Forgiveness
As we have explored and discussed in
class, human behavior has negatively impacted our planet. Is it too late for the Earth to forgive us
for the ways we have treated it? In one paragraph:
●
share
textual evidence from an online article of your careful choice that proves how
human behavior has negatively impacted our planet,
●
discuss
how the damages caused by the human behavior you share can be reversed, or why
you think it's too late, and
● at the end, paste the url of the
website from which you gathered
evidence.
Everybody likes to make money, that’s just how our world is. But it’s the people who go to extreme levels that are destroying our planet. An example of this is hunters that kill endangered animals to extinction just to make a good profit.
ReplyDeleteHundreds of dollars are offered for endangered species animal parts. So, people's first reaction is to hunt down these animals so they can make some money. Between 2007-2013 rhino poaching rose from only 13 to 1,004. And it doesn’t stop there, in 2011 about 2,500 elephants were hunted down and killed to produce 23 tons of illegal ivory. While all of this is happening, tigers population has dropped 95% since the beginning of the 20th century. As you can see this is a huge problem caused by people only thinking about themselves and not the problems they are causing to the rest of the world.
But, could we fix this issue or is it to late? The only thing stopping us of saving these endangered animals are humans themselves. If we could just figure out a way to make money a different way, then all of these animals lives could eventually be saved.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/20-ways-humans-are-negatively-impacting-the-environment/ss-AAvYIla#image=11
Deforestation has been a big problem in our world for quite some time. Nearly 31% of the earth is covered with forests and we are sadly losing 18.7 million acres of land per year. Deforestation is caused by fires, use for agriculture, ranching, and much more. There is still time to reverse our mistakes because in the last 25 years, the percent of forests that make up the world has only gone down by about 1%. To lessen the amount of deforestation taking place, we would have to use less paper, recycle, and just simply tear down less trees. As long as we can do these things, then forests should be fine for many years to come.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation
You would not think fish would be the ones to slowly end our planet. Studies show that we over fish a lot. We do this because we have illegal fishing and poor fishing management going on. Theses things matter because we aren't letting fish naturally produce more fish. For example commercial fishermen are over fishing salmon. If salmon go extincted than what will whales, bears and ect. do for food. All theses things we don't think about are happening because humans make good profit off fish, but if fish are no longer here than our food chain can, and will slowly break and die. https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/overfishing
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, even if everyone made enough effort to reduce plastic usages our environment is affected too much from it already. Plastic can take up to a thousand years to decompose. Even if it did, the toxic chemicals in plastic would seep into the ground or our water supply. Microplastics are very small pieces of plastic particles broken up. Since very little plastic actually get recycled or incinerated, they have to go somewhere else. Our water, soil, and animal species are being contaminated; consuming microplastics and harming them. This is a never ending cycle that will continue to happen as long as there is mass production of plastic. It is too late to really change anything because of the usefulness of plastic and it’s easy manufacturing. Overtime people can probably reduce the damages done to the environment. But it will take years, and by then the damage may be too severe.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/plastic-planet-how-tiny-plastic-particles-are-polluting-our-soil
Wildlife places that supports billions of people are getting destroyed as it continues, Sacrificing the long term benefits of trees make oxygen and the earth is getting warmer witch is making the ice melt in the arctic. I think We need to fix this because if we keep cutting down trees there soon won't be anymore . https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation/
ReplyDeleteOver-consumption is killing our planet. We consume air, food, and water, and there is nothing we can do about it. We need these things to survive. But what about the excess? Things like makeup, perfumes, ocean cruises, ice cream, and closets full of clothes that we don't wear. All of these things are not necessary, and they are greedy. 80% of Earths natural resources are used by the minority which is 17% of the population. These are all because of luxury wants. This leads to collapsing ecosystems, habitats, species. It even contributes to things like Pollution, and toxic waste. In the end, these essential things we need such as air, food, and water, are becoming more toxic because of our actions. I don't think that we can completely turn around what we, humans, have done. However, we can improve what we are doing now. Things like recycling, and only buying things that we really need in order to save our planet along with all the other species we share it with.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.worldcentric.org/conscious-living/increasing-consumption
We are doing terrible things that is harming the environment. One of the biggest problems is pollution. Pollution has increased dramatically over the years and has a lot of effects. Pollutants that result from exhaust pipes, burning coal or greenhouse gasses can cause your eyes to burn, have breathing difficulties and it can even increase lung cancer. When pollutants mix with moisture it will create acid rain. Acid rain can kill trees, poison lakes so fish are unable to live. Pollution comes from factories. We created factories to produce items better and faster. Now not only has it come to a point that it is harming other organisms around us, but now it is harming us. We built factories so that our lives would be better, and for a time they did help us. You probably know all this, but did you know that there are effects for noise and light pollution. Light pollution can confuse animals between day and night. Noise pollution is unpleasant and some songbirds like robins are unable to communicate or find food. The noise waves produced can disrupt the sonar used by marine animals to communicate or locate food. These is a big problem, but it's not too late. We can solve this by recycling, reusing materials, keeping limit on emission of greenhouse gasses. You can also help by spreading awareness to other people. It's never to late to make a difference. It will take a lot of time, but at the end it will be worth it, so let's start before it's not to late.
