When you were younger your parents taught you that if someone gave you something or helped you, you were supposed to thank them. You were supposed to show some form of gratitude. Why then have we as a species forgotten, for so long, to thank the one thing that provides all of us a place to live? Did we simply forget our manners? Or worse, did we choose to ignore what our parents taught us just so we could have exactly what we wanted and when? Lets be frank, we chose to be selfish.
Planet Earth. Inhabits around 7 billion people. The planet has given us resources that make sure we are fed, sheltered, and pretty much taken care of, not from our on messes though, but our planet has always made sure we have gotten what we needed. Unlike what we were taught, we haven’t thanked it or even simply done what we need to do to help the planet stay around for future generations; Instead we have left it in the dust, turned our backs on it, and one day it will do the same to us.
Global warming – the heating of the planet from our CO2 emissions – is a big thing today. Many believe that this is the major effect of how we have thanked our planet for all that it has done for us. Others will try to tell you that this is all fake, that people are being irrational and that the planet is even cooling right now. Global warming is very controversial, so controversial that we cannot address the real problem at hand. Instead of just looking at the fact that humans have caused damage to our planet, we must label it and someone must be right. We should just look at the facts of why global warming might be true. The facts that say we have polluted with so much that one day it will not function for us.
What exactly have we done? We are charged with the crime of putting so many CO2 emissions in the air. The CO2 is from our cars and other vehicles. They can come from buildings and the power plants. With the population of the planet growing and the revolution of many countries, the need for more cars, and more power is increasing exponentially, causing more harm to our planet now than ever. Back when the technology leaving CO2 emissions was new, we weren’t as guilty. One, because we didn’t know the harms on the planet, and two, once we did know the harms we didn’t know other, cleaner and safer technologies. Now we do know those technologies and we are failing to change from the old to the new when the outcome is only affecting us.
The new technologies are ready to be utilized. Things like solar power, hydroelectric power, nuclear power, bio-fuels, wind power and many more, are ready to go into action, not just as small producers, but at our main source of energy. They have the ability to take over where the dirty fuels are leaving off. The only problem is that we aren’t doing it.
Right now if you hadn’t noticed, the U.S. is in a depression. Throughout this depression I have noticed more talk about “Going Green” and becoming more Eco-friendly; but after learning about the readiness of these technologies in my competitive debate class this season, I see that if the government truly wanted to do something about the problem it would have been done, honestly, about 2 or 3 years ago. Of course knowledge and technology only gets better with more study and time, but at this point we are merely mocking the planet, showing it yet more disrespect for what it does for us. By saying ‘we will when we can,’ shows how little this topic is cared about.
The main message of this article is that the disrespect we show to our planet earth only hurts us and our children – no one else – nothing else but us and everything we have accomplished and overcame as the human race. So in turn, we are disrespecting ourselves.
