Environmental Issues

Rising Population

In the past few hundred years, the population of humans has steadily been increasing. The rate of its increase had not become too large until the last century when it started to increase by increments of a billion in just a few decades. This enormous change in the human population can largely be attributed to medical advancements and increases in agricultural productivity, but with all of these advancements there may be a downside.

As each individual is living longer than his/her ancestor, he/she will need more food and use more of the earth's resources which is the main contributing factor to the introduction of pesticides. While pesticides are primarily used to kill insects that spread diseases, they may not be any safer than the pests they are killing. To make matters worse, spraying pesticides can cause pesticide drift which damages human health and causes environmental contamination according to CPR.

Is Global Warming a Myth?

The development that humans have made over the past few centuries is astounding, but currently we are getting to the point where we may be growing too fast for our own good. This is discussed in detail on The Interacademy Panel on International Issues where it says "science and technology may not be able to prevent irreversible degradation of the natural environment and continued poverty for much of the world." It explains that this is a clear effect of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, ozone depletion and acid rain, loss of biodiversity, and deforestation. Due to our dependence on fossil fuels, it is obvious that we as a population must soon make a change or else we will either run out of our necessary fuel or reach a point where we cannot reverse the detrimental effects we are doing to our planet.

Some people may argue that global warming is a myth because there is no data to support it, or because the climate has not had a drastic change but this is not true. The fact that the polar ice caps are melting and 2014 was the hottest year on record should be enough to make the general population question whether global warming may actually be true. Even more disturbing, the 10 warmest years in the instrumental record, with the exception of 1998, have now occurred since 2000 which is discussed on NASA.gov. It is said that the reason for this is because of "the increase in carbon dioxide and other human emissions into the planet’s atmosphere." This video shows how much the temperature of the earth's surface has been changing over the past 130 decades.

Proof of Human Impact

This map shows the difference in temperature of the earth's surface than the average of the past 130 decades. This picture and the video showing the temperature change make it evident that global warming is no longer a myth but something that has finally been proven which we need to take seriously. There are countless ways in which we can support our current population for decades and even centuries to come, but changes must be made to the way obtain energy, grow our food and many other areas. If we all start to acknowledge that we must start making changes, we can hope to live in a healthier world and start saving the only planet we have.

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