Obama Day

1/20/09
Today was the first day of a new president, a president who talks of hope and progress. We started lecture by watching MLK Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, which was extra moving given the day. The lecture was the ‘doom day’ lecture that is in every environmental class and it is always pretty depressing and can be hard to bounce back form. Finally it was 11 and our professors let us out of class so we could watch the inauguration. USFQ had set up a large projection in one of the auditoriums on campus so we all flocked there. This is one of the biggest things to happen to America in my life time, and it was very serial to be in South America during it. I think it gave me more of a pride in my country since I could see the international support for Obama. By the time he started his speech, it was pretty safe to assume that everyone in the auditorium was in deep thought and fairly emotional. Listening to him acknowledge our problems and differences, made me make some connections between the environment and the state of the USA. The US, much like the environment, is in a recession and a solution is not straightforward. To fix the things that the last administration has let happen and to undo the destruction that the recent generations of humans have done, and continue to do to the environment seems like 2 almost impossible tasks. These tasks will need the participation of everyone, and if completed they have the potential to be exponentially rewarding. The value of biodiversity is much harder to quantify that the value of a stable economy and the end of war. However, I believe that caution and preservation now is the only option we have. Some have the “too little too late” mentality and that may be the worst thing I have ever heard in the context of conservation. What if everyone thought that? We wouldn’t have Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, El Pahuma, and countless other reserves that many of us take for granted. I think in both America and the environment we must look to the past to better understand where we went wrong. After this emotional day I started to think about how I fit into this all, which lead to a mini existential crisis. Last semester I decided I wanted to go into water resources as a more specific branch of environmental science. I took physical hydrogeology, which is pretty much only about aquifers, and although it was a very tough class I got really excited about water. Today, this excitement started to falter. I want to help the most living and non-living things possible, and I started to think of water and aquifers as just a human necessity. Do animals use wells? No. Also, I hate to think that my work will just allow the human population to continue its exponential growth and exploitation of the earth. These thoughts are what make me crazy, one of my biggest fears is getting through law school and not helping the environment but getting caught up in the human aspect of environmental resources. For example wanting to save Pandas even though they do not have a very big impact in the balance of nature, or going into something like aquifers which seems to mainly benefits humans. These are the things that keep me up at night. Finally, I let go of my inner struggle and decided it was way too good of a day to be sad. So, I got some champaign and celebrated Obama’s first day in the white house. Later that night a lot of the students meet at a bar and we all had a great night. The next day I was still a little worried about what I wanted to do with my life, which was amplified by the approaching deadline of me choosing an internship for my last month in Ecuador. I had wanted to do a water quality internship with a USFQ professor, but this was starting to look less appealing. I decided to go talk to her anyways in hopes of re-igniting my interest in water. She was not in her office, but she had a poster of one of the projects she had assisted with. It was exactly what I needed; it was a study about the how litter and contamination in streams effects the surrounding environment. So, finally, I remembered that water is what every organism needs to survive (duh) and I will be able to help more than the growth of the human population by studying water, existential meltdown avoided.