Could It Be Too Late?

Could It Be Too Late?

By: Daniela Chur

Have you ever thought that we may have gone too far, and that now Earth is suffering the consequences?  Our planet is encountering serious issues and only we can help solve them.

Earth is currently facing serious problems such as global warming, excessive pollution and animal extinction but when asked, Mr. Feeney, our tenth grade science teacher, said the worst problems were a combination of huge storms and seismic activity. He says it is because, “global warming is not going to proceed at a slow rate the way scientists formerly thought, they now know that the rising temperatures will advance at an exponential rate” and that it is too late to stop it. Some of the most known effects of global warming include melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and melting permafrost, but do you know what else it does? It affects temperature sensitive species and now, “dengue fever is on the raise because the mosquito that carries it isn’t dying because of cooler temperatures”, and it also causes larger and more powerful hurricanes due to larger amounts of rising warmer air.

The main reason animals are dying is because of global diming. Heavy air travel pollutes the upper atmosphere, preventing clouds from shifting northward from the equator and causing floods in land slides in places along the equator and droughts north of it. An example would be droughts in Kenya and Ethiopia. If animal extinction continues it could affect humans because if things on the lower levels on the pyramid of life become extinct, then the things that live off them will also die. “Life has a very fine threshold where species depend on other species for survival”, says Mr. Feeney. If this were to happen there would be less food for all the upper levels on the pyramid.

Mr. Feeney worked in a pulmonary research lab, they did studies on different types of pollution and they found that the worst substance humans can inhale is the pollution that comes out of vehicles, especially diesel, and it is more harmful than cigarettes. “The black soot that you see and smell coming out of buses and trucks in Guatemala City is the most harmful stuff a human can inhale and it will cause cancer, not only in your lungs, but in other body organs and tissues as well”, he said. He also thinks that the most efficient way to reduce pollution is to convert to safe nuclear power with many safeguards and restrictions.

While discussing it, Mr. Feeney commented that we are technologically behind and that we should already have biospheres and colonies on Mars. “All the world’s top scientists predict hundreds of millions of climate refugees wandering the earth looking for food and water. They also predict many wars over food and water.” In the end it all comes down to you. The decision is yours and if we all take a stand and help a little we could prove these people wrong and fix earth's problems.