Why Should We Protect Our Environment Essay Example

Humans should go above and beyond to protect our environment as it is our home and our very lively hood. Earth’s current health state is in dire need of humans to change, we are jeopardizing earth for our future generations. Changing our lifestyles to reduce our footprint is not an overnight thing nor is it possible without the help of everyone regardless of if they are young or old. Humans deep down know it is a noble cause with the main excuse of just being lazy or maybe even unaware. It may require a little bit of time but none the less the benefits outweigh the cons greatly. There is not a wasted effort when it comes down to helping our planet stay healthy regardless of rather it is a big or small impact. Humans need to snap out of it and change or we are going to be the cause of humanities downfall even when earths been nothing but well to us.
Humans have basic necessities in life and in order to get these we are obligated to work, rather than be anywhere from a farmer to an oil refinery. A hungry person will never go hungry when they have an opportunity to support themselves. Putting yourself over the environment is a necessary evil, but how about we find a way to make up for it. Kim Anderson asked a valid question we should use when we go to work, “Can we apply the 5 R’s of being environmentally friendly?” (Anderson,2018) Every job is not going to have an ecofriendly agenda when they are trying to make money, but what about having these jobs and advocating towards a goal of being at least a little ecofriendly from recycling to finding ways to minimize emission by carpooling. It is impossible to leave no trace of negative impact on our environment, but it is all about limiting it through shear effort.
There is not a reason to care about something that does not affect you or involves you in the slightest, you rather put that time into something you care about. The biggest threat to our environment is our mindset as a people, we have become so selfish that going out of our way for something that doesn’t better us is a bother. Environment issues do not seem real as sometimes it is hard to personally see it with your own eyes, so it does not feel real. As a people we should spread awareness in a positive light and even make it to where it is realistic and understandable for everyone. Taking a couple minutes out of your day should not kill you and ignorance shouldn’t be a thing when we are taking advantage of all the gifts earth gives us. We currently have a total of “7.8%” of people born and alive with asthma, imagine if we inherited a planet where asthma is at a high rate and breathing fresh air is a special privilege. (NHIS,2019) So let us stop that from happening to our future generation of people regardless of if we are involved in it or not. We tend to sweep anything that doesn’t involve us under the rug and forget so the pressure never settles in for us to change.
When people get awareness, it can then develop into a community following the path of improving our environment and a community that make what that one person of the group gain voice. In japan they separate everything even there trash which isn’t an impossible task, so as the community gets bigger and bigger we can develop this into a way of life and hopefully it passes on. Another awareness issue is just plain not knowing the harm we do as the amount of activities we do daily can be harmful to the environment. Something as simple as using paper products is harmful to our environment, “we estimate that over 15 billion trees are cut down each year.” (Crowther,2015) Most people use wood-based products every day, so it should also be easy to recycle when you are done with the products.
It is easy to think these problems will just vanish but they are here till the day we wise up and push for change in us and our community. Humans are responsible for the state earth is in today so it is only right we get us out of the hole we dug ourselves in. The faster we take responsibility for it, the faster we can start finding ways to improve our environment and hopefully influence others to follow suit. Our whole survival as a species is based on how well we treat earth and there is not a backup to replace earth yet. We should start more efforts as a country as the “United States generated 42.0 metric tons of plastic in 2016 and was the lead plastic producer in the world”. (Law, 2020)
The main point is as humans it’s our job to ensure our environment is healthy and we have been doing a very poor job of doing it. There shouldn’t be any excuse in not giving any time of day to help bettering our environment as it can take 10 seconds to recycle one thing and that thing can form a beneficial habit. It is our responsibility as we are the ones mainly destroying our environment along with the main ones taking advantage of it.  Even when we are in predicaments where we have to choose our livelihood over our environment we should try to make that little bit of effort to make a change. The change cannot be limited to the environment, but to oneself as they gain the awareness and even socially as you start to connect to people in your community. Gandhiji put it nicely when he said, “earth provides enough to satisfy one needs but not every mans greed” (Pyarelal, 1958) earth provides us with enough to survive and we should hold others accountable for their greed that’s putting earth in a depleted status.