Mankind’s Role in Global Warming
How are 7.3 billion people and counting doing damage to the environment? How is our insatiable demand for water, food, land, and fuel exhausting the earth’s finite resources? These questions could be answered by looking at our surroundings, questioning our place in it, our contribution to the harm and to start by changing our way of life. The following is a limited list of what mankind has done to damage the planet: farming, factories, power plants, industrial waste, sewage, chemical pesticides, the burning of fossil fuels, cars, deforestation, fracking, radioactive waste, plastics, chemicals called CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons).
- Farming is transforming topography in order to raise animals and plant crops have destroyed the soil. Now in the era of industrial agriculture which impacts the environment in such harmful ways because it uses huge amounts of chemicals, water and energy that cause negative effects. Toxic herbicides, pesticides are accumulating in the ground and penetrating in the water. All these chemical fertilizers are disrupting ecosystems and endangering from fish to bees. This style of producing food for consumption has to be abolished if we are to keep the earth and ourselves healthy.
- Factories, power plants and other industry that are all over the world consuming large amounts of natural resources, releasing chemicals and burning fossil fuels pollute the environment.
- An example of human sewage discharged from population centers is the major contributor to aquatic pollution.
- Car pollution is one of the main contributors to global warming. It has short and long-term effects on the environment. Cars burn fossil fuels, its engines run on different gasses detrimental to the environment such as carbon dioxide which emits greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, carcinogens such as nitrogen and sulphur oxides and fragments of metal and soot. The oxides cause acid rain which changes the pH of waterways and soils affecting the creatures that depend on them. Plus these emissions as well as carbon monoxide create smog and is destroying the ozone layer, the shield that protects us from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.
- Deforestation is as the National Geographic calls it, “The Modern Day Plague.” It is a plague on our surroundings and it´s caused by the avarice of those that profit from the destruction of the environment. Deforestation is being driven by agriculture. At this rate, the rain forests could be destroyed in a hundred years. The most dramatic of deforestation is a loss of habitat for millions of species. Seventy percent of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests and many cannot survive the destruction of their homes. Deforestation drives climate change. Forests soils are moist, but without protection from sun-blocking tree cover they quickly dry out.
- Fracking or drilling into the earth causes earthquakes and it is a health, environmental and safety hazard. Ninety percent of the water used to frack never returns, exposure to hydrocarbons can lead to asthma, anemia, cancer among others A recent study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that homes located in suburban and rural areas near fracking sites have an overall radon concentration 39 percent higher than those located in non-fracking urban areas. The study included almost 2 million radon readings taken between 1987 and 2013 done in over 860,000 buildings from every county, mostly homes. Radon is a radioactive gas formed by the decay of uranium in rock. And if that wasn’t enough natural gas is mostly methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas that traps 86 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. It leaks during the fracking process, so it is worse than burning coal, contesting the claim that natural gas burns cleanlier than coal.
- Radioactive and nuclear waste affects the environment because it’s difficult to dispose of properly. If it isn’t disposed of properly, it can cause extensive groundwater and soil contamination. The elements that make up nuclear waste often have long half-lives, which means that it may take millions or billions of years before the waste is safe for humans to be around.
- We have to think of plastic bags in a different way because they disrupt the environment in a serious way. They get into soil and slowly release toxic chemicals. They eventually break down into the soil, with the disastrous repercussion that animals can eat them and choke and die. Plus the petroleum and gas used to make plastic bags is a finite resource. We only have a limited amount to use. But perhaps a bigger problem is the gross number of plastic bags that we use globally, (the current estimates are 500 million to 1Bn). Most people don’t recycle, figures show only 1% get recycled the rest end up in a landfill or in the ocean.There are many places that they can be taken to be recycled, but in reality figures show that only 1% of all plastic bags are recycled, with most heading for landfill, or in the ocean.
- And we come to those chemicals called CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons). They were used in aerosols, refrigerators, air conditioners, fire extinguishers and other products. They contain a group of manufactured chemical compounds that contain carbon, chlorine and fluorine. When emitted and they reach the stratosphere they break apart and release chlorine which destroys the ozone. They can last for more than 100 years. They were banned since 1995, but Dupont and other corporations replaced CFCs with HCFCs and HFCs which are highly volatile if they reach the troposphere or stratosphere.
As conscious people we have to act and change our way of life, from our diet to where we shop, what we buy, and how we commute. We can start by getting involved in our communities and to raise our voice to what is going on in the world. Get busy in saving this planet from ourselves. Because like 350.org says “The window to act and prevent catastrophic climate change is shrinking.”
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Leticia Cortezis a teacher, writer, loves film. She was born in Mexico, grew up in Chicago and has travelled the art world. She presently teaches Latin American Literature at St. Augustine College.
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