Assalamu `alaykum all,
Here is a persuasive article I once wrote about why we should go green and become more environmentally-friendly people. Enjoy!
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If skyrocketing oil prices, the booming world population and the threat of global warming hasn't already grabbed your attention, this past summer’s record power demand and air-quality warnings certainly serves as a reminder that the world faces pressing questions about its climate and energy use. While "doing something for the environment" at one point meant tossing a newspaper in a recycling bin or buying organic lettuce, now encompasses nearly every aspect of daily life – from the toilets we flush to the flowers that decorate our dinner tables – all of this is being radically rethought. Entrepreneurs, scientists and thinkers are working to transform industry so that it functions more like nature, lessening pollution and inefficiency while propelling the economy forward. This is relevant to every single living being because we are all inhabitants of this Earth and we are obligated to take care of the place that we live in. After doing the required research, it has only made me more convinced that each and every one of us plays a major role in helping maintain a healthy and clean environment. For many people, this is a huge challenge because of the fact that our lives are routine, and we are used to doing certain things certain ways. But in order to make this as easy as possible for all of us, we are going to start off with small steps that make big differences. To fulfill this responsibility that we have upon the environment, we must consider three things: the effects that today’s practices have had on the environment, what you can do to have a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, and what will happen to the world if we continue living our lives the way we do.
First, we are going to discuss the effects that today’s practices have had on our environment. Immediately, when you here the phrase “Save the Environment,” you begin to think about something that everyone talks about nowadays, global warming. Now, I want to ask all of you one question: do you know what global warming is? It’s funny, because you’d think with all of this commotion around us that we’d know what global warming was, but according to a survey conducted by Kyle Western, a journalist for Men’s Health Magazine, only 44% of people believe that global warming is actually real AND shockingly, 20% are not even concerned about it. In reality, in a February 2007 United Nations report, 600 international scientists agreed that humans are actually exacerbating global warming. If any of you have seen An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary directed by Al Gore purely dedicated to the issue of global warming, Gore states carbon dioxide and other gases warm the surface of the planet naturally by trapping solar heat in the atmosphere. This is a good thing because it keeps our planet livable. However, by burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil and clearing forests we have dramatically increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere and temperatures are rising, as if we are living inside of a huge incubator. Some people attribute these phenomena to nature itself, but I have one question: is our planet betraying us or are we betraying our planet? Another huge effect of today’s practices on people’s lives is the number of deaths, in both humans and animals, attributed to poor environmental conditions. According to Dr. K. Emanuel, in the past 30 years, the number of 4 and 5 Hurricanes has almost doubled. It’s no wonder that we hear about hurricanes all the time, and scientists have attributed the occurrence of these natural disasters to global warming unfortunately. Because of the number of factories that exist, the number of cars on the road, and the power that we consume every day, the air pollution that has been created as a result has caused a high rise in the number of death due to respiratory problems. The Climate Institute has also stated that deadly diseases often associated with hot weather, like the West Nile virus, Cholera and Lyme disease, are spreading rapidly throughout North America and Europe because increased temperatures in these areas allow disease carriers like mosquitoes, ticks, and mice to thrive. Now that we’ve talked about the effects that today’s practices have had on our environment, we will talk about what you can do to have a more environmentally friendly lifestyle.
