Human Environmental Impact

“Hurry, hurry, bring the camera quick”. Yelling to my sister because I know we both would never want to miss this. “There’s a Tornado touching down, get out here”! Besides seeing my family, being able to witness nature’s fury in the form of a tornado has always been a dream. Top soil from the flat plains being kicked up and flowing with the wind as if it were a swarm of locusts approaching on the overwhelming Kansas horizon. It started about two hundred feet up, as a dark thunderous, magnificent mass of spiraling clouds. All the way to were it touched down and started tossing anything in its path miles away into neighboring towns. This was the very first experience I had with Mother Nature and the magnitude of her devastation. It’s something I only want to witness miles away.

Ever since my experience in Kansas with a tornado that was recorded as a magnitude F-3 Tornado. The weather, our planet everything about it fascinates me. I can’t even begin to understand how things like tornados, tsunamis’, hurricanes, and most importantly of all Global Warming. It’s a true fact of life on this planet and we definitely need to start thinking about our global climate change and the variables that affect it. “The increasing emissions of carbon dioxide, CFCs’, nitrous oxide, and methane along with ruination of the world’s tropical rain forests, which help absorb harmful carbon dioxide excess, are expected the throw the climate into a state of precarious imbalance in the next century if these trends are not reversed, experts warn” (Roan).

One thing is certain. “The release of manmade pollutants into the atmosphere has come about so fast and so furiously in the past century that the future of the earth can no longer be reliably determined” (Roan). One huge reason why Global Warming isn’t accepted by some skeptics because scientists are analyzing past weather patterns to predict future weather patterns. We aren’t actually feeling the earth getting warmer, but in time the problem will get worse. In the form of Natural Disasters, things like; droughts, Flooding, extremely cold winters, and blazing summers. Whatever series of events to occur on our unpredictable planet, we must work to stop the problem before it’s too late.

If you’ve ever traveled cross country, through big business cities you tend to notice a trend. No matter what, you’re going to pass hundreds of other cars every hour. We Americans don’t exactly understand the problem because we don’t think about nationwide pollution, we usually only think about the city or state we live in. It’s a real problem that we don’t think about how we humans really affect planet earth. “With a jolt I realized that the world is full of such cities, whose fossil-fuel-driven lights cause our planet to blaze into the night sky” (Flannery). “The bottom line is that we insult the environment a lot faster than we understand the consequences. When you do that, you’re guaranteed to have some nasty surprises” (Roan).

Big businesses, mostly oil companies, shipping corporations, and any company that makes their money, and directly impacts the environment in any way probably wouldn’t support this global warming theory. If the theory be true Politian’s would be running scared. “Some time this century, the day will arrive when the human influence on the climate will overwhelm all natural factors. Then, the insurance industry and the courts will no longer be able to talk of acts of God, because even the most unreasonable of us could have foreseen the consequences. Instead, the judiciary will be faces with apportioning guilt and responsibility for human actions resulting from the new climate. And that, I think, will change everything” (Flannery). It has already been proven that certain people in the government have used their power to keep Carbon Dioxide from being proclaimed a pollutant. I understand that money can and does corrupt a lot of people but wouldn’t you think our government would take our earth a little bit more serious. “In July 2003 three New England states announced that they would sue the federal government, and by October ten northeastern states had joined forces to sue the federal Environment Protection Agency to force regulation of CO2 as a pollutant” (Flannery).
I’ve thought about it a lot lately. What is happening with the weather and how much of an impact have humans had on it. I thought to myself, there are plenty of teachers in this school are almost experts in this subject.
I said to myself “Alright, I have Mr. Benoit’s class next, Ill ask him what he thinks”.
“Excuse me, Mr. Benoit I was wondering if I could get you take on the impact us humans have had on the environment”?
“Of course”! He says with a grin.
“What do you think could happen to our environment in the next twenty to forty years if people do not change their ways”?
He ponders the subject rubbing his chin.
“You will see shore lines DISAPPEAR, more severe weather, Massachusetts will be the next Florida, after the state sinks”.
“Globally, what could we all do to prevent the destruction of our planet and its atmosphere”?
“We would need a change in energy usage, and use renewable resources”.
“Do you believe that Global Warming is directly linked to the twenty percent of polar ice caps melting away or is it a phase the earth goes through”?
“That’s a tough question to ask, there are so many other factors that take part in global warming. But, yes I believe that the ice recession in the Arctic is connected to Global Warming”.
“Ok, next question”.
“Bringing in all of the aspects of Global Warming, what is the biggest cause for what we are experiencing today?”
“Didn’t you learn anything from my lesson on Global Warming and the Green House effect, come on nick? First of all, the exploitations of fossil fuels have been a huge dynamic since corporate America and other companies all over the world race to collect the most oil, and coal. Also because we live in an energy hungry society we don’t think about the ramifications of our actions”.
“Lastly where would you start if you were in control of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and what would be on bad course of action to take?”
“I would first start with automobiles, maybe work on a fuel cell vehicle, or an electric car to cut gas costs almost in have if you drive correctly. To take care of energy costs and to protect the environment I would work hard on solar wind energy parks, and also geothermal power plants.”

Everyone has a fear of what might happen. No one knows exactly when our time on this planet will end. No one can predict something of that magnitude. Maybe there is a way we can try and guess what is to come by trying to decode biblical tales, or any text that sparks superstition. For superstition really does affect human behavior. “Even people who understood little about science or the environment could see that the Antarctic ozone hole was a frightening phenomenon. NASA’s satellite image-the swirling dark whole surrounded by hands of color-was shown repeatedly on evening newscast” (Norman). Taking it all into consideration this world would be out of control if word got out that the world as we know it was ending because of a hole in our upper atmosphere. It simply strikes fear any where it would be heard. Mass hysteria, mass suicide, the collapse of religions all may occur in the onslaught of Armageddon.

Think twice about it next time you see a GREEN POWER ad on a build board. Think about what it stands for, what message it is trying to get across. The message is important to our lives. It’s important to every ecosystem, every organism that calls planet earth home. We must work to lower our Carbon Footprint as a planet not only individual.