For a class I have to interview someone from an older generation on the environment. I am taking everyone's thoughts!

THE QUESTIONS

A brief history of their life and how they lived when they were young. You should spend extra time on this part if they grew up on a farm or in the country. What kinds of environmental problems do they see today that they didn't when they were young? What kinds of environmental issues are important to them today? Where there environmental concerns when they were young? If so, what were they? What do they see as the causes for environmental issues we may have today? (They may focus on one or two in particular and that is ok.) What do they think we should do about these problems?

if you have any thoughts or anyone you want to ping; all is welcomed!

Definitely not debate

Ok, I'm at work and bored, so here you go...

A brief history of their life and how they lived when they were young. You should spend extra time on this part if they grew up on a farm or in the country. -I grew up in a small town, moved to another small town for college, and then moved back to the small town where I grew up.

What kinds of environmental problems do they see today that they didn't when they were young? -There are a lot more vehicles on the road. Also a lot more chemicals being used for lawn treatments/farm fields/insects/etc. People are killing more animals than they used to, for 'funsies' or for bullshit 'research', like how the Japanese murder whales and split up dolphin pods for their stupid theme parks. It seems like it used to be where people would hunt only if they needed food, and like Native Americans, would use every part of the animal they could. But now people seem to be in a killing frenzy of sorts and they don't even seem to care if the animals are endangered. The rate at which species are disappearing is terrifying. It seems to be an 50/50 divide of people who give a shit and people who don't.

What kinds of environmental issues are important to them today? -Endangered species' protection, protection of all species of animals, rainforest conservation, conservation of marine life, finding sustainable energy solutions, vehicles that run on electric/hybrid

Where there environmental concerns when they were young? If so, what were they? -When I was younger, no one really talked about these kinds of things. It was kind of a 'oh everything will last forever' kind of attitude.

What do they see as the causes for environmental issues we may have today? (They may focus on one or two in particular and that is ok.) -human stupidity

What do they think we should do about these problems? -People need to wake up and look around themselves at everything that's happening. They need to stop being so self-centered and think about something other than themselves. I don't know how it could be done, maybe starting in schools, maybe an environmental awareness class that's mandatory in all schools, but some sort of mass education needs to happen on the topic of the world's environmental issues

A brief history of their life and how they lived when they were young. You should spend extra time on this part if they grew up on a farm or in the country. What kinds of environmental problems do they see today that they didn't when they were young? There are more landfills and they are filling up quickly. Everything is more expendable, it is cheaper to buy something new than to fix something that is old so people will just throw away the old item and buy something new creating more waste. What kinds of environmental issues are important to them today? Recycling needs to be very important, trying to fix things before they break Where there environmental concerns when they were young? If so, what were they? I had the same environmental concern as I do now, my mom always recycled and tried to throw away as little as possible. I always used reusable containers for food and what not. What do they see as the causes for environmental issues we may have today? People throwing anything and everything away. What do they think we should do about these problems? We should make it a big focus on recycling and reusing materials, not throwing away anything. Perhaps putting an incentive if you recycle more than you throw away.

A brief history of their life and how they lived when they were young. You should spend extra time on this part if they grew up on a farm or in the country: Grew up in suburbs in Arizona. Well, technically, where I lived most the time was part of the absolutely sprawling Phoenix metropolis, since that includes like a billion cities, eh? For environmental purposes, my autobiography isn't super relevant, although I do remember caring a lot more about the environment than I do now. What kinds of environmental problems do they see today that they didn't when they were young? Hrrrm none really come to mind except that Global Warming wasn't a thing for a good decade and a half or since I'd been born...probably a bit less than that. What kinds of environmental issues are important to them today? Let me start by explaining what I meant earlier - the environment is as important to me as it was when I was young, but when I was young, I had this optimistic view of how things worked, the way only a kid can see it. I assumed everyone cared and did their best. But then it became clear people don't care and trying to care is really hard so I became disenfranchised with it. But anyway, recycling is important to me, and it drives me crazy it's so friggun hard to recycle where I live now. When I was a college student, you could -pay- someone to come pick up your recycling and I didn't have the money for that. I still save stacks of paper - I produce a lot of paper waste because I'm a writer - getting big piles of it so I can go put it in a recycle bin. I still live semi-close to my college campus that has, somewhere on it, a recycle bin for paper so when I get a large stack I eventually go deposit it. There's not much I can do about plastics and stuff but my household doesn't really use bottles or cans anyway. Where there environmental concerns when they were young? If so, what were they? I worried about there being enough trees, recycling all the things, not producing pollution, thought a lot about how cars could pollute less... What do they see as the causes for environmental issues we may have today? Apathy. It doesn't matter what the actual causes of environmental issues are, no one cares about them, or no one cares enough to actually do anything. Really, in the end, it's because we have this general thought of "It's too hard", "what can I do", and "it's not that bad/I don't make a difference" that's what allows the issues to exist. And yeah, I do that too - I know I make a difference, but I'm incredibly lazy and so in the end it's just too hard. Apathy is the root of all the causes because we allow things we shouldn't, we don't make the extra effort to change things or to recycle rather than throw away. What do they think we should do about these problems? I think education would actually help a lot. Even if it was just PSAs. Also if it was easy to recycle, way more people would. If people were even aware of the effects of a business' pollution, the effects of a business on their lives, then they would care. Also what issues there even are, like, I think most people don't even know what they should be thinking about when it comes to the environment or what they can do to help. If you just tell about a problem and don't give specific instruction for action, you don't get anywhere.

Might edit this later on, so bare with the crazy, crazy of this post at the moment.

Man, I really wish that those Bio-dome projects we did as kids were a bigger part of our school life, or at least touched upon later in highschool. As a kid who went to elementary school in the late 90's early 2000's I never had a connection with what was going on in the world. Having my sister PUSH and complain about not having recycling in the subsidized housing complex we lived in was the first real introduction I had to anything remotely about the environment and climate change. About this foot print that people leave behind and that we, as the human race, can do something to slow down our negative impact on surrounding life. We used to live in a less developed area of the Great Vancouver Area. Having to climb a steep hill for about 45 minutes to get to a store that was mostly parking lot, it felt like nature was already reclaiming most of the land anyway. So what was the point of thinking about how humans are "destroying" nature, when there was physical evidence of nature destroying man made structures?

It wasn't until we moved to the Vancouver city center that I started to realize how people were affecting the world. With the 2010 Olympics coming to the city, it was crunch time for new development ideas to be put into action. It became more obvious, the sheer lack of respect people had to public property and the environment. From tossing cigarette packages onto the ground to whole roasted chickens going into the trash just because it had been four hours since someone had placed them out under a heat lamp in the store. It was very eye opening, especially working on a mountain seeing all this junk on the ground after the snow melts.

All in all, it's would be GREAT if kids were educated on the environment and our role in it. Throw in some biodome projects for highschool students, make it easier for stores to give away products to charities without fear of law suits. But mostly, a great step to changing the world we live in, is by teaching our young humans how to live without creating too much waste, and what will come if things don't change. This will motivate many adults to change their ways, since preaching without doing would lead to a very confusing message.

We can't stop our climate from changing, but we can teach future generations to adapt, slow down, and not speed up those changes.