Shanjun Li, Greg Poe, and David Wolfe shared their knowledge about environmental issues and climate change. One of the most striking things to me was how they viewed environmental pollution. In essence, pollution is viewed through an economic lens as an “externality.” As such, it needs to be regulated in order to find the best possible amount of pollution. I never thought about it in the way of cost benefit analysis.

It is difficult to incite action from the people with regard to environmental issues, considering everyone sees them as far away in the future. Few know that they can take small, every day action in order to improve the over all conditions of the world. I sat there wondering what I could possibly do to help the environment right now, and then realized that with this kind of mentality nothing will be done. The panel was enlightening to me because it gave me the message that something must be done and this starts on an individual level.