Many fiction books have acquired my interest however, I decided to read a non-fiction book this quarter. Written by Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fall or Succeed claims the ecological problems that can lead a society to crumble. We can observe from past societies that have collapsed suffer from difficulties such as soil problems, overfishing, overhunting, effects of introduced species, human population growth, increased impact of people, water management problems, deforestation, and habit destruction.
Instead of reflecting on a character in a story like I would have normally done if I read a fiction novel, I will be evaluating the problems we have today that can lead to our downfall. One problem we have today is destroying or losing natural resources such as natural habitats, wild food sources, biological diversity, and soil. More than half of the world's original area of forest has already been converted to other uses which are destroying or decreasing our income of raw materials. This may lead to our demise as raw materials are harder to gain and can end up destroying the ecosystem.
Instead of reflecting on a character in a story like I would have normally done if I read a fiction novel, I will be evaluating the problems we have today that can lead to our downfall. One problem we have today is destroying or losing natural resources such as natural habitats, wild food sources, biological diversity, and soil. More than half of the world's original area of forest has already been converted to other uses which are destroying or decreasing our income of raw materials. This may lead to our demise as raw materials are harder to gain and can end up destroying the ecosystem.
Another problem that is evident in our civilization involves harmful things that we generate or move around such as toxic chemicals, alien species, and atmospheric gases. Chemicals are being released into the air, soil, oceans, lakes, and rivers that are damaging the ecosystem even further. A recent example of this would be the use of insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides that had damaging effects on birds, fish, and other animals. Just like the destroying our natural resources, spreading dangerous chemicals in the environment may lead to negative, irreversible changes in the habitat that can bring dreadful complications in the future.
An increase in human population has also served to be a problem in our society. The more people that inhabit a community, the more food, space, water and other resources required. The number of resources used by these people lessens our supply and in turn, causes more consumption and destruction of natural habitats to support the increasing populations. If we do not find a solution to these problems we may find ourselves exhausting our environment and stimulating new difficulties that may be too great to solve.
The earth is deteriorating and not much can be done with all the pollution. Even though most people do not deliberately trash the environment, almost everyone carelessly litters today. Most of the time people are just feigning ignorance and eventually causing harm to themselves with all the gas emissions in the air.
ReplyDeleteWe can see the consequences of our actions everyday. Our streets are not clean anymore. The amount of people in clinics and hospitals is increasing rapidly. More factories are created and overproduce products that are not eaten or used. The air is not as fresh as it once use to be. We have failed as a society to have a healthy environment.
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