Issues Exploration and Choice

There are countless issues in our living world that seem too big of a picture to truly look at and solve, including these are water (whether it be access to it, pollution affecting it, etc..), mental health, and climate change. Each issue in of itself represents countless other, smaller issues built into one large topic. However, if one was to break down each one into areas that are more refined and focused.

One of the issues I decided to put my options of focus on was climate change, an issue near to my heart. Environmentalism has been a theme in my family, especially in my brothers. My eldest brother is a landscape architect, and so holds the natural landscapes of the Earth to the highest pillar of what he cares about. My other brother, however, goes beyond just exploring and appreciating the landscapes there are to offer, and takes a direct stand as a environmental policy major. He has a heavy presence already in politics, and so I’ve been exposed to countless political campaigns advocating for protecting and saving the wonders of nature our world has to offer. This issue focuses heavily on planet and people, as the two are heavily intermingled in how they are affected. As we affect the Earth, the climate is affected, and it affects our farming, our water, and our general quality of life. I, however, didn’t choose to do this as other topics have always interested me.

The next topic I decided to do some minor research into was mental health. Mental health has had a constant presence in my life, as well, though more subtle in more ways and more evident in others. Whether I had to take a mental health day during high school or was going through a bought of heavy anxiety or disassociation, or helping out a friend going through a rough mental health time, it was always in my life. This issue mostly affects people and profit, as it is inside only people themselves. However, mental health help is increasingly difficult to find affordable help for, particularly medication. Pharmaceuticals bump up the prices of their medications a ridiculous amount, and finding an affordable therapist can also be quite the stressful thing to do for someone who is already suffering. Mental health issues have been in the forefront of the news in this past year as tragedy after tragedy occurred, dragging people down into dark feelings and dark spaces that were hard to come out of. I chose not to go with this topic, too, however, as I wasn’t particularly sure if I myself was comfortable having to assess and likely bare my own struggle with mental health in my research.

Lastly, I looked into water. This topic I was familiar with as I had taken a strong liking to it in my last year of high school through a few projects I did. The largest one included a Reservoir cleanup I organized and lead. Before the actual cleanup occurred, I informed those who had come to help me the affects of algal blooms and dead zones in our water sources, as well as the different types of pollution that lead to the deadly zones that were plaguing areas like Lake Erie and the Gulf Coast. This issue has links in almost every P of sustainability, as well, as it affects each area in different, large ways. It affects people because it affects their water sources, which in turn has control over the health of a population. If the water isn’t clean, the people of a community will likely get sick from whatever it is affecting the water. As for planet, when the planet’s water begins to form dead zones, nothing can grow or live there. This leads to an imbalance in where countless species live, and leads to invasive species moving to other areas and killing off native species. Lastly, profit is affected as without water, many places like Florida, California, and many other areas with beaches will lose their tourist economy. They will also lose their fishing economy as dead zones spread, leading to the collapse of an entire economic system in some cases (especially for island economies).

I chose to focus on the issue of water and dead zones. For this issue, I have plans to print out pamphlets (or, at the very least, flyers) and post them in buildings around campus. I also have plans into looking into donating to causes that focus on reversing the affects of dead zones, or the pollution in our closest water sources. I believe the challenges I will face in this will be trying to get people involved and caring about this issue, as when I did my project in high school I struggled in getting people to listen/help me with my cleanup.