Secondly, becoming more environmentally friendly in our lives doesn't need to be a big transition; in fact the best habits are those which begin with small steps. We can first approach consumption, one of the best things we Americans do. For starters, according to Tim Ponce, owner of Geocities Rainforest Ring, one of the biggest problems is packaging. One of the things we throw away most often is the packaging of all the products we purchase. Think about the products we all buy. From snacks to CDs, many of these products contain several layers of packaging. Some have four or five layers, including several layers of plastic, far more than may be necessary. If your household is typical, about one-third of the packaging you buy will be thrown away immediately upon opening a package. To be more environmentally friendly, we can carefully inspect packaging, and purchase items that have minimal layers, as well buy those which have the recycled symbol on any cardboard parts. If it's necessary to buy overly-packaged products, placing a designated recycle bin at home can at least guarantee that what was unnecessary will be reused. For all that we throw, we also love to clean. That is, purchase cleaning products and other household chemicals. Conventional household cleaning products can be noxious, especially in confined spaces. But a few new brands such as Seventh Generation or Method Home are made with an ethical approach to living and cleaning in mind, including non-toxic ingredients, being cruelty-free, and biodegradable. These are available at large chain stores, such as Target, and not only obscure health-food shops. Another area in which most developed nations excel is energy production and consumption. Many times we forget that it's there or is necessary for our moment-to-moment living, but energy is required for everything we buy, use, eat, or power on. According to Kyle Western we could save 50 to 75 percent more energy while using computers by switching from a desktop to a laptop. Forty percent of all electricity that is used to power our electronic devices such as TV's and DVD players is wasted not while using the devices, but simply when they are plugged in and idle for hours on end. The best recommendation for appliances and electronics that require a plug is to connect them all to power strips and switching off the entire power strip at the end of the night, when no one is going to use any of them. Another easy-to-miss energy sucker is light bulbs where Western also reports that "normal" incandescent light bulbs exhaust almost 90 percent of their energy as heat. If every U.S. household switched to compact fluorescent bulbs we'd not only get more light per dollar spent, but also it would be like taking 2 million cars off the road. "Going green" has meant many changes in the way some colleges maintain their grounds, construct their buildings, perform their research and even teach their courses. According to Christine Frey of Seattle University's Reporter, in some cases, colleges are complying with government environmental and energy-consumption rules and saving money by conserving. This has resulted in the popularizing of campus-wide energy saving practices such as recycling programs, energy-efficient buildings and even creating compost for landscaping from scrap food. This was done by simply agitating the student body to create a large demand for these things to take place, which is something that is well within our own reach on this campus as well. Now that we’ve discussed what you can do to have a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, we will talk about what will happen to the world if we continue living our lives the way we do.
There is a big problem, whether we believe it's man-made or not, that needs a solution. If the harsh practices of today continue, we can expect catastrophic consequences to occur. We will first examine what will happen to the environment, including the very own cities that we live in. Though the causes of global warming are often disputed, most scientists agree change is under way, at least in the short frame of time that humans have been paying close attention. In terms of global average surface temperature, the four warmest years since the 1890s are 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004, and according to Gore, with 2005 as the hottest year ever recorded in history. The Washington Post reports that global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide. This would drown many metropolitan coastal areas such as the Florida peninsula, much of Manhattan as well as Shanghai, China. According to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment group, the Arctic Ocean is predicted to be ice-free by the summer of 2050. For some of us, that may be in our own lifetimes. Time Magazine writes that by that same year, it is predicted that over one million animal species may also be driven to extinction. Another result of such a continued warming would be an escalation in droughts and wildfires, as well as the intensification of heat waves.
Robert Roy Britt, a senior writer at Live Science, points out that if the earth's climate steadily gets warmer in the coming decades as many scientists have already predicted, heavy smog and extreme weather events could increase healthcare risks. The Midwest and the Northeast of the United States could see significantly more stagnation of air masses in the summer, this condition would allow pollution to linger and build, creating harmful low-level ozone as well as tiny particles that can damage the lungs. According to the World Health Organization, deaths from global warming alone will double in a matter of 25 years. The numbers will go from 150,000 deaths to a whopping 300,000 a year.
In conclusion, we have discussed three integral points in being able to fulfill our responsible to the Earth that we live in, namely, the effects that today’s practices have had on our environment, what you can do to have a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, and what the world will look like if we continue our lifestyles that way we do currently. Remember that each and every one of us can have a great impact on this ever-growing problem by just looking at the small things we do in our life. Even if sometimes it may be a little inconvenient to unplug our appliances every night before we go to sleep, or to recycle, it is a nice gesture. Here, I have a list of things that you can do in your own home to help our environment. These threats are real and all of us, ourselves, as well as our governments, should be preparing against other threats besides terrorists.
