I sat down to talk to my oldest child about the changes that have happened in the past few weeks. I wanted to get his honest opinion and share those thoughts with you about what a 12 year old thinks about saving the world begining with his own home.
I started by asking him what he thought of his mom’s mission to save the planet.
He said “I think its good to set a goal to save the earth, I’d like to save it too if I were my mom.” Then I asked what he thought about the changes, if he had noticed a difference or not. He said, “We haven’t bought milk in a week, but I guess not buying plastic saves us money”. “But I don’t like the idea that we can’t have plastic, there are a whole bunch of things that I want and they are all wrapped in plastic.” He mentioned that he misses cereal alot cause “it’s kinda my breakfast thing”. “I think it’s good that I don’t have to rinse the dishes anymore, especially since mom can’t think up another chore for me to do!” “The hardest part is remembering to turn my computer and lights off when I leave my room, cause I have never had to do that before.”
So I asked him what he thought that saving the earth was all about. He said “I think it’s about being more resourcefull in different ways”. What does it mean to be resourcefull? “I guess it means to use something without using a lot more energy.” How can we do that at home? “We can compost, or reuse plastic things that we bring into the house” Why is it important to save the earth? “It’s important to save the earth because we are going to live here for millions of year and we don’t want to use up all the fossil fuels, so that’s why we need hybrids or cars that run on corn.” What happens if we don’t do anything about global warming? “If we don’t do anything about global warming, the stuff that gets put into the air put a hole in the ozone and with more UV rays the glacial ice caps will melt which causes flooding in coastal areas.” (Apparently he is studing this at school!) And if the coastal areas flood, then what happens? “It would cause people to move from those areas and cause more crowding in other parts of the country.”
So do you think that what you mom is doing makes any sense? “In some ways, yes… but not using plastic is kinda wierd cause everything comes in plastic.” “I do think that it makes good sense to try to save the world because like I said before, we have to live here so we need to keep good care of it.”
Well those are his honest opinions with a little bit of knowledge from the Shelby County school system. I think I will make this a monthly addition to my blog. It will be interesting to see if his opinions change over the next several months.
