First of all, LOL at Bob’s statement about kids.
Your dilemma is a no-brainer to me for a couple reasons I think. I began my schooling doing Environmental Sociology and realized the entire knowledge base is just rhetorical data gathering in order to influence the actual policy makers. In summary, I got very easily discouraged by the seemingly nonexistent amount of progress ever made and just the disconnection from the actual environment in general.
When I began LA, I was immediately inspired by the visual progress one can observe from project to project. As they’ve replied earlier, you can be subject to just doing some firm’s work or be stuck plastering sustainable concrete surfaces over corporate courtyards, but you could also get involved with restoration work. LA may not always be the BEST thing for the environment, but to me it was a give and take. You can restore unused and wasted urban areas to states that were definitely no worse than how they began. Or you could do restoration work for the national parks, preserving the natural state and designing to limit the degradation humans have on the naturally existing environment.
Either way, in my opinion as an LA, we have direct responsibility of the land on the projects we decide to take on. We do have a choice. The land is going to get used one way or the other, we have a say as designers how that will be.
