Why its important to help our environment

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Every year, thousands of marine life, captured and confined by careless humans. 10000-year-old coral reefs, home to a fourth of these underwater creatures, are at risk. Consequently, the planet has lost over half of the 46% of land occupied by lush forests. Brought to my attention by The World Revolution, a site for environmental and social change, barely ? of the Earth’s natural groves remain untouched from our polluted ways; the result? Deserts. Deserts threaten over ¼ of our globe, leaving 250 million people affected and 4x that amount at risk. In the Arctic, The Guardian and Washington Post claims that the Polar Bears be the first to go extinct, and will lead to a chain reaction of many other species nearing their extinction period. Accordingly, the oceans around the area are rapidly losing ice, as well as freezing later in the year. For example, the Arctic Ocean has lost over 95% of its oldest ice. Don Perovich, a scientist at Dartmouth and internationally renown arctic sea expert states that “The younger the ice, the thinner the ice, the easier it is to go away.” For almost all the older ice to melt, can the younger ice stand a chance?

You might ask why it's necessary to help the environment, after all, the earth is still here after the 6 million years we’ve been on it. Our world is changing, however, and with all the threats we cause, we should be the ones responsible for it. According to Reference.com, within these recent years, there has been a drastic change in temperature, climate, and weather. Many sudden increases have led to events such as frigid cold weather, heavy rainfalls, floods, heatwaves and droughts. Factors that hurt the environment negatively impact our health. Pollutants produced by toxic emissions and our wastefulness are injuring our whole planet. Along with damaging our ecosystem, many of these pollutants are harmful to our health, causing conditions and illnesses such as cancer, cholera, cystic fibrosis, and irritation to your respiratory tract.

We affect the world more than one would think. I know I for one, and perhaps many of you as well have our priorities and needs, but that doesn’t stop us from making an effort to help the planet. How Stuff Works, an online website dedicated to explaining many topics, claims that if just one person is committed to recycling plastic waste, that would be equivalent to eliminating 85 pounds of carbon emissions each year. Think about how much we could do if everyone contributed together.

What steps then can we take to help our planet? What about switching to a reusable water bottle? Not only are we helping the environment by reducing unnecessary waste, but it is also good for our health. Did you know that our tap water is safer than the water in plastic bottles? Based on the BC Drinking Water Protection Act, our tap water is treated regularly by scientists, environmental health officers and public health engineers to ensure that it is of the highest quality. On the other hand, Bottled Water sits in these plastic bottles for months in hot factories before they come to our home, leaving possibilities of harmful chemicals leaching into the water. So the first steps you should take is switching to reusable items. Why bring Ziploc bags to school when you can bring a reusable thermos or container? What about chopsticks? Is there a need to open up a pair of disposable ones every time we eat at a sushi restaurant or enjoy a bowl of noodles? But the best thing to avoid using is styrofoam as much as possible. Styrofoam, a variant of plastic, takes an eternity to decompose. Do you know how long an eternity is? Well to put it simply, it doesn’t decompose, styrofoam is made to never decompose.

Do we want to leave future generations with mountains of waste? If not, we must refuse to contribute further to this waste. We need to think about our actions and help change the world for the better. It doesn’t matter how small, if we start now, even if it’s just refusing a plastic bag or receipt while shopping, we are well on our way to reducing our carbon footprint. There are already so many problems on our planet, what disappears will not ever come back. What we do will affect the state of the world as we know it. There are those who aim to ignore this problem and carry on with their lives, believing others will rise up and deal with the situation. There are also those who know the only way to bring back our environment is to act now.

So, which side are you on?