The five biggest threats to the environment
Mass extinction. The Arctic sea melts. The collapse of world fisheries. Raging fires. crippling droughts. And modern powder bowls.
The environment, and our ability to survive in it, is being pushed to the limit.
I interviewed Tim Vendlinski, a longtime environmental professional and community activist, to discuss the five biggest problems facing the environment today and, more importantly, what each of us can do to help. to save the planet.
Tim Vendlinski began his career as an environmental advocate when he was 10 years old. “At the elementary school I went to, there was a big oak forest behind us. Then one day all these bulldozers showed up and started pulling down the oak trees,” Vendlinski said. “Well, to the horror of the school principal and the teachers, I took a group of students to the construction site and stopped them from cutting down the trees.”
Vendlinski later earned his associate’s degree from American River College, saved Arcade Creek, the last intact watershed[1] forest in Sacramento as a teenager, and completed her bachelor’s degree in environmental policy and planning from the University of California.
Now 53, Tim has been fighting for the environment for more than 40 years.
1. The loss of biogenetic diversity
The earth is now experiencing one of the largest mass extinctions in the history of the planet. The rate of species extinction is now 1000 times greater than before the arrival of humanity.
“This is the biggest ecological disaster, in terms of sheer extinction,” Vendlinski said. “We have lost more plants and animals today than when the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago.”
Although extinction is a natural process, human activities such as deforestation accelerate these natural processes. In the past, an individual species naturally disappeared at the rate of one species per year and was replaced by a new species. Scientists now call this environmental disaster the “modern extinction crisis.”
If current extinction rates continue, half of all species on earth will be extinct within 100 years. “It is a philosophical and spiritual problem. We should protect life. Life has intrinsic value. We should honor life,” Vendlinksi said. “But practically speaking, almost all pharmaceutical chemicals on the market were derived from natural sources.”
2. Deforestation:
Corruption, greed and economics are linked at the heart of these modern environmental disasters. Logging, oil and mining companies build roads into the jungles. Governments encourage the poor to settle in these regions, who must clear them for agriculture. Ranchers require vast expanses for their herds, and land speculators clear large areas for expected profits.
However, the reclaimed land is fragile creating a cycle of further destruction.
This process is known as deforestation.
Tropical rainforests cover about 7 percent of the planet’s dry land. But those rainforests are being cut down at a rate of around 8.5 million hectares per year. “When you look at the rate of Amazon deforestation each year, it’s hundreds, if not thousands, of miles each year,” Vendlinski said.
According to the National Geographic website, “Deforestation has many negative effects on the environment. The most dramatic impact is the loss of habitat for millions of species. Seventy percent of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests.” , and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their homes.”
Deforestation is also responsible for regulating water cycles, absorbing greenhouse gases, and stabilizing the earth’s climate.
3.Climate change:
The earth is heating up. Arctic ice is melting, glaciers are shrinking, and sea levels are rising.
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international coalition of the world’s top scientists, declared that climate change is real and man-made. Based on their data, the IPCC concluded that warming of the climate system is “unequivocal.”
“We have the hottest temperature ever recorded in the United States,” Vendlinksi said. “In fact, every year now the previous record is broken.”
This rise in temperatures is also causing more extreme weather across the country.
“We’ve accelerated temperature increases with human activities and made the weather more extreme,” Vendlinski said. “So events like droughts, records or hurricanes are now more extreme.”
Climate change is now creating an unstable world and affecting global food production.
Four. Unsustainable energy policy and excessive dependence on fossil fuels:
During the Industrial Revolution, humans harnessed the power of fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. For the first time in history, machines replaced man and animal power. Global populations skyrocketed. Economies flourished. And empires were born.
But progress came at a high price.
First of all, fossil fuels are a non-renewable energy source. They take millions of years to develop and are being depleted much faster than they are being formed. And second, the burning of fossil fuels produces approximately 21.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year.
This is where the lines start to blur. Fossil fuels, deforestation, and global warming are so closely linked that it’s hard to see where one problem ends and the other begins. Like glaciers, distinctions fade.
After all, carbon dioxide, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, is the main contributor to global warming.
And when it comes to carbon dioxide emissions today, the United States is public enemy number two, behind China. In fact, the US economy is based on fossil fuels. In fact, we consume more oil and natural gas than any other country, and we are second only to China in coal consumption.
“When Vice President Dick Cheney was in office, the Bush administration’s energy policy was made by the oil companies,” Vendlinski said. “The administration formulated its energy policies only with the energy companies.”
Although the United States has 4.5 percent of the world’s population, it produced 18 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2010, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
For years, scientists and climate experts around the world have warned us that 350 parts per million was the upper threshold for CO2 in the atmosphere. Once past 350 ppm, they warned that global warming could spiral out of control.
Today, the planet has 392 parts per million of CO2. According to 350.org, we must act fast if we want a deliverable planet.
“While the Bush administration disparaged scientists and environmentalists on climate change,” Vendlinski said, “they were simultaneously preparing to harness the melting ice sheet to exploit oil resources.”
Our voracious appetite for fossil fuels has many other consequences, including: contamination of the local environment through oil drilling, pipeline leaks, underground tank discharges, oil spills from maritime accidents, routine washing of tanks and deep water drilling accidents.
5. Depletion of water and soil resources:
Across the planet, a three-foot thin layer of topsoil provides food crops for 6.8 billion people and grass for an estimated 4 billion domestic animals, but this nutrient-rich layer is under threat.
“All life depends on the first foot of soil around the planet,” Vendlinski said. “We have the atmosphere and we have that foot of land.”
Scientists now estimate that we are losing about one percent of our topsoil each year due to careless agriculture.[2]urbanization, plowing, excessive use, irrigation and chemical fertilizers.
“In addition, we are destroying our fresh water supplies around the world,” Vendlinski said. “Through direct pollution, mismanagement of our rivers, and depletion and poisoning of our groundwater.”
Our rivers, lakes, and oceans are being polluted by industrial waste, agricultural by-products (such as herbicides, fertilizers, and animal waste), city sewage, and oil spills.
Today, contaminated water kills more than 5 million people worldwide and almost 1.2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water.
Like the rest of these issues, the distinction between land and water issues evaporates upon inspection.
“Rivers are expressions of their terrestrial environment,” Vendlinski said, “Rivers are there because of everything around them. The trees. The forests. The way water moves off the land.”
In addition, fish populations are on the verge of extinction, the oceans are becoming more acidic, and coral reefs are disappearing.
[1] According to the Environmental Protection Agency website, a watershed is “the area of land where all the water that is under or drains goes to the same place. John Wesley Powell, scientific geographer, put it best when he said that a watershed is: “that expanse of land, a bounded hydrological system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common watercourse and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community”.
[2] Breeding is the care, cultivation, and raising of crops and animals. It is also the management -or mismanagement in this case- and conservation of resources.
