Birth and death are the main concepts of the beginnings and ends of every organism on Earth. Life started billions of years ago before we came to be. Once our kind was born, our brains developed much faster than other animals; thus, we evolved from our environment quicker and became very adaptable to every one of the five biomes.  We grew, spread, and conquered every part of the world. 

Today, our brains have developed so much that we can solve problems that we once had trouble with, but this created more problems with those solutions. Thus, populations of organisms have declined over the decades. Except for the human race, which has been growing, according to the United Nations, we have recently hit eight billion people on Earth. Nevertheless, one of the causes of this decline in the population of so many organisms is human pollution. We throw away our garbage and don’t think about it. We produce methane and carbon dioxide and don’t think about it. Every action we do daily and do not think about impacts our environment. 

Everybody produces trash. Every time we eat something, we also throw its packages away. These packages are not recyclable, and they end up being in landfills. However, the journey of these packages continues. They either get blown away or just stay there for decades. Either way, it pollutes the environment and harms many creatures and their habitat. If these packages get blown away, they end up in an ecosystem where animals might think it is food and will eat them. Thus, they swallow them and most likely die from it. On the other side, if the packages stay in the landfills, they produce a toxic liquid that spreads through the soil and may end up in clean water.

Another way we create garbage is through food waste; if a person doesn’t like the food, they are too full, or it is just spoiled, they throw it away. I’ve seen so many people eat food and just throw it away; every time I watch, I wonder how many countries dealing with famine can benefit from it. People need to buy less food so they can finish it. To continue, if you know that a food item has been there for a while, you should prioritize eating it before it spoils or giving it to someone in need. If you do not like the food, give it to someone that will eat it and enjoy it: some people’s junk is someone else’s treasure. 

Our globe is warming up and has increased over the years as we produce more carbon dioxide and methane gas. Based on the pie chart given by Hannah Ritchie, 24.2% comes from the energy we need in industries, 16.2% from transportation, 17.5% from energy use in buildings, etc. In addition, deforestation has not helped the cause; as trees get taken down, they release all the carbon dioxide in the tree. The other factor to global warming, methane gas, is produced by livestock: “…livestock [mostly cattle] produce 7.1 gigatons of CO2-equiv per year of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, which is 14.5 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions….”

The consequences of global warming have caused much damage to many people and millions of dollars to countries. Around the world, states will get warmer, which changes the weather patterns. Thus, some places will get dryer, and others will flood. For example, weather events, like storms, can flood towns, cities, and significant land, just like in the movie Spirited Away and the monsoons in India. These weather changes will also impact our agriculture, and floods will destroy crops. Dryer land will cause wildfires and cause people to evacuate their homes. 

Our environment is very fragile and unique to our solar system. However, this scarcity of life will only last if we change our current habits. It helped our race to evolve and make us what we are now. Helping it would just give back what it gave us because, without the help of the environment, our race might not survive. “…I think how much I have seen disappear in my own life [and wonder] what will there be for this person when…[they turn]… my age?”