Sustainability has largely been involved in business and was originally focused on profits that would sustain a company’s growth. Recently sustainability has begun to account for the wealth of the world and what industry is doing to the planet we live on as a global whole. Humans today cause more damage then any other species in the history of the world. The amount of damage humans has done is irreversible and steadily increasing. Without seriously changing the infrastructure of most major areas of the world, the increase in damage to Earth’s ecological environment could push the human race as well as many other species of animal, to extinction. If we look back at the Islanders from Easter Island and how their story relates to today we can see a lot of similarities. These Islanders were so focused on constructing large statues that would gain them religious statue and prestige that they deforested their entire island to make these statues. Once the forests were gone and the food ran out, the islanders resorted to eating each other to survive and continue building statues. Human greed can very easily lead to human extinction and this island is a clear example of that. When I finally finished the 11th hour documentary I realized that there are so many different factors involved in our environment that if one of them fell out of whack, just like our body getting a cold or having an organ fail, the entire body could potentially fail or live eternally handicapped. Consumerism pushes the ideal that everyone is not doing things correctly and needs to buy and consume more so that they can keep up. What if consumerist business were given incentives to pose articles that push ideas of sustainable practice? What if companies were given high tax cuts for sustainable practices than for charity donations? Charities are after all companies that don’t always show benefit where as sustainable practices can be measured for their outputs. Sustainable practice is a wicked problem because we have no clear solution and every apparent solution really only causes more problems. We can’t sit and do nothing because the system is so bad as it is that global warming and pollution have grown exponentially as more and more species go extinct every year. This situation is even harder to deal with because it has to be handled case by case yet it affects everyone and on a global scale. Andrew Dent discussed and interesting case in his ted talk where he discuss the idea of thrifting and how to use old materials to save energy. Thrifted clothing can save all kinds of money in the process of reusing products but this practices is best applied to architectural waste and scrap that can easily be repurposed and used in new building. This scrap is also a very good portion of our landfills and would help to significantly clear them. We can also with a single enzyme recycle a plastic bottle with literally no waste at all. I think our best strategy is definitely going to be to legislate better education of sustainable practice. My carbon footprint was high and for things that I either didnt know about or wouldn’t have account for. For instance the town I live in does not have great public transit and to have a regular job without a car would be difficult. In addition I wash my clothes apparently much more regularly than I should which means I’m wasting water. I also own more clothes than I need so I’m over consuming. If I had known that these things would effect the Earth and that those effects would compound when my peers did the same, I would have rather had us all educated at a much younger age so that it could be avoided. Educating our youth is the only way to truly change our tomorrow.