Speak Your Mind, Even if Your Voice Shakes.

I daringly decided to write this column after three eye opening events took place in my life over the past summer. Firstly, I so fortunately got the chance to attend a planning student conference at UBC in Vancouver in June. At this conference I gave a presentation titled “Sustaining the Discussion of Sustainability”. I charged everyone who came to my presentation to go home to where ever they came from and do whatever they could to become more sustainable. To be honest, I wrote this presentation with little heart and it wasn’t until half way through actually presenting that I realised “Hey, this includes YOU Trish!”

Secondly, I went to see An Inconvenient Truth at the Princess Twin cinema here in Waterloo. I have been interested in the environment since I was a young child, and knew global warming was taking place prior to seeing this movie. However, it was the sobering images Al Gore used that really gave me a sense of the urgency with respect to the reality of the environmental crisis Earth currently faces. If you haven’t seen the movie, I suggest you do.

And the third event took place on a Wednesday morning in July. I was sitting at Café 1842 drinking my coffee when I looked up to see two stickers on a young man’s note book at the table next to me. One read “Think Globally, Act Locally” and the other, “Speak Your Mind, Even if YourVoice Shakes”. This was all I needed to drastically rethink the way I live my day-to-day life.
If I want to see change, I have to do more than just rant about it not being there (as I have done for so long prior to this summer). These two stickers helped pursue me to write this, as well as change certain aspects of my live which will reduce my personal impact on this planet.

So what is this column all about you ask? Simply put, I hope to offer everyday ways people can use to become more mindful of their actions and their impacts on Earth. For some of you readers, these may be things that you already do, and of which you are already aware. This column is ore directed at people who spend little time thinking about their impact. I’m going to try to make my suggestions as easy and painless as possible. With that said, I promise that I will not offer any sustainable steps unless I myself have made them in my life.
So at the risk of being labelled a tree hugger or a hippy, I’m going to hopefully make some people realise that acting with a heightened awareness of their impact on the environment doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Just taking your time out of your busy day to read this article is a sustainable step. I thank you for reading this and hope you stick around for next week’s column.