Give Earth a fighting chance

Garbage+and+debris+pollutes+the+water+as+it+accumulates+off+of+the+coast+of+Guyana

Photo Credit: Nils Ally

Garbage and debris pollutes the water as it accumulates off of the coast of Guyana

Samantha Ruoff, Staff Writer

Everybody wants to see the world change, but nobody wants to put in a enough effort to see those changes happen.

Earth is the one place we call our home, and this home needs a deep cleaning. Imagine someone coming into your house, picking up your trash can and pouring it in your bathtub and stuffing it into your fridge.

On top of that they start burning trash and cigarettes in each of the rooms, not caring about your well being, your children’s well being, or any of your pets well being.

This is what we do to earth.

The only place that holds our food, water, and resources that we need to live, and we do nothing but take it all for granted.

Every day for 365 days a year we do nothing but hurt our planet.

The amount of pollution released into the air by burning fossil fuels is so revolting, that in 2015, Berkeley Earth released a paper on how breathing air in Beijing China is the equivalent to smoking 1.5 cigarettes for every hour you take in that air.

While Phoenix is not Beijing, how long could this take to plague Arizona, or even the rest of the globe?

How long will it be before we realize our time on Earth has expired?

No matter how many times this topic has been discussed, there has not been a good long-term solution to deal with this, and every year without a solution on how we can heal our planet, is another year that our planet dies.

Every time we burn an excessive amount of fossil fuels, it does not only affect the air we breathe, but it also affects every other portion of nature as well.

According to NASA’s website, 9 out of the ten warmest years that have been recorded have occurred after the year 2000.

As a result of this global change, glaciers are melting at an alarming rate and the ocean waters are warming.

Earlier in the year there was a popular article floating around social media, saying that the Great Barrier Reef had died. This was not true, of course, the reefs aren’t quite dead yet, but they are becoming stressed.

The Reefs are becoming ‘stressed’ due to warm water change, which causes them to release algae. This algae is their food source and also how they get their color; which is why they appear bleached.

Despite the fact that this article was a fake, it caught everyone’s attention; and after everyone got done posting how sad they were on their social media, they went back to not caring.

As humans we keep forgetting that we share this beautiful planet with so many other creatures. We crave power and success, but some of our achievements may bury us, because our planet cannot handle our rapid ‘advancements’.

While most big businesses cannot come to an agreement on a long term plan, remember, that just like a donation, every tiny contribution that we can make will be helpful.

We need to start recycling.

If we start implementing recycling into more neighborhoods, making recycling units more readily available to the public, they would be more willing to put cans into a bin when it’s in their backyard, versus traveling to the nearest recycling plant to do away with their waste.

In order for us to live, we have to keep our planet alive too, so be kind to it.

Remember that we have the ability to run outside to catch glowing bugs in glass jars, then enjoy a glass of sweetly-sour lemonade, all while we are in the company of our friends and family.   

But what if Lightning bugs died out due to environmental changes? What if we lost citrus trees due to polluted soil?

Every time we kill our planet, we are also killing more potential memories for the future generations to come.