What is our ecological responsibility?

                

               Wasn’t Mother Earth kind to breathe life and through a slow process that took millions of years, establish human civilization? Isn’t it clever that she made everything in the world fit; everything have a balance. But now, some query upon why she is unleashing all these natural disasters that within 2010 and 2011 alone, have been a monstrosity. Natural disasters can all be related, though indirectly, to humans. For example the heavy rains that stormed Pakistan or the heavy snowfall that Europe faced last year, or the extreme weather conditions that is hitting the United States. Think about the amount of gas and pollution that goes into the air from factories, the ever increasing number of vehicles, and such; the amount of carbon dioxide. This affects out ozone layer which is getting thinner and there’s even a hole in it! This is allowing ultra violet rays to enter our planet, and its getting hotter, simply said. The heat is melting the ice in the arctic circle and there are even satellite images that compare the land area a few years ago to the present day, and it’s as if it’s shrinking. With the ice melting, this will affect the living conditions/ habitat of several animals in our ecosystem. Additionally, melting ice means that we are getting a “larger pool of water” and this means more water is being evaporated and forming these big, heavy clouds that are sponged full of water. And thus, this is why there has been heavy rains in many countries and regions.

                A very basic example as to why it’s our ecological responsibility to protect our earth and all civilization. If we don’t take action to minimize or eliminate waste, carbon dioxide levels, use of water, and so on, we will not be able to survive ourselves! Just because locals have been breaking off pieces of coral and tourists have been crushing the coral when diving in the coral reefs, 90% of our world’s coral reefs are gone. We have not protected it. Now, the coral reefs are facing extinction by 2050 and it is said that without coral reefs being a part of our ecosystem, nothing would exist.

How do our actions affect others?

                

                Let’s take the recent incident in Japan. Because of the leak in the nuclear power plant, they have to “cool down the system” and so you use water. However then, the water used to cool the system has to be sent somewhere, and so what is being done is that it is being sent to the ocean! Now the seas and oceans near Japan are radioactive and is an extremely dangerous level of radiation in the air and water.

                Water is used to grow crops obviously. What would happen if I watered my crops with water which has a high amount of radiation?

                Well! Now I can’t eat my vegetables, fruits, wheat, anything! So maybe I should take up finishing. I can’t do that either! The fish are being poisoned and the population of fish is decreasing.

                I can’t really do anything  so I think I’m just going to pack up and migrate from Japan to Hawaii. What happened when I got there? I had the same problem and I couldn’t grow safe crops because we forget that we are all interconnected. If you put something into the ocean, it’s going to affect the islands and countries that have coastal borders that belong to that ocean.

                This is just a recent example that I have simply explained.

Which of the five “footprints” do you feel is the most important to fix? Explain.

  Carbon, Energy & Climate 
(energy use, impact of forest loss, and the need for a new global policy on climate change)

  Farming 
(food, fibre, grazing, aquaculture, and biofuels)

  Fishing
(over-fishing, illegal & unregulated fishing, and bycatch)

  Forestry 
(timber, paper, pulp, and fuel wood)

  Water
(dams, irrigation, and drinking supplies)

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/

               

I think that all of them are equally important. I would like to briefly highlight “Forestry” however. Photoautotroph, mainly plants, take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen. What I am curious to know is that, if there becomes an imbalance where there are suddenly very few trees left and the high population of people, how much oxygen will they release? How much carbon dioxide will still be in the air?

             We don’t even need to cut down trees for paper but we choose it. We can just use elephant dung! How ingenuous is that? You not only have something to use the excretion of an animal for, but you get this really interesting yet pretty textured paper. Hooray for recycling! In Sri Lanka, there’s a lot of focus on this. Not only notebooks are made out of elephant dung, but also photo frames and accessories, to name a few.
                 The “Carbon, Energy and Climate” footprint needs to be fixed, but I mean this is terms of the goals we need to achieve. The United Nations have already come up with new frameworks, action plans and policies, so what’s the need for another one? We need to shorten our time to complete a goal, so that it will be done closer to the present and not in the future. We need to put ourselves under pressure.