Introduction & Top 3 Environmental Issues

My name on the books is Kirsten Williams, however I go by Hillary, which is my middle name. My current location is riverwest Bend, and I have lived in this area since I graduated high school in 2008. I grew up in a tiny town called Lorane, which is located roughly 23 miles southwest of Eugene, OR. Lorane has a population of a little less than 1000, and is made up of ranchers, loggers, vineyard workers, and hippies. My family fell under the last category. I am a natural resource/management option major, and I have been a senior for the last year and a half, but I will actually be graduating this June (finally).

In my opinion, the top three natural resource issues of the day are food production & waste, water consumption, use, and waste, and energy consumption, production, and waste. The three essentials for all living organisms are food or sustenance of some kind, water, and shelter to keep from freezing to death and protection from the elements. Most species retrieve quantities of these resources necessary for survival but do not take much more than the minimum amounts required to live and reproduce. Humans, however, have increasingly utilized, and wasted, copious amounts of these resources as our kind has "evolved" over time. Maybe you've ever seen the outdoor fountains in Las Vegas sending fresh, clean water vapor into the desert atmosphere. Perhaps you have walked through the Costco garage doors out of negative temps and felt the blast of heat come down on your face then escape to the cold outside. How many times have you left a restaurant and witnessed plates at an empty table half full of food, including burgers, or fish? It isn't that we don't have enough clean water, food to eat, or energy to stay warm at night, it's that we consume them all in excess and waste without considering the rest of the world who barely have access at all. Overconsumption of food and demand for meat products, wasteful use of water that has upset and unbalanced the water cycle, and the highly excessive use and release of unnecessary amounts of energy has led to all sorts of environmental degradation and lack of resources for those less fortunate populations in less developed countries all over the world.