Global resources and the inevitability of the destruction of our environment

Saloni
Maharaja Man Singh Vidyalaya
India

Most human cultures have an intuitive sense of participating in a living, breathing ecology. Planet Earth is a self-regulating, living system that maintains conditions suitable for life. The planet, then, is always evolving so as to adapt to the changing nature of the organisms that live within it. Mother Nature is alive and responding to everything we do, and we, whether we know it or not, reacts in turn. This is not a 'human versus nature' relationship, but rather a set of symphonic interactions: those between human beings and those between us and our environment.

As human beings continue to wreak havoc on the ecosystem, with seemingly no awareness of the long-term effects of our shortsighted actions, we seriously jeopardise the fragile balance of life on this big blue marble we call Spaceship Earth. Now is the time to take steps toward creating a cleaner environment, however insignificant and seemingly useless those steps may be. We should take steps to end pollution, limit damage to our precious ecosystem, and preserve what remains of our planet's biodiversity for future generations.

If we ignore the Earth's wounds today, what sort of world will our children live in, after we're gone? It's not enough that we work to provide good homes for them inside our houses. 'Home' must stretch beyond those walls; we need to care for the Earth because it is home to all of us.

Every day, without fail, we can meticulously organise our recyclables into five distinct categories, thereby subtracting an eyedropper's worth of garbage from the countless tonnes of waste that ferment in our landfills. It only takes a few extra minutes. We can also refuse to use anything except 'Earth-friendly' paper products, some of which contain up to 10 per cent recycled materials. For us, it's worth shouldering the extra cost, but, unfortunately, only a scant few of us bother. And growing some of our own organic vegetables in our backyard garden also, to my immense satisfaction, reduces the use of toxic chemical-based pesticides and herbicides present in corporate farming techniques by as much as 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001 per cent.

These quixotic, Sisyphean efforts are some of the ways of dealing with what is perhaps the most crucial and difficult issue of our time.

Why do we boycott multinational oil and gas corporations that fail to acknowledge and address global-warming issues, resulting in a few less dollars in their swollen coffers? Or participate in demonstrations against local wetland destruction that are attended by as many as a dozen people, before the wetland is eventually drained and cleared for a new Wal-Mart anyway? Why make the effort? Because I care. Because we care. And all of us want these feelings to manifest themselves, even if they are in barely measurable ways.

Conservation is more urgent than ever. Scientists inform us that the combined effects of fossil-fuel consumption, land clearance, and overfishing of the planet's seas have already ushered in a period of ‘mass global extinction', the sixth so far recorded in the Earth's history, and the only one to be entirely caused by humans. In the next century, between two-thirds and three-fourths of all plant and animal species now in existence could become extinct if we don't invent new methods and make our best effort to protect the Earth. And even if only one out of several people agrees to take such steps, he/she can help to delay this inevitable global death by as many as several nanoseconds.

Despite the irreversible effects of centuries of sustained environmental abuse by the human race, individuals, working together, can fight this inevitability in a real and concrete show of unity, even if it is apparently ineffective.

Together, we can make an unbelievably great difference. Earth is our home, just as a house or apartment is our home. Think deeply about what needs to be done to protect our home planet and then always try to relate it specifically to your own life and actions.

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