and irrefutable facts aren't debate topics. The continuation of the human race has greatly to do with the continuation of our resources and of the survival of other species. We seem to forget that it's an ecological web not a pyramid. Even if it were a pyramid, what happens at the bottom effects what happens at the top.
Now there might be some people out there thinking "well if humans aren't changing/damaging the planet, why should we care?" I will address that, but in reality we are changing the planet. We are one of three species able to alter the chemical composition of the planet (the other two are plants and bacteria). Not to mention all of the over-consumption of even renewable resources, for example we are cutting down trees at a faster rate than nature can replace them. If I were to set aside those things, we should still care about the state of the planet that we live on...merely for the fact that we depend on it for survival. If we don't watch how we use our resources it becomes simple biology...a species with depleted resources soon won't be a species at all.
The focus, at least for me, in the Environmental Science field is Sustainability. Sustainability has become a new fad word that's being thrown around in the business and advertising industries lately, but the actual definition is the ability to meet current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. This is a pretty basic definition and one that people might deem as common sense, provide a world for your kids and their kids and so on. It is a hard thing to achieve because is encompasses so many aspects and requires not only an understanding of our consumption and it's impacts but also accepting the shared responsibility for environmental impacts and improvements.
The five main focuses of Sustainability are:

• Eliminate poverty and stabilize the human population
• Protect and restore Earth's resources
• Provide adequate food for all people
• Mitigate climate change
• Design sustainable cities

This goals might look un-achievable but if you break it down and really look at what your dealing with there is no reason we can't create a better world for ourselves. Education can be the difference between someone who weaves skirts for less than $2 a day and someone who runs their own international company. Environmental Protection Agencies help preserve areas of natural landscape and resources. The United States alone produces enough food the feed the entire world. The possibilities are there, we just have to take action.