Sustainability Reflection – Patrick Noonan

After this workshop, my concept of sustainability has broadened. While in my internship with the Center for Sustainability Education I think about it daily, my view is often narrowly within what I am doing day to day and this workshop provided me an opportunity to zoom out and look at sustainability in a much more macro scale with its full impact. With this view, it is clear to understand how sustainability isn’t just a base level of prosperity without degradation of the environment and resources, but a complicated and interdependent system involving global and individual action to ensure we attend to the needs of small communities, care for those who need it, and thinking about how we better handle world hunger, gender inequalities, and other inequalities around our world that will make for a more positive, sustainable and just system. These changes can have far reaching impacts on who we become and how we handle environmental challenges in and as a more just society.