The Environment: Right, Wrong and Future
By Melissa M. - $1,000 6th Place Scholarship Winner
Make any reference to “saving the environment” and most people will immediately picture a cuddly panda bear cub in a captive breeding program or a team of dedicated volunteers participating in a roadside litter pick-up. While these symbols of environmental conscience that society has come to internalize send important messages, they far from serve to communicate the entire picture. The distressing truth is that human beings are not doing near enough to save the environment from impending disaster. Some conservationists even fear that our current actions are too little, too late, and an environmental catastrophe is currently unfolding uncontrollably on a global scale.
For so long, humans have inhabited this planet in possession of the self-centered mindset that nature exists exclusively for our aesthetic, recreational, and survival needs. There used to be a time when man could coexist in harmony with nature, taking only what he needed, and assuming a quiet, unobtrusive place in the careful balance of the planet’s hugely complex ecosystem. In today’s time, that selfless perspective of coexistence has been wiped out almost as completely as those on the shamelessly long list of extinct, endangered, and threatened species, victims of “civilized” man’s attempt to “conquer” his surroundings. We have only recently been able to comprehend the magnitude of the consequences reaped by our history of repeated injustices.
The question is not “how are hurting the environment,” it’s “how haven’t we hurt it.” We have plundered its sprawling forests, dammed its mighty rivers, polluted its air and massacred its creatures. In the true manifestation of man’s repulsive avarice the planet has been “civilized” and its wild species “subdued” so that man could most comfortably revel in his own destructive glory. Living in the Chesapeake Bay region, I see first hand the adverse affects of human activity on our natural resources. The Bay has a serious problem with eutrophication, the unnatural growth of algae caused by excess nutrients. These nutrients come from a variety of sources, including runoff from fertilized yards and fields, manure from chicken farms and overflowing waste from sewage treatment plants. The excess algae blocks sunlight from reaching aquatic vegetation and dangerously disrupts the dissolved oxygen content of the water. Additionally, the construction of dams on the many tributaries of the Bay inhibits many fish species’ migration to spawning grounds upstream. This obstacle, combined with the effects of overfishing, hardly leaves the marine species of the Bay with a fighting chance.
And the Chesapeake Bay is just one example of such abuse. Widespread deforestation, pollution, and the consumption of natural resources have caused so many ecosystems around the world to suffer on the verge of collapse, or even fail altogether. The Living Planet Index, which measures the health of the planet’s ecosystems, has observed a 30% loss in planet diversity in just over thirty years. The World Wildlife Fund has issued a statement predicting a worldwide ecosystem collapse in the next fifty years, an event many of us will be unfortunate enough to witness in our own lifetimes.
The time has come when we are realizing that our action to date just isn’t making the cut, especially in light of startling evidence that the earth’s climate is warming beyond its natural course. Our society’s unhealthy dependence on fossil fuels pumps unnatural amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for one hundred years. This means that every day we drive our cars we are emitting a gas that will have harmful effects on our planet for longer than that one individual person will inhabit it. Pollution regulation and fuel efficiency laws are good intentioned, but too lax; even efforts to globalize the movement have been shaky (the United States refused to sign the Kyoto Treaty, although we are responsible for contributing approximately one quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases). Many times, our attempts to clean up our mistakes have just resulted in more disasters. For example, efforts to stabilize the Florida Everglades by introducing foreign species, such as cattails, which out compete the native saw grass, have complicated the restoration exponentially.
In my science classes at school, we raise SAVs (sub aquatic vegetation), shad, and American eels. The fish are then released, and the grasses planted in areas where the vegetation, essential to the ecosystem of the Bay, is most minimal. Despite the inception of programs like this in many places in the Bay’s watershed, which is so large it encompasses several states, we are still fighting a losing battle. The conscientious efforts of a few can hardly stand up to the ignorance and apathy of the uniformed masses. If we are to preserve the environment for ourselves and our children, the protection of our planet’s resources need to become a community priority, with each member assuming part of the responsibility.
We’ve destroyed parts of our planet, and we’ve taken some steps to rebuild. But the most important question now is “what can we do?” The answer is sustainability- fulfilling social demands while ensuring the environment stays healthy enough to continue providing in the future. It’s up to the world leaders to make the aggressive and drastic policy corrections that will finally bring about positive change. Recently, the United Nations has taken progressive steps by identifying global warming as an active threat to the human population, as projected climate change could cause sea level rises creating 200 million refugees, or cast millions into poverty and hardship. But the average citizen doesn’t have to sit idly by and wait for environmental conservation to become law. Furthermore, respecting the environment does not mean abandoning a comfortable lifestyle. Conservation experts suggest a few easy changes that can make a big difference, such as choosing a more fuel efficient car, taking a carpool, changing out the incandescent bulbs in your lamps, or going earth-day traditional and planting a tree. It’s now or never, and it comes down to this: In the year 2057, what kind of world will you be living in?
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