A few thoughts on sustainable living..

So a few days ago we had a group discussion about some articles that were assigned to us. All of the articles had very valid points and interesting new ideas to them but the thing that stood out to me the most was the idea of the earth being just like a human body. It has to be taken care of and needs to be able to release waste but we are making that impossible. Think about how sick a human feels when their temperature goes from 98.6 to 101 degrees.  Now think about how the earth must feel from global warming. This idea just makes the whole “save the planet” campaign so much more relatable I feel. We think of the earth as some inanimate object that is here for us to live on, but its not. The earth will be here in the future, with or without us. It doesn’t care about us just like it didn’t care about dinosaurs and wooly mammoths during the ice age. We are the only species that has the ability to make the earth adapt to our needs, while other species have always been forced to adapt to the conditions of the earth. The thing is, we will be forced to adapt eventually, but we don’t know how..mostly because we think we are so smart and invincible that we will never be killed off. If we don’t learn to respect the earth, we won’t be here much longer.

Last night we watched a movie on coal mining and mountain top removal which I knew nothing about before now. Not only is coal mining not sustainable or as energy efficient as alternatives like wind turbines, but it also has huge detrimental affects on peoples' health. So many different kinds of cancer have popped up in mining towns but the people in these towns have hardly been able to do anything about it. I learned that Massey coal mining had over 60,000 health and safety violations in one year. I didn't even know that was possible but they weren't forced to do anything about these violations because they could afford to pay the fines. SO RIDICULOUS. What's the point of handing out violations and making safety regulations if the companies don't really have to do anything about it. Dumb.

On another note, we just got to hunter valley and its really pretty! Its definitely a lot warmer here than it was in Sydney but there is less to do here. We're pretty much stuck at the Hostel because we are literally in the middle of nowhere but its so pretty out at the vineyards here that its worth it. I'm excited to go out and learn all about wine and even more excited to get to sample some! All the vineyards we are going to are organic and working towards sustainable practices so that will be really interesting to learn about.