Serious Environmental Issues: Solving Our Planetary Predicament

article image
Photo by Fotolia/chas53
Embracing sustainable agricultural practices would not only greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but it would also restore soil fertility, advance the humane treatment of livestock, and improve the nutritional content of our food.

While today’s unsustainable farming systems may be achieving record grain production, they deplete soil fertility and rely on pesticides that harm our health and result in synthetic fertilizer runoff that’s killing broad swaths of the oceans and contaminating our water.

Human mismanagement has turned millions of acres of land into desert. Expansion and development are destroying vital ecosystems and putting thousands of species at risk of extinction. Today’s oceans contain only about half as many fish as in 1970, according to a detailed report from the World Wildlife Fund.

Controversial fracking activities temporarily give us lower gas prices, but also disrupt communities, poison our air and water, and even cause earthquakes.

Perhaps most critically, climate change caused by our release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases — fueled by our ever-growing population — is melting the Arctic ice cap and increasing the severity of storms and droughts. Millions of refugees will be forced to flee from coastal cities as sea levels continue to rise. Did you know that before civil war broke out, almost 1.5 million Syrian farmers and herders were pushed to the cities as a result of the country’s worst drought in modern history?

And, if all of this fails to inspire public support for strong measures to protect our planet and curb greenhouse gas emissions, a new study projects that the warming of the oceans could disrupt phytoplankton’s photosynthesis. These single-celled organisms produce about two-thirds of the oxygen we breathe. Researchers at the University of Leicester in England warn that, if their model is correct, this ocean warming and resulting global depletion of atmospheric oxygen may result in “mass mortality of animals and humans.”

  • Published on Jan 7, 2016
Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368