The Modern Environment

POSITION PAPER BY

Humans have been inhabiting the Earth since 200, 000 years ago. If we
are to scale our planet’s life of 4 billion years to 24 hours, our race has been
here only for 2 minutes. But the humans also did the most profound alteration
to the Earth compared to the rest of its inhabitants – that is to say we made
the greatest breakthrough of obliteration so far. As far as science is concerned,
during that scope of 120 seconds (in scale) we have polluted massive oceans,
filled the air with deadly gases, jam-packed the lands with enormous amount of
trash, and destroyed over 50% of the Earth’s lungs (rainforests).

As stated by a quote “Whoever caused the madness shall formulate the

solution”, we, humans, are held liable for these damages that we instigated.
Each of us has to be responsible and obliged to amend every single damage we
made intentionally and mindlessly. As individuals of the modern generation, we
are aware that the future might suffer for all we have done over the past
centuries, thus we should do everything we think would save our planet before
its too late - we do not want our grandchildren to pay our debts.

On the other side of the story, many credible and prominent people don’t
believe in the deterioration of the Earth and the results we are facing right now
are simply natural occurrences we would still experience even without our
destructive attitudes – as if saying everything is flowing through the stream
where it should flow. “No one can destroy nature. We may create imbalance in
it but as it goes out of equilibrium the restoring forces start building
immediately and place it again in its equilibrium. Don’t worry about nature, it
is very much capable of taking care of itself.” Says Naveen Bhatt of Bangladesh
University of Health Sciences. However, according to NASA, the following
evidences proves the decline of our planet: global temperature rise; warming
oceans; shrinking ice sheets; glacial retreat; decreased snow cover; sea level
rise; declining arctic sea ice; extreme events (i.e. super typhoons, earthquakes,
etc.); and ocean acidification.

It is an undeniable fact that our Earth is at its brink of

devastation. Sure, we may close our eyes and pretend that nothing is
happening but we can’t deny the fact that we know what’s going on – which
should be enough to move our conscience. Our earth is getting warmer each
year and due to that even greater amounts of evaporation take place powering
huge and ravaging typhoons. Not just that, it also dehumidifies the air, thus
resulting to forest fires and drying of closed water sources. This yields the effect
to the ‘fauna’ side of the story. Between 200 and 2,000 species go extinct every
year which, according to experts, amid 1000 and 10,000 times higher than the
natural extinction rate. The worst thing is, compared to the previous mass
extinctions, this time only one species – obviously humans – appears to be
almost wholly responsible.

Others may think the exact opposite way and that nature can adapt to
changes very efficiently. Indeed, it is true but the alteration rate – the speed of
changes – is relatively faster than that of the past million years. So fast, our
mother nature can’t keep up with. For instance, the ice age, which caused the
extinction of almost all megafauna (i.e. mammoth, saber tooth tigers, etc.) and
flora species, stretched a span of 2.5 million years to incur its devastation
while the human race, that’s obviously not a natural catastrophe, competitively
starts to overthrow the aforementioned mass extinction with just a course of
200,000 years. Saying the Earth can keep up with the changes just because it
has the power to adapt is like alleging a turtle can keep pace with the speed of
a hare just because it has the capability to walk and move forward.

Whether we like to think of it or not, it’s a reality that we are killing

ourselves by destroying our mother nature. In a literal sense, we are now
paying the debt we enjoyed to consume yesterday. Typhoons, earthquakes,
tsunamis, storm surge, forest fires, drought, extinction of species are just some
of the results we yielded from what we’ve been doing. Science states, “For every
action, there’s an opposite and equal reaction”, unfortunately, mother nature
chose only the latter one. As in mathematics, she is in a direct proportion to
what we’ve been doing – we were destroying her, now she’s starting to devastate
us. We can never blame the Earth for how it reacts to what we’ve done. There’s
only one species where we can put the blame and the whole responsibility on
and that is no other than humans.

You may say, it’s too late. We can never revert the damages. Indeed, we
can’t go back in time when the Earth was still filled with what we have lost.
But, like an ailment, it is our mere decision whether or not we will take the
initiative to cure it. “It’s never to late if we start now”. Amending the
destructions can be as fast as how we made them if we work together in simple
things. Spontaneous actions such as: conserving water and electricity; using
both sides of a paper; drying clothes under the heat of the sun; using reusable
materials; shutting down your computer instead of just hibernating it; and
more can deal massive effects towards the healing of our planet. Together, as
being the front-liners, let’s save the world!

REFERENCES:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/global-warming-real/

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-can-climate-change-affect-natural-disasters-1?qt-
news_science_products=0#qt-news_science_products

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Naveen_Bhatt

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

http://wwf.panda.org/our_work/biodiversity/biodiversity/

https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/climate-change-preceded-ice-age-megafauna-extinction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_megafauna

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event

https://qz.com/1128362/15000-scientists-just-signed-the-largest-ever-warning-about-earths-
destruction/