ReplyDeleteURL: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/pollution/
Out of greed, us humans would do almost anything to make a profit, regardless of the outcome. There are many clear examples of this phenomenon, such as overfishing, factory pollution, and deforestation, the latter of which is becoming a very serious issue. The article, ‘’World of Change: Amazon Deforestation,’’ documents the high rates of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, particularly in a place called Rondônia, located in western Brazil. At the beginning of NASA’s satellite observation, there were about 208,000 square kilometers of rainforest, but as the years progressed, the forest rapidly decreased in size. 4,200 square kilometers were cleared by 1978, 30,000 square kilometers were cleared by 1988, and 53,000 square kilometers were cleared by 1998. The article states that, ‘’By 2003, an estimated 67,764 square kilometers of rainforest-an area larger than the state of West Virginia-had been cleared.’’ All the land that was cleared was to suit our human greed. Farmers would make the land into farmland, to create a profit for their business. After some time, the farmland became unsustainable, and the farmers would convert the land into pastures for cattle to graze. All of this deforestation could have been avoided if we had not been so greedy. However, there is one silver lining:the effects of deforestation are (mostly) reversible. If we plant trees and other flora where deforestation occurs, we could (slowly) grow the forest back. Many foresting companies replant the forest, but many do not as well. That's why there are many organizations that replant trees in deforested areas. One is the Rainforest Alliance, where you can donate to help save the forests, wildlife, the plants and many of the people residing in the forests. If we all group together, we can reverse our past to create a better future.
ReplyDeleteSource:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/Deforestation
Air pollution is a big way human behavior has negatively impacted our planet. One way that air pollution happens is from people using their cars too much. Ways people can reduce using their cars as much is carpooling, riding a bike, and if the place you need to be isn't far away you could just walk. Not using your car as much will not only help the environment, but it will also help you save you money, because you won't be needing to pay for as much gas as you usually do. I don't think it is too late to help the earth, because their are a lot of ways humans can stop air pollution, and they aren't that hard, and even if you reduce the things you use daily, like your car; it will still help the earth, and I think it will forgive us.
ReplyDeletehttps://www3.epa.gov/region1/airquality/reducepollution.html
https://interestingengineering.com/10-ways-humans-impact-the-environment
https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/aerosols-and-global-warming-faq.html
Plastic is more than bags or bicycle helmets plastic has a big negative effect on the environment. Plastic can last a long time and next year there will be approximately 300 million plastic bags produced. Plastic harms the environment because of the chemical building blocks that make up plastic like Bisphenol A (BPA), therefore this will hurt us and the land/sea animals. More than 180 species of animals have ingested plastic debri, so plastic will affect their reproduction and development. Plastic can also harm humans in many different ways. We are exposed to plastic just from air, dust, water, food, and consumer products. When you breathe in that nice fresh oxygen you are probably getting in some plastic as well. The BPA is found in many things like in the linings of your food or drinks. Most people don’t realize, but the BPA is leaking into your food and drink right at the same time you are going to take a sip or bite. Also 93% of people had high levels of BPA in their urine this can impact you drastically by having an increase rate of heart disease and diabetes, but the good thing is all these damages can be reversed. All you have to do is not use plastic whatsoever. Carry around a metal water bottle and stay away from plastic, so next time you go to drink out of a plastic water bottle or see a plastic bag blowing in the wind you will be prepared next time.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ehn.org/plastic-environmental-impact-2501923191.html
Humans use up a lot of resources and pollute the earth. This not only hurts the earth, but hurts the creatures living in it. We have entered the 6th wave of extinctions, but unlike where it was thought an asteroid or an ice age that killed so many species, it is actually humans who are causing so much death. Through habitat loss, global warming, introducing invasive species and just hunting the species itself, we have been killing around 1000 to 10000 times the regular 3-5 species per year, killing dozens of species per day. Although efforts have been made to try and conserve the larger more populated habitats such as rain forests and coral reefs (which is a good idea), we should also be focusing on the less populated habitats such as tundras and prairies. Not only that, but we should also focus on making local efforts to preserve animals. In the article it is predicted “30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century”. Although it is impossible to preserve every one, we should try to at least preserve some of these amazing creatures we share the planet with, by conserving their habitats and cutting down on pollution and over hunting/fishing. Otherwise, not only will they die, but we will too.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/
Forests are an important part of our environment. They provide food, fresh water, clothing, medicine, and shelter. Deforestation is negatively affecting the life of animal that rely on forests. Forests cover 31% of our land , and that is decreasing immensely by 18.7 million acres annually. The main cause of this is humans, they are illegally logging, cutting for agriculture, ranching, degrading, and more. Forest fires are also a cause of deforestation, some of these can be caused by human carelessness. People dig for mahogany, gold, and oil but they don’t care that they are ruining our environment. They do it for the money because humans are very greedy. Tropical rainforests are very important but those too are being cut down. 17% of the Amazon rainforests is gone, and that only happened in the past 50 years. I believe deforestation can be reversed. If humans stop everything they are doing to get rid of forests, they could grow back and animals could get their homes back. So next time you go to take another piece of paper instead of using the back of another, think about the damage you could be doing to your home everytime you take that extra piece of paper.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation
We caused most of the problems in our world today. One of them is global warming. It's harmfully affecting our communities, our health, and our climate. We are destroying earth. Because of us the earth's temperature is rising. We have had 12 of the warmest years since 1998. By overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide(from burning of fossils fuels), it traps the heat in and drives earth's temperature up slowly. It's causing frequent and intense heat waves and is also causing more and longer wildfire seasons. It is a reason for more rain and sea levels rising that causes serious flooding. I don't think there is much we can do to stop it because it might be too late. We need to take action immediately. We could try and reduce it by putting less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We need to also stop deforestation and reduce heat-trapping emissions.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming
Humans have been known to be selfish. One way is only thinking about what makes them happy, and not how it affects other people, or in this case, the environment. People have been smoking cigarettes for years. Not only is smoking bad for your health, the toxic pollutants it releases is bad for the earth's health. The main component of cigarettes is tobacco. Did you know tobacco is grown in rainforest habitats? That means to make the trillions of cigarettes produced, we are deforesting so many forests. Not only are cigarettes causing mass deforesting, but the chemicals they release are a big factor in climate change. Smoking emits 2.6 billion kilograms of Co2 and 5.2 billion kilograms of methane. I think this damage is irreversible because people have been smoking for so long, the damage is already done. Humans don't realize any of this and still smoke just because they like it.
ReplyDeleteI personally don't believe that our planet can forgive us for what we have done. It is way harder to uncook an egg than it is to cook an egg just like it is with saving our planet. One of our main issues is the way that we generate electricity. As of 2015 the United States generated 16 terrawatts of electricity using non renewable energy, that is 16,000,000,000,000 watts or one thousand six hundred lightning bolts. We used 2 billion kilograms of coal, Imagine what that has done to our environment. Add on the 93 billion barrels of oil that our planet produces and we start looking like we are in deep trouble. Our whole world needs to act fast before our entire planet is completely erased of life. If we used nuclear fission instead of primitive fossil fuels then we would only need 666,666.67 kilograms of uranium 235 to get to the 16 trillion watts that our country needs for power. We could also make solar power more efficient because only 10% of the useable energy exposed to the photovoltaic cell is converted into electricity, personally I think that is rubbish and we need to improve them before we can actually use them as an alternative energy source. If we are able to fix the solar panel’s fatal flaw then we could build something called a dyson sphere or ring. The dyson ring is a superstructure that has been thought up by scientists, It is a sphere encasing the sun and the entire structure has solar panels on it so it could theoretically collect 386,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts of energy in a second! Obviously, blocking out the sun is a really stupid idea, and there isn’t enough material in our entire solar system to build a structure like that, but building something called a dyson ring which is just a small ring around the sun could work.
ReplyDeletePollution affect the earth pretty bad and humans don't help with that. If humans throw trash into the ocean, freeway and into the atmosphere. Pollution is really bad that 2.4 billion people do not have access to clean water. Just the US produces 147 million metric tons into the air each year. So the way to stop pollution is for people to stop throwing into the ocean,freeway or into the atmosphere.
ReplyDeletehttps://interestingengineering.com/10-ways-humans-impact-the-environment
Humans don't realize that the earth is bad with pollution and we don't help. It also doesn't help when we are throwing trash out the window or into the ocean it needs to go into the trash. So many people do not have any way to use clean water.there are also 7 types of pollution they're ‘’Water Pollution.
ReplyDeleteAir Pollution.
Soil Pollution.
Thermal Pollution.
Radioactive Pollution.
Noise Pollution.
Light Pollution.’’
I think the way we can prevent this is just do not throw trash into the street or into the ocean and we can all have a non polluted area.
www.alphaenvironmental.com.au/7-different-types-pollution-explained/
If you have eaten a food that is GMO (chances are you have) it probably has not affected you in any way noticeable. I mean technically they are helping to get starvation in the past, but what about if people are allergic to the genetically modified food sources like corn and wheat. This example comes from personal experience because I can’t eat wheat because of all modifying that scientist have done. If people are unable to eat the foods then we shouldn’t produce them, right. That is why I think it is the right time now to stop genetically modifying food before we rely on it too much as we have with cars that are polluting the environment. Also, some of the foods now have toxic substances due to the modification.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.livescience.com/64662-genetic-modification.html
There are many ways pollution can come into play a lot of different ways like air pollution, factories putting smoke into the air, and ocean trash. If people continue to pollute the earth it can cause environmental change and disease. Animals are constantly dying because of the pollution making it unsafe for us to eat that animal. Pollution doesn't only affect animals though, it affects humans too causing diseases like chronic respiratory disease and lung cancer. Pollution can also cause muddy grounds, poisoned soil and water, and can kill plants and animals. Air pollution can cause black clouds and difficulty breathing; this can become a huge problem because if it gets hard for us to breath when we are near a factory, how hard will it be in fifty years when all we do is go outside? Ocean trash has also become a problem because of plastic falling off ships or waste from landfills can cause the fish we eat to die out, and the waste can end up on shores and travel in currents this has been happening more and more each day causing more and more extinctions of the animals we eat every day. I don’t believe that we can fix this problem now because we dug a hole too deep to get out of. The animals that are extinct are either gone, or in another part of the 95% of the ocean that we haven’t discovered yet. This is why I believe that we can’t fix this issue because there is still that 5% chance that they are going to be extinct.
ReplyDeleteURL: https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/pollution
Did you know that in 2011 in the United States alone over 13.7 million people hunted animals just for fun (sport). Just about 12,000 years ago people hunted three different types of camel species, woolly mammoths, and giant armadillos to extinction. Overhunting also creates an imbalance in the natural elements in the environment. I think that right now it's too late to reverse the damage caused by people hunting for sport because the animals that they’ve made extinct can’t just come back; The University of Michigan predicted that by the 21st century 25% of all animal species will be extinct. But I also think they can because there are many animals right now that are endangered by getting extinct but haven’t gotten extinct yet, and if we stop over hunting I think it can be reversed. In conclusion, I think that If we stop over hunting right before any more species become extinct I think we’ll be alright but If we don't we will totally fail at attempting to stop over hunting. Also If you were in a situation where you poached animal how would you feel about yourself?.
ReplyDeleteURL:https://sciencing.com/hunting-affect-environment-11369486.html
Anonymous post:
ReplyDeleteOur land and oceans are being destroyed by all the plastic and garbage. Many animals are being hurt or dying. Due to people just for one being lazy and not putting their trash is the garbage cans or two there's so much trash that it has nowhere to go I believe that we can change that find a way to use less plastic. I think we would be healthier all the way around we would sop eating less prepared food, and start eating natural stuff. That is not wrapped up in cardboard or plastic. It is estimated that is 15 to 51 trillion pieces of trash in the world's oceans. Sea turtle missatake the trash for food and choke and die.This problem needs to stop.
https://www.biological \= diversity.org/campaigns/ocean_plastics/
Burning of fossil fuels will soon be the extinction of all sea life. Our ocean absorbs 30% of our CO2 that is released into the earth’s atmsophere. The CO2 causes multiple chemical reactions in the water, causing for the ocean to increase in acidicity, and also to cause carbonate ions to decrease as well. Carbonate ions are the building blocks for sea shells and coral skeletons, and without them building or maintaining shells will be difficult. When shells that were put in sea water with pH and carbonate levels projected to be in the year of 2100, it dissolved completely in 45 days. CO2 could affect the behavior of certain fish, like how their ability to detect predators is slowly decreasing. Ocean life could be destroyed as we know it if we don’t act fast. Estimates of future carbonate levels in the ocean by the end of this century, that the ocean might be 150% more acidic. So it might possibly too late already.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-coasts-education-resources/ocean-acidification
Greed trait that everybody has from the dust bowl almost destroying America's farming land to people betraying family for a few thousands. Greed is all over the world. There is no statistics only examples. From kids hiding food, Teenagers stealing money and progressing to adults robbing banks only for the money. Greed is a shortcut, but there is no shortcut in life. Somebody who is greedy you can't fix that trait actually nothing can fix that trait except the person themself.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.lds.org/study/ensign/1989/06/greed-when-enough-is-not-enough?lang=eng