in

Is your comfort worth the world?

As San Diegans, most of us have grown accustomed to the constant onslaught of environmental ideals everywhere from ‘ride your bike to school’ to ‘don’t leave your trash on the ground’. While the extremes of these ideas can be obnoxious, we tend to agree with them and complain about how badly we, as humans, treat the world around us. Alas very few of us actually follow through on our clean lifestyle claims for one reason -comfort.

trash-can
Photo courtesy || www.coatesville.org

The fact of the matter is that these ‘small’ changes to our lifestyle require us to go out of our way. And some of us are even less willing to do so than others. How often have you seen garbage scattered about the quad after lunch? The fact that a table can be left so trashed that it is essentially uninhabitable by man-kind frustrates me to no end, particularly when I had planned on sitting there. It is these occurrences that will define, as a school, how much we actually care. If we can’t take three steps to dispose of trash properly, how can we expect to live a clean lifestyle?

We are all aware of the problems associated with carbon dioxide, after all it is drilled into us from the moment we learn that cars go vroom. Unfortunately, we refuse to heed the warnings and cause more problems than there needs to be. Many of us drive to school, and by many I mean 110% of us, looking at the number of cars in the parking lot. Unless you are injured, live more than two miles away, or have to lug around some art project/instrument, I see little reason in driving to school. If your goal is saving time, you have made a grave mistake. My mile time is around ten minutes and I could still probably go two miles before the average driver could get out of that parking lot. But why do we really do it? We want to inflate our high school ego of simulated freedom with a few pistons and a leather chair. Other than that it is easier, instead of moving our feet, all we have to do is sit in one spot. With the U.S. being highest on the obesity charts of any country, should our main focus really be walking less? Even if walking isn’t your fancy, one could always ride a bike. A rider can go pretty far on a bike, plus, its great exercise. Now it may not be hip to ride a bike every day when you can drive, but the rider will save some flaunting money that would have been spent on gas as well as a healthier lifestyle. Money and health, or ego?

One way or another, our lifestyle is going to have to adjust. Our world is changing while we continue to refuse to do so. This change doesn’t need to just occur in industry or in politics; it is on us, in the everyday. Change is inevitable and it is better to be a charge of change than a victim of it.

Written by Michael Andrews

Michael Andrews was born on September 15th 1996 in Boulder, Colorado. At the age of two he moved with his family to San Diego, California. He joined the MC Sun newspaper during junior year and became the editor of the opinions section, starting his senior year. He enjoys many hobbies including model building, role-play gaming and anime.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *