PART II: The Gears Start Turning

The next installment on how I came to write my thesis ... to catch up read this one first. I promise to do better and post the next two installments in a more timely manner.

PART II:

"The teacher loved the idea since the seventh-grade class was working on a recycling project that could be highlighted in the book and the entire yearbook staff seemed to like it as well. After all, they voted the theme in - "97% Recycled 3% Attitude" – hands down. I thought I was pretty clever. After the yearbook was distributed to all the seventh and eighth graders at the end of the year, with its big silver 97% and even bigger recycle sign stamped into the fake forest green leather front cover, my tune changed. It was not exactly a big hit with my peers – go figure since I was blatantly saying we were highly unoriginal. I became extremely embarrassed about my contribution and needless to say blocked the concept of recycling out of my mind for at least five years (ah, youth ... always uncomfortable about something)."


"In my world, the environmental movement – which basically consisted entirely of recycling – took a hiatus while I was in high school. Yes, I still recycled newspaper and soft drink cans, but environmentalism was not on my radar much other than basic recycling and erratic weather patterns caused by El Nino. With El Nino came a gradual awareness of the discussion about climate change for me. By 2001 I was studying Archaeology at Brigham Young University (p.s. blogger wants me to spell archaeology like this = archeology ... that is sooo wrong) and we often were reminded of the earth’s warming and cooling periods – the most recent Pleistocene (ice age) and the current Holocene (interglacial period). The lecture would often touch on the controversial issue of whether or not man was speeding up the warming of the earth by accelerating the rate of depletion of the Ozone Layer through industrial and car emissions; or if this was a natural cycle that the earth goes through and we were more than capable of adapting to it. It is only recently that the world has come to a general consensus that the rate of climate change is increasing due to human activity and that changes in behavior might need to happen. That makes this thesis more important and relevant than ever."

PART III ... coming soon.