There are many problems we face in today's world, a lot of issues regarding social, economical, and health problems, like the recent coronavirus; however, there are problems that if not solved quickly might bring an end to the planet and all life on it, some of those are environmental issues, which are problems relating to the planet, such as forests, the oceans, the north and south poles, the ozone layer, these issues have been going around for decades or even a century; things like plastic pollution, and the ever polluted oceans, so in this speech I am going to talk about the ones I am concerned the most about.
The great majority of those problems come mostly from one source, fossil fuel, which brings about 80 percent of the world's energy, it provides electricity, heat, and transportation, it also feeds the processes to create materials such as steel and plastic, responsible for most of the environmental issues because when burning minerals, like coal, this process produces carbon dioxide, which contributes to the warming of the planet, which in turn melts the polar ice caps and contaminates the planet's atmosphere.
All of this also comes into another very serious issue, plastic
wastes, since it comes into play in various ways in our lives, as when going shopping if we use plastic bags, on our juice boxes, candies, food wrappers, so plastic is everywhere. In our lives, plastic may be super convenient, since it is a material that has many uses and it has a span of use of roughly 10 to 20 minutes, or even seconds before it is thrown away, never to be seen again; despite that, it's not all good, although we use it for mere minutes, it has a time of decomposure spanning decades, or even HUNDREDS of years to decompose, and that's no good because of their slow decomposure, trash keeps accumulating much more, with no apparent way of speeding up, but if you try burning it, the fossil fuel in plastic creates smoke that contaminates the atmosphere; therefore, making air less breathable, and melts the polar ice caps.
Now, we've spoken a lot about the ice caps, what are they? and why should we care? well, ice caps are gigantic land glaciers typically found in the north and south poles; however, there are other ice caps all around the planet. Then, why are they important? well, many tribes live there, and when they start to melt not only they are slowly losing their homes, but also since the ice caps are giant masses of ice, when they melt they start turning into water. LOTS of it, so much that it starts rising seal levels, and it's slowly sinking the landmass around the planet.
On the other hand, where does the trash go, well it goes to trash deposits where it is incinerated and we are already covered by it and that isn't good; despite that, due to people throwing trash in the ocean, there is a giant accumulation of trash in the Pacific Ocean, and it will keep growing, so now why should we care? Our trash contaminates various ecosystems, leaving a major part of the sea population homeless, even leaving them to die choking on plastic, these animals help our ecosystems thrive with life, the oceans also produce half of the oxygen we produce, by contaminating the oceans we continue to pollute the air we breathe.
I mean, we as a species, have been gifted with knowledge, we've had millenia to develop and somehow we're not even responsible enough to put a wrapper in a trash can, knowledge gave us massive power over the entire planet; however, knowledge is the most dangerous weapon, we as a species carry a monumental responsibility, and in those terms we are LACKING, if we can't seem to care about our planet, our responsibility
- Do we actually deserve this power, those in power tell us climate change is "just a hoax" that there is nothing to worry about, contradicting factual evidence, this is wrong, even if they acknowledge the problem and say they will work on fixing it, they won't, it's all empty promises, we keep fighting for the environment but it all seems in vain, the media is against us
The government seems against us, what else can we do? but we can't give up, if we have at least managed to make people aware of this issue, we have started doing SOMETHING, as long as someone is willing to fight for the environment, there IS hope.
If we keep pushing, maybe even harder, we can change their minds, heck we can convince more people to join the cause, some companies (mostly toy companies like Lego) are finding other materials to replace plastic, plant based materials, heck plastic isn't useless. All we need to do is turn something like trash into anything else, since plastic has great artistic potential, we need to reduce, reuse, and recycle, change might not get here instantly, but it's coming, we just need to make an effort. Let's join in.
By Gabriel Guerra, Step 9
wastes, since it comes into play in various ways in our lives, as when going shopping if we use plastic bags, on our juice boxes, candies, food wrappers, so plastic is everywhere. In our lives, plastic may be super convenient, since it is a material that has many uses and it has a span of use of roughly 10 to 20 minutes, or even seconds before it is thrown away, never to be seen again; despite that, it's not all good, although we use it for mere minutes, it has a time of decomposure spanning decades, or even HUNDREDS of years to decompose, and that's no good because of their slow decomposure, trash keeps accumulating much more, with no apparent way of speeding up, but if you try burning it, the fossil fuel in plastic creates smoke that contaminates the atmosphere; therefore, making air less breathable, and melts the polar ice caps.
