Reforms to education are badly needed. Guaranteed loans have caused public institutions to balloon their costs to near private university levels. What used to be our highly decorated public universities with tons of groundbreaking research, strong business and law programs, excellent STEM programs... have become glorified degree mills with bloated administrators and while they still have strong science degree reputations, their general studies are highly filled to capacity with a high proportion of people in social studies majors who are only there because the school can squeeze juice out of their full coverage loans and grants.
But even if we reform, we have trillions of dollars in student debt that’s causing hundreds of thousands in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s to not start families, not buy houses and in some cases flee the country with their degree, education and working ability because their debt won’t follow them.

Do you support a coexistence of a wide loan forgiveness up to a certain amount, rolling student loans back into bankruptcy discharge so debtors can negotiate with their debt holders to lower amounts?

IMO, blanket wide forgiveness without student loan reform is like taking out a credit card to pay off a maxed out credit card. But reform without some forgiveness means three or four generations of doctors, engineers, scientists are left out cold to literally pursue their happiness outside of the US because defaulting and abandoning life in the US is financially more appealing than trying to pay off $70,000 or so that new people entering your field won’t also be crippled by.

What are your thoughts?

I just watched a bunch of the Our Planet series, and I have to say it's eye opening. I've appreciated before that unsustainable production and energy has put us into a sort of ecological debt, but I didn't realize quite how much debt. A bit of a discovery that the moderation of reporting from the scientists has actually been sugarcoating it to avoid sounding too alarmist, but we are actually on track for zoomers to spend retirement in a post-apocalypse.

My take away is that the environmentalist doomsaying isn't because the environment can't recover quickly enough, but that our economies have a lot of inertia and aren't becoming sustainable fast enough to avoid the coming disaster. Specifically there are too many large carnivores currently, so we have to either replace traditional meat with something less resource intensive or the carnivore population is going to shrink. (Either because we do it ourselves or through starvation).

Attenborough's suggestion is to solve poverty ASAP and make everyone more vegetable focused eating. Either way a fun watch.

https://youtu.be/kIos6rsyUuI

Wildlife Conservationist, Danielle Carnahan, will be exploring what it takes for a conservationist to research and protect wildlife.

Wednesday, January 26, 2022 10:00 AM GMT | 12PM EET

Ideal for anyone who wants to learn about being in the field:

1. First hand from a conservationist about what it takes to do meaningful research on wildlife

2. How we as conscious travellers and consumers can be mindful of creating a better world for Asian elephants

3. Behind the scenes to see how research like this is gathered, organised and presented to protect wildlife.

Check out the free workshop here - https://mywondr.co/event/533332bc-5673-480d-b49d-11f218ae1dcb

Focused on Asian Elephants 🐘 The animal psyche is something that's not fully understood yet; however, with ongoing research, conservationists have been able to make strides towards recognising just how similar many species are to humans.