That terrible feeling of going to unplug your fully charged (or what you think will be fully charged) phone, to find it at an even lower percentage than before. How? Once again, I forgot to flip the switch on the converter. Thoughts of how I am such an idiot, and how did I forget AGAIN go through my mind as I run out of the hostel with 7% of battery usage left. The angel and devil on my shoulders debate about how important the switch is to save energy versus how it’s SO stupid that I am required manually flip the switch for electricity. I eventually come to the conclusion that I am being a brat and next time I just need to slow down and remember to simply flip the switch. I continue to think about this idea of saving energy through the basic idea of turning on the switch when energy is in demand. I recall the fact that at home, I never unplug any of my chargers, or electronics and think about how absolutely ridiculous that is. I am kicking myself because at school I pay for my own electricity bill…I think to myself, “how much more money could I be spending on clothes if I just unplugged my chords when I wasn’t using them?” But more importantly I think to myself, “why doesn’t the U.S have this kind of system for energy?”
I understand that implementing this idea of flipping a switch when we need some electricity would create complete chaos and total havoc, but it is even more chaotic to refuse this at the cost of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emission into our air. After Peadar, a strong advocate for turning our actions on the environment around, lectured us on the alarming rates in which our planet is being destroyed, I realized the changes we should make in the U.S. Peadar’s presentation showed us that the planet is currently at a temperature of 1.1℃ if this gets to 2℃ our planet is completely destroyed. This terrifying statistic made me realize that the public is uninformed about how much trouble our planet is actually in. Going back to the U.S, with my new knowledge is hopefully going to help me make life changes and inform others about what we can do to improve the wellbeing of our planet.
