| environmentalism |
As
humans race towards the 21st century, we are on the fore front of ecocide,
the choices that we make now will shape the environmental destiny of future
generations. Our oceans are being raped of their inhabitants at a rate
which exceeds its own ability to re-populate, to feed our mostly meat eating
world population. Our forests are turned into the paper that fuels our
existence, an existence that turns the sky grey, and eventually black,
the trees wont be around to keep it grey forever. The trees and vegetation
which are lost every minute are sometimes replaced by plantation forests
for the future use of paper and other resources. These forests do nothing
to stop errorison and can even add to the problem, apart from that they
offer little protection for the native animals of an area.
As we reach the future
of medicine we eradicate the diseases which would halt the over population
our future holds, as our birth ratio over lap our death ratio we are heading
for obvious problems. The landfills which hold our garbage are quickly
filling, as we devote more land to landfills we are quickly turning land
which was once useful for the natural animals which inhabit it or at least
humans into uninhabitable wastelands. To a large extent we are really bringing
about the destruction of our own planet, if your wondering what we can
do about this? to stop or at least slow the process, to keep the ecology
of our planet in a healthy state; i hope to get your mind working on how
to help you find that answer.
OCEANS LIFE
To help with the problems of over fishing in or oceans, you can start out small, boycott canned fish; tuna, salmon, sardines, if you still want to buy canned fish buy cans which carry the dolphin free logo's, or made from fish that were farmed. This may seem like a small step but one person can make a very big impact on issues of consumption. The only reason canned fish exist in the first place, is because there is a demand for them, if you cut out the demand, even on a small scale your stoping the demand. If you consume a lot of sea food, try and cut down your amounts, if possible seek out sea foods which are farmed and not fished from the sea. Become active in marine conservation, adopt a dolphin or whale, learn about marine life, over fishing, etc; educate your family, freinds, work mates. Become active in making a difference for yourself or your children, or your childrens children, or just the children that you will never know or meet, but that will never have the opertunity of seeing a whale or dolphin in their natural habitat; if we dont make a difference now.
A good way to help save animals of anykind, including marine life, is to take on a vegetarian lifestyle. At least abstain from sea food, or red meat, to do anything is a difference, any difference which aids the environmental life of the planet is a good difference. For more infomation on vegetarianism, refer to the vegetarian pages of sxethic.
DE-FORESTSATION
Deforestation is a
big problem for our future generations, when you consider that it is both
one of the most economical viable resources we have available and it is
also what is keeping us alive. Forests are home to many animals which only
find protection in forests and jungles, which are being used for paper,
woodchips and other wood bi products.
So why cant humans recognize this? even if we did recognize this on a global
scale we would have a hard time trying to find a resource as flexible as
lumber. It makes paper, and society is basically run on paper, even with
recycling this is still a major problem for society. Plantation forests
are a suitable short term solution but they it is far from a viable long
term solution. The electronic technology that we are faced with in today's
work place; fax machines, email, the internet alone. The closer we get
to being a electronic society the better for our forests, but then you
have the problem of power plants faced with the task of powering this electronic
equipment. But of course there is no easy answer to this problem, it is
the biggest problem for our future.
Possibly the only way you can help on a small scale when it comes to a problem this big is by recycling as much as you can. Recycling doesn't seem like that much of a help in the short term, but it does make a large impact on cutting down the speed at which garbage landfills are filled. Recycling also conserves the products which are used to create plastic in the first place, let alone the effect it has on the amounts of plastic which are already sitting in land fills slowly breaking down naturally. A smaller scale way to conserve environmentally resources, like wood is through the realization of energy usage. So consider that next time you leave a light on and leave the room, or leave a television going when there is no one watching it, let alone the money it is costing you annually. These are just a couple of ideals that you could try out, its not to say they are the only ideals that could help the environment.
OVER-POPULATION
As humans begin to erradicate the diseases which keep the number of humans to a level which allows us to interact with the environment without having a negative effect on it. As our birth ratio becomes greater then the rate of our mortality we can look towards a future of birth control becoming more of a law then an option. This seems like an extreme avenue but it is not all that out of sight for the future, the reasions for this is becasue humans only have so much land that will support us while still giving us at the very least oxygen. This will become a very big problem in the future which will hit us very rapidly and very hard. As our technology gets better we develop ways of making our older people get older and our younger people grow into larger numbers. This is a very hard problem to correct, or even do anything about. To learn more about over-population, there is an over-population header in the human links page of sxethic; human links.
Possible solutions to over population are not very helpfull as far as a long term solution could be considered. One of the most effective is to consider adoption rather then actualy concieving your own children, of course this is not an easy choice to make for any reaison other then personal reasions. So in as far as directly targeting the problem is concerend it would be extremly hard for individuals, i guess in the future that govonments will put programes into effect to deal with overpopulation. Of course contrception or abortion could be considered options also, if a pregnancy is not wanted in the first place. But there is no easy answer to most of the questions that are going to be very big problems for the environmental future of our planet. Some times there are easy ways to help, but rarly easy ways to eradicate the whole problem.
