Hi, as you can probably guess by my ultra creative blog title, my name is Laura. I have spent the majority of my life in Southern California. I grew up in Rancho Cucamonga and later lived in Los Angeles for a while and have called Riverside home for the past couple of years. I do not have kids, but I have 2 1/2 dogs...I count my little chihuaua mix as 1/2. My goal for this year is to compete in a Tough Mudder event this July. If you don't know what it is, you can check out the website at http://toughmudder.com. By no means am I a fitness guru, but this is one of those things that I want to do at lest ONCE in my life! It looks CRAZY...in fact, I have been called crazy because I even want to attempt it! Oh well, I won't let that scare me away! I have been floundering with my education for quite a long time and have finally reached a point in my life where I am dead set on obtaining my degree. Deciding my major has been very difficult for me because, ultimately, I want to know that I am not wasting my time and money on a degree which I will not use or worse, I won't enjoy the field that it lands me in! I have decided to work towards a transfer to Cal Poly Pomona so that I can major in Urban and Regional Planning. I have chosen this as my major because I have worked in this field for the past 7 years. Right now, my position is in the environmental department of a Civil Engineering firm, preparing air quality analyses for development projects within Riverside County. It is pretty interesting stuff! As the standards become more and more strict, the rules and regulations keep changing! This is important to all of us because about 38% (California Air Resources Board) of air pollution is generated by transportation. While most of this is from diesel engines, it includes our cars too! While it is going to take quite some time, in the years to come I believe we are going to see more and more hybrid vehicles and zero emission vehicles on the roads. I am excited that these changes are coming because it means better health for future generations. So, according to the footprint calculator, If everyone on the planet lived my lifestyle, we would need 4 Earths! WOW!!! The largest part of the my footprint comes from services (49%). In order to get this number down, I could consume less aninmal products, use products with reduced packaging, get solar panels and energy star appliances for my house and avoid flying this year. By doing all of these things, I could reduce my footprint to 3.2 earths. I do believe that we can all make a difference, but, I also believe that the BIGGER responsibility belongs to the corporations and developers rather than the individual. The people that produce items which are consumed need to be conscious of evey aspect of their products...from production to packaging, they should consider the complete cycle of their products from beginning to end. I think this would lead us as consumers to produce less waste. I believe that, as an economy, we are stuck in something of a "learning curve" in that we are still trying to develop the best technology that we can (solar power vs. wind turbines, electric vehicles vs. hybrid vs. hydrogen), added to that, trying to make it cost effective for consumers. We are getting there though, little by little. It is only a matter of time before these products become widely available and a part of our daily lives.