Google Alerts!

I used Google Alerts for the first time yesterday and was pleasantly surprised about how the whole thing worked. I didn't even know there was such thing as Google Alerts but I am looking forward to using it a lot more now. I made alerts for four different topics: "electricity conservation", "environment", "overpopulation", and "food shortage". I got two very interesting articles that sparked by interest. The first article I cam across was from my "overpopulation" alert. This article entitled Adopt for the right reasons, not overpopulation fix was published on the Kansas State University website. The writer explored several reasons for adoption but mainly focused on the point that so many families adopt for the wrong reasons. Adoption is such a life changing thing that the ONLY reason to adopt should not be to help the overpopulation issue in our world. "Considering the number of children awaiting adoption, the idea of adoption as a way to alleviate overpopulation issues truly isn’t a bad one. If more couples adopt children, as opposed to having their own, a child will have a home without adding more people to the inevitable overpopulation issue. Though the idea is solid, I can’t get myself to believe that it’s a good enough reason on its own to forgo having biological children". Though this article didn't have as much to do with sustainability I thought it was an interesting thing to think about.
The second article I found interesting was from my "environment" alert. This article entitled Fungus has killed up 6.7M bats in potential extinction caught my attention immediately. Since 2006, a white fungus has been discovered to be killing off millions of bats. "The cause is a mystery. One theory is that humans may have introduced the fungus while exploring caves". Woah, what? Humans may have caused this? Although I'm not some kind of bat lover, the fact that humans could be responsible for killing 6.7 million bats is horrible. This is definitely an eye-opener when it comes to animal extension.
I also read up on what sustainability is and how us as inhabiters can help our planet. I didn't really know what sustainability was before this class. I never really learned about. This one article produced by the EPA website puts it like this: "Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony..." I like the way that this is put. "Productive harmony" makes me think that all things living on the Earth are helped by each other. Humans help the plants, plants help the humans, animals help the plants, plants help the animals, and so on. I completely agree that it is productive harmony that our Earth needs and I am definitely willing to contribute. I perused this EPA website and found a really awesome tool that tells you what products are environmental friendly. I love to shop for just about anything. I typed in that I was looking for household cleaners. "Design for the Environment" popped up as a brand that creates safe cleaners. Sustainability is actually an interesting subject to learn about and there is so much more that I am eager to learn more about.