Discussion: Human Impact

There is a story I was once told (I’ll paraphrase it here): A
little boy was walking along a beach. Every few steps, he would
pick up a sea star stranded by the tide and throw it back into the
water. A man saw him and asked “Why are you doing this? There are
miles of beach and thousands of sea stars and there is no way you
can save them all. You are just wasting your time and not making
any difference at all.” The boy looked at the man, and then down at
the sea star in his hand. Then, as he threw it back into the ocean,
he replied very simply, “It makes a difference to this one.”

It is easy to be overwhelmed by all of the negatives and the
immensity of the problems on this planet. Considering pollution and
overpopulation and habitat loss and global warming … it sometimes
seems that that the job is too big to even begin. In your
own life, what are one or two small changes you could make to begin
the shift towards a more sustainable world?