Last Wednesday’s Rose Cafe featuring Professor Blalock, our resident professor, brought up an interesting perspective on the nature of humanity as a collective. He started by surveying us, college students living in America, asking us how many of us wanted to help the environment. While almost all of us raised our hands in response, when we were asked whether we owned an automobile which optimized efficiency and reduced waste, almost no one did, save for one or two people. He followed this by telling us that his research in rural Africa proved a similar case–when given an opportunity to use more efficient stoves (than the commonly used three-stone stove) which reduced the amount of smoke and the amount of damage done to the lungs of the families using the stoves, almost every family abandoned the more efficient stoves and returned to the old three-stone stove system. When we compare these two points on our globe, Africa and America, though we differ culturally and geographically, we must realize: we’re not so different, are we? This brings about the question–is it simply our nature as humans to resist change? To that, I will say yes and no. If we truly deflected all change, we would still be living in caves like our cro-magnon ancestors. We would not have the technology and adaptive means of survival and comfort that we have today. Change is inevitable. But it cannot be denied that though change is inevitable, we are quick to resist it. But the knowledge is there. In a couple of years, decades, who knows? Maybe the majority of the U.S. will be driving Priuses, and maybe the rural areas in Africa will be using more efficient stoves.