The environment is a constant topic for a lot of kinds of people in the world. The debate on the environment is only growing due to advances in technology and more coverage about the environment on social media and news outlets. This leads to people’s environmental ‘worldviews’, or simply how people think we should use the environment and how it should affect us. Some people have no idea what they think about the environment but that is not such a bad thing. People that believe all life has value and will help in efforts to prevent extinctions tend to believe in the life/earth-centric worldview. People that believe that the environment should be used in favor of humans and that it should only benefit us fall under the anthropocentric worldview. There are also worldviews based off the Bible and using the environment for how God says we should (biblical worldview). I will be diving into my beliefs on the environment and how I feel we should use the resources we are given in the environment.
My worldview comes from my background. Specifically, how I was raised and where I grew up. My worldview is a mixture of a biblical worldview and a life/earth-centric worldview. Working on a farm has built a trust that I have with the animals that makes me feel connected to them and obligated to help them live their best life in any way I can. As much as human relationships are important, the balance of having animals in the world is just as important to me. Then comes in the biblical aspect of my worldview. I was raised going to church on Sundays and really had a grasp on what Christianity is in my teenage years. God wants man to thrive in this world, but he does not want to do it at the expense of the other living creatures in the world. In Genesis 1:28 God says, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth”. To me, God is telling us to responsibly handle animals in a way in which they can thrive a long with us. I believe he is saying that a balance is important and that protecting the environment allows the animals to live a healthy life as well. Humans can be the top priority, but it should not be the only thing on the list. The environment is valuable to me because God created it. God knew that man would evolve over time and that technology would become a factor. As the technological age advances there are ways where we can create a balance between economic growth and environment stability. Using resources more wisely like cutting down on the usage of exhaustible resources and finding ways to eliminate harmful emissions that are put into the environment. When new buildings are being built for technology in the environment, using tradeoffs and win-win solutions help create a balance in the environment without depleting it helps balance things out.
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When I talk about my worldview to other people, I get asked about the threats that can harm the environment. ‘What threats are most important to you?’, then there are the questions of, ‘What environmental threats are not a big problem?’. Any ‘threat’ to the environment is important to me. There are some threats that are bigger to me and ones that I think can help the world in a bigger way than others. For example, illegal fishing is a problem in our country and around the world. Catching fish that are not allowed to be caught or fishing ‘out of season’ can hurt the ecosystem because it can affect the predators of the fish and can cause problems for the whole ecosystem. I think pollution hurts the overall ecosystem more than illegal fishing does because of how it affects us as well as the ecosystem. While children make up 10% of the world’s population, over 40% of them end up with a disease of some sort and around three million deaths occur to children under the age of five according to the Blacksmith Institute’s article about the worst pollution problems in the world. Pollution kills over one million sea birds per year and over one-hundred thousand sea mammals. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, over sixty percent of species reside in the water and that fact causes a problem with how an ecosystem operates and the organisms that live in it. An example would be companies dumping wastes into a body of water. This ends up contaminating the water which leads to the death of aquatic species. This also causes problems for us as less than one percent of freshwater is accessible due to pollution. This could become even more challenging as the demand for water is expected to grow by over thirty percent by 2050. Another problem with pollution in the waters is how it reaches the soil in some areas. If the bodies of water are contaminated (whether with wastes or pesticides) it can affect the soil around the areas in which they are located, which can harm the consumers that eat around these parts of water. Remember that seventy-one percent of the earth’s surface is made up of water so that is a lot of contamination around the world. Climate change is another environmental issue that is finally getting national attention but needs to be seriously addressed. Preventing paper use, recycling, being more energy efficient, using compost bins, etc. all can help prevent global warming. This is a big issue because it is melting glaciers which is leading to an increase in sea level. Habitat destruction is another problem that is an effect of pollution and climate change. Building roads and making room for houses is a continuing trend in the tearing down habitats. Habitat destruction affects the animals and causes them to transition to other areas or some cannot make the transition and just die from the destruction. It also causes problems with climate change because of the lack of trees (forests being able to absorb carbon dioxide).
These problems in the paragraph above could ultimately lead to our world becoming a place that is not safe to live in within the next hundred years. It honestly only takes some common sense to not let these things happen. Throw trash away the right way, be avid about recycling and reusing items, and find ways to be energy efficient. That also means being more efficient with how we use technology. The environment is important just like technology and doing what is right with both the environment and technology will create a balance that helps the world. This is ultimately why I have questions about mankind dominating the environment. Because are we even running the environment or is it the desire for technology? Yani Saloh is a worker for Wetlands International of Indonesia and he believes that the government needs to do their best to eliminate greenhouse gases and force companies to reduce emissions that are put out into the environment. The areas that are deforested and drained are known as ‘dry areas’ and lead to respiratory disorders. Saloh believes that by 2035 around fifty percent of children in dry areas could have some sort of respiratory disorder. Technology is not a bad thing at all, but we are so caught up with it right now that it is causing problems in our country. Technology should be used in ways to help the environment out, not to find ways to destroy it. Without people at the top that can make laws and regulations, people will continue to take advantage of the environment in a bad way. The problem with how the environment works is that mankind does run it and is going to be the only thing that can run it, so we must fix it. It is ultimately up to us to take care of our environment or it could eventually cause problems that were not thought of many years ago.
This pretty much sums up my argument on how I think about our environment. I am a big supporter of the environment and value what it has to offer to me. I also believe God created the environment so that we as humans could enjoy it and cherish it instead of destroying it. God wants us to evolve as humans but also wants us to watch out for the animals so that they can evolve and flourish as well. Making the environment flourish gives us better air to breathe, allows animals to live in the ecosystem that they were made to live in, and to protect our oceans from becoming the local trash dump. My mix of the life/earth-centric worldview and the biblical worldview gives me a real feel of a genuine respect for the environment. I hope to make people around me feel more obligated to show that respect to our environment as well not because of me, but because God made everything that exists in his image. He would have never created the environment if he did not want us to take care of it. What are we going to do about it? That’s the question that needs to be answered.
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