In the words of Stephen Hawking, the universe was formed as the result of a “happy accident”. Life on this planet is one of the most beautiful accidents of all, the result of certain elements, chemical reactions, and the perfect environment. The Earth is an environment perfectly suited for human life, of which we have not been able to find a suitable replica, in the 3726 planets outside our solar system that we have observed. Of course, there are many other planets in the universe, but frankly, it would be impossible to ever inhabit any of those, because it would take thousands of years to ever reach the borders of our solar system, and many more to a distant planet; thus, Earth seems to be all we have. However, global warming has upset our ‘perfect’ environment - one meant to house millions of different species - and as the Earth warms, everything and everyone is at risk, and humanity faces its biggest foe yet - itself. Now, as the clock ticks down, the world is left scrambling for a solution to this grave problem as the ignorance of humanity has blindfolded and caused us to overlook the looming threat of global warming for decades.
Humanity’s money-driven nature has hindered our society’s chances of survival and it has left our civilization too ill-prepared for our future. As our population rises, we remove more oxygen, needed to breathe, from the atmosphere; yet instead of planting more trees to supplement our depleting levels of oxygen, we cut down more trees. In fact, only 1.6 billion trees are planted every year while between 3.5 and 7 billion are cut down, for paper or for more space to house our growing population. We destroy 200,000 acres of rainforest every single day. Melting glaciers, early snowmelt, and severe droughts are causing more dramatic water shortages and increasing wildfires on every continent. Yet amazingly, our planet does not only just house us. It is also the home of almost a trillion other species. But, according to the United Nations, the disruption of habitats such as coral reefs and Alpine meadows are driving 150 species to extinction every 24 hours. Every day, the biodiversity of this planet becomes less diverse and more uniform. It is hard to imagine how the world as we know it could survive another century of this abuse, but no one is doing anything about it. The survival of our planet becomes a problem that the next generation will have to solve and it may be too late by then. An ancient Cree proverb accurately addresses our state today: Only when the last tree has died, and the last river has been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught, will we realize that we cannot eat money. Furthermore, the future of our planet may be written in the stars through Venus because based on size, chemistry, and position, Venus is very Earth-like. Scientists think that Venus used to be more similar to Earth, with lower temperatures and even liquid water on its surface. But at some point, billions of years ago, the planet started to heat up, and the water evaporated. Interestingly, water vapour is a very powerful greenhouse gas, so temperatures rose even more, causing the carbon trapped in rocks to mix with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, and Venus became a barren, hot, hellish wasteland. Back on Earth, 2016 and 2017 were the hottest years on record, and the trend only continues. However, as mankind sits on the brink of extinction, our civilization realizes our past mistakes and begins a long journey of correcting our wrongs and climbing out of the hole that humanity has dug itself.
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Humanity is not crazy for ignoring climate change but instead, it is because we believe that mankind is just too big to fail. Our ignorance leads us to believe that nothing can stop us and that mankind is the pinnacle of creation. Thus, we continue to exploit the world without any consideration of the massive footprints that we leave behind. We have essentially become captives of a civilizational system that compels us to go on exploiting the world in order to live. We are captives, and in this, we make the world our captive. But the world is not going to survive for very much longer as humanity's captive. It is common knowledge that the environment is dying, although many people may still deny it. The media talks about the destruction of the ozone layer, about the deforestation of rainforests, about the contamination of our land, ocean, and even drinking water, about the extinctions of dozens of species every day; yet people seem perfectly okay with that and continue with their day-to-day lives. We have all heard of evolution, and we all seem to know its basic message: that life is always evolving. However, we seem to believe that evolution does not apply to homo sapiens, that the goal of the universe was for mankind to exist. We are the creatures for whom all the rest was made: this world, this solar system, this galaxy, the universe itself. As a result, we come to regard the Earth as a machine designed to produce and sustain human life. And so we say, well if the planet was made for us, then it belongs to only us, and we can do whatever we want to with it. However, this ill-founded mentality has led mankind down a crooked path that will spell out the doom of our species, unless we can learn from our mistakes and fix them before it is too late.
If we continue on the path we are taking, there will come a day when Earth will be no better than Venus. We will look at our civilization crumbling around us and we will wonder how the human race ever thought it could control the universe. Although mankind is at the threshold of irreversible damage, there is still time for us to admit our wrongdoings, and reform our civilization’s way of life. Everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was - lived out their lives on this tiny sphere of ours. Every thought we have ever had, every action we have ever taken, we have done on this wet rock floating through the cosmic backdrop of endless lonesome space. Thus, we cannot afford to destroy our home, to be the victims of our own greed so we must take care of our planet because while the Earth will continue to exist without us, we cannot say the same for ourselves.
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