NATURE.
We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children- Native American proverb
As a kid, I have always been fascinated by trees, plants, and nature in general. I always imagined each aspect of life operating as a group to make humans adequately comfortable. Till, when I grew up, I came to the understanding that every unit of nature operated independently, and a form of positive interaction existed between every individual specie of biotic organisms working on earth. These interactions are also largely dependent on the abiotic components. That’s why humans, animals, and plants suffer the brunt of climate change. I apologize if I went all scientific right now, but I just explained ecology and how an ecosystem works. It is okay, for we humans to think we are the cradle of evolution, and all other living organisms that exist on earth should worship us, but what is not okay is for us to be destructive about our activities in our environment. I love to see us, humans, simply if asked as the major, wardens of the earth and while we think nature needs us, it is a terrible lie we need life more, mother nature doesn’t need us.
Man’s destructive activities on the environment became somewhat disastrous as time grew, from habitat fragmentation to over-fishing, to hunting, to resource exploitation, pollution, etc. All of this didn’t just start today, or yesterday, as I mentioned earlier, but it slowly progressed. Wherever man went, destruction followed, in the name of quenching our insatiable desire to satisfy our greed. These days it gets worse due to over-population. The increasing population means a higher amount of resources required to cater for needs. While humans simply cared for our needs we systematically ignored the needs of nature, without actually understanding that life runs in a cycle, the first law of thermodynamics, simply suggested that; “Energy can neither, be created nor destroyed, but transformed from one form to the other,” that is a pretty basic explanatory definition of how energy is distributed on earth. Let me give a short example, we all know most of the urban areas in the world are marked with high environmental pollution indices as a result of improper waste disposal mechanisms and habits among other things, now imagine a person who lives close to a water body, open up a wrap of bubble gum, and after, putting the glue in their mouth they simply throw it in on the floor instead of properly disposing the wrap in a dustbin, here is what will happen, the wind carries this wrap and dispose it into the water body, afterwards a fish comes and swallows the bubble wrap, it doesn’t get metabolised by the body of the fish properly, so the fish is weak and unable to carry out its normal activities so natural selection occurs and the small fish gets eaten by a much bigger fish, now have it in mind that, this bubble wrap is made of plastic, and as a result it contains some dangerous compounds, so the big fish also has those major compounds because of the fact that it ate the smaller fish and then a fisherman catches the bigger fish, while fishing, and brings it ashore, sells it off in the fish market and a person buys it and eat it, without realizing the dangerous substances that are present in the tissue of the fish resulting from the bubble wrap, now this whole cycle is called Bioaccumulation. Now this compound stores up in the body of the person, and the more they eat bad fish, the dangerous substance keeps accumulating in their body tissue till they fall ill as a result. So now, from this rather short but graphic example, we can see how one little mistake can affect us all, the food chain and web are dynamic. We have an effortless and ignorant approach to the environment. It is sad, that is why most of the health and environmental crises the world currently faces, is caused by man’s negative impact on the environment; we cut trees, build roads, houses, and even as a fuel source, without understanding the effects of deforestation. Fossil fuels are commonly exploited, instead of adopting greener alternatives, poaching wild and exotic animals to the state of extinction, polluting the environment, during exploration of earth’s resources, dispose of our wastes, irresponsibly. The air we breathe is full of particulate matter, most of which are toxic to our body, our natural water bodies are highly polluted, our lands degraded. One of such is the Niger-delta, area of Nigeria, whenever I look at the pictures from the area I feel nauseated and weep, after decades of oil exploration the land and water bodies have been left in destruction. It is even sad enough that nothing is being done to date to ameliorate the effects caused by these activities. Every party involved are equally responsible for this disaster.
In conclusion, there is a symbiotic relationship that exists between man and the environment. That relationship must continue to be a positive one, and we must cease from living in a state of negative interactions with the environment, such as parasitic and predatory kind of lifestyles. We must find green sources of energy, adopting sustainable waste management techniques, and promoting sustainable development goals. We must ensure to keep the earth healthy enough so that our resources can be preserved and conserved sufficient to ensure the survival of future generations.
This letter is a follow-up from the previous one, as it came to my understanding that most people don’t understand how the environment works. Thank you.
Man usually doesn't care about the environment until something drastic happens. Most of the environmental disasters we see today are a gross product of how we have been harming our environment and causing an imbalance in nature's cycle. Well done.
...most people are unaware of the harm they cause themselves and others indirectly... thanks for this