Saving the Environment Part 2

This second lecture was much better than the previous lecture, because the speakers discussed positive, as well as negative ways people affect the environment, and they stayed to the point and focused. The first speaker was a girl named Rachel. She was a graduate of Berkeley and spoke about her involvement with on campus groups and how they changed the Cal campus. At first when she joined the environmental group on campus she was highly disappointed with what little she was able to achieve. However, in the end she was able to raise a lot of money to make her campus greener. Her story was especially compelling considering that she was a student just like us, and was able to achieve so much in the end. She now has the job of going around to different colleges and speaking, which is something that she never thought she would be doing, but at the same time is something that she loves.

The last speaker was named Erica, and she discussed how the poor environment that she grew up in greatly affected her childhood. She also discussed how race and class can define the type of environment that someone lives in. She described how many Mexican Americans live in her neighborhood and how certain polluting industrial centers were built in her neighborhood while they purposefully bypassed the high end neighborhoods. Although I believe that Erica's information was very good and interesting I believe she lacked a bit in he speaking skills. I liked how she gave me a different perspective that I have never heard in regard to environmental concerns however in some ways her rhetoric did not appeal to me and did not express the message as well as it probably could have.

My favorite speaker was the second speaker,named billy, because he related the environment to issues that are more related to ways that a current student could help out. He described how he created the Energy Action Coalition, which quickly grew to be a very popular and strong youth group, and helps people all around the country be involved in changing the way we interact with the environment. He also showed a study at the end which showed that students that do what they love often are more successful than students who just want to make money. This study was probably The most fascinating part of the entire lecture to me, because it can be applied to so many different things. If you are really driven to help the environment then it shows that you can do what you love and in the end perhaps be very successful, but it can also be applied to any field. In a society that is driven by money I think this is an important consideration.