I would like for you all to understand something very simple - We are killing the planet. It sounds harsh, I know, but it is the truth, we need to take into account what we are doing and how everything that is hurting the environment is in turn, hurting ourselves. I understand that people in the world think that “If I do this little thing, such as turn on my car, it shouldn’t make a big difference, cause its only one little car in the world of hundreds of thousands of cars.” But, if you thought that, how many others do you think would have thought that? Which leads to all of those other cars on the road you see everyday, and that is what leads to the pollution the cars bring into our world, If you understand this then i believe you should understand that we need to stop, why?, because we need to breath healthy air to live.
The pollution in the air today is not only making the average temperature of the world higher by about a degree, enough to make the most famous large glaciers to melt, it is also making our bodies weaker, the pollutants in the air are not meant to be in our lungs at such a large amount, the large amount of sulfur dioxide, carbon and carbon dioxide are hurting our bodies that can be permanent. Some of the pollutants make it harder for us to breath, which leads to the increase of cases of asthma in children today. Put up your hand if you have asthma, or if your child has asthma...now keep those hands up and look around you, you should know what it is like, having asthma, or having a child have asthma, and think about it, those people around you have to deal with it as well, they have the same problem as you or your child does.
Having lung problems, such as asthma, makes it hard for people to live a “normal” life, they have troubles doing to much exercise or their lungs will start reacting and it makes it hard for them to breath. Think of it this way, if you have ever been in a sauna, you should know how hard it is to breath, not think about it this way, how frustrated, or how hard do you think it would be, if you had to breath like that every time you exercise. We can limit the cases of asthma by helping decrease the pollutants. But how can we do that? How can we limit our pollution to make it healthier to us? Well there are many ways that we can decrease this, for one, we could use public transport to get to work or school, yes it may take a little longer and you will have to get up earlier, but you will be decreasing the amount of chemicals being released into the air, now look at this picture.
It shows us how many kilometers a liter of gas can take one person, in a car, next it shows us the equivalent amount of kilometers if we were to have 4 people in the car, next, in a bus, then in a train, now think about it, what would you rather do, deal with the time restraints? Or make the world an unhealthy place for all of us, yes it will be a little inconvenient for some of you and i do understand fully that the busses still produce gas emissions, but all in all, it will be less emissions then if you were to go on your own in your own car.
There are many ways to help save the world, many of you may think, well if it is so bad then how can we change it? How can we make this better if there is so much in the air already? How can we make it so all of those chemicals aren’t there anymore if they are trapped there? Well, there are other reasons for why there is so much more carbon and carbon dioxide in the air, the cutting down of trees. Trees and plants are one of the only natural systems the world has made to clean the air of carbon dioxide, for that is their air.
When we breath out we are breathing out something that is toxic to us, carbon dioxide, which is a molecule made of one carbon and two oxygen atoms. Plants although “breath out” the air we can breath, which is a mixture of different chemicals, which are, from highest amount to the least, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Helium, Argon, Carbon dioxide, neon, methane, krypton, and hydrogen. Now, what would you think if I told you, our air is composed mostly of nitrogen, not oxygen. Nitrogen makes 78% of the air, where as oxygen only makes about 21%. Now the healthy amount of carbon dioxide that should be in the air should only be 0.1%, or around 300 – 400 ppmv, which means Parts per Million by Volume.
The air quality in the world today is getting much worse than it was a few years ago, for right now there are higher levels of carbon dioxide in the air, which people are suspecting to the main problem with the worlds problem, Global Warming. Carbon Dioxide, and many other chemicals are creating what we call the Greenhouse gas effect, this is when the suns heat hits the earth, and when it bounces off the ground to leave back into space, a lot of it gets trapped because the chemicals are making it bounce back down towards the earth again, this is what is making the earth such a warm place as of late.
Everything that happens to the environment inevitably changes everything else too, from micro plankton to elephants. All animals have to adapt to different climates, including us. We can simple change our clothes, for if it’s too hot, we wear shorts and a tank top, but if it’s to cold, we bundle up in many layers, but other animals out there cannot simply put another layer on or off to protect them. Animals are finding small ways to adapt to their climate, such as elephants, they roll around in mud to keep themselves cool on a hot day, when the mud dries it creates a barrier so the sun doesn’t hit their skin directly. The dried mud also helps keep underneath the makeshift layer their body temperature, which will keep them cool.
Now, animals in the ocean don’t have even that much protection, they have to move somewhere else in the ocean if they need a cooler place to survive, or a warmer. There are many animals that were only known to live in certain environments, for instance the Greenland shark, they live up in the North Atlantic Ocean, but something has changed in their environment that has made them want to come into warmer waters. They have been spotted down around the Labrador coast, where the waters are warmer than normal. Now you have to wonder why? If they are so used to colder water? Well, maybe they aren’t used to colder water anymore, for there water could be warming up, becoming the same temperature of that of water closer to the equator.
Now you see, we are changing the world and how other animals need to adapt to the environment. Now lets look at the most popular example for global warming, the polar bears.
Everyone should know about what is happening to the polar bears, they are running out of land to live on, for their “land” is ice. Because of global warming the ice is melting, as everyone knows, but this is making it so the polar bears have to find somewhere else to live and they have to swim more then necessary. This is also a bad thing for them for they need somewhere to hunt for food, and as many people know they stand at the edge of the ice looking down into the water waiting for their food to come swimming by, then they pounce into the water to catch their food. Now, if they have nothing stable enough to stand on then they will not be able to watch then jump at their food, and I highly doubt any animal would swim close enough to the bear in the first place.
Now, if you look at this picture you can see how difficult it is for polar bears to find a stable ground to stand on, for on this glacier it would be very difficult to hunt for food, for they are not close enough to the water, why is that bad? Well the animals that are swimming will be able to see the polar bear before it hits the water so they have enough time to get away. Here are some more pictures that show how hard it is for these animals to live in their environment.
There are also many other things we have done to make the world a worse place to live for, lets say fish and birds. I say them both in the same sentence because they can be affected the same way. Fish can get contaminated due to chemicals that are released into the water, consider this, the chemical mercury has been found in higher doses in tuna, and we eat a lot of tuna us humans. So now consider the fact that if we eat a lot of tuna we are also consuming more mercury. There are many side effects of mercury poisoning and they can be quite dangerous, such as muscle weakness. Muscle weakness can be serious because our heart is a muscle, now if our heart is too weak we can have a heart attack. There are many other cases of mercury poisoning especially after one incident in Japan. There was a new company manufacturing chemicals, but they were putting a ton of waste in the near by lake, which was the source of water for the city, Minamata. This is where the name of this disease comes from, the Minamata disease, it is caused by mercury poisoning and half of the recorded cases have been reported as deaths. The other half has all had permanent symptoms such as narrowness of eyes sight, hearing loss, muscle weakness, etc. Now we have to think about this, the tuna in the ocean have more mercury in their systems because we, us humans, dump waste into the ocean, so we are the source, in almost every situation, where we get mercury poisoning and where man people die. Now, back to fish and birds, well, you probably all know that bird eat fish, not all birds but a lot, such as seagulls and pelicans. Now if birds eat these fish too, then the mercury would have the same effect on the birds, don’t you think?
I believe that the government and everyone in society are not taking global warming that seriously. People, I’m not going to specify who, are saying that global warming is a myth. They are saying that Co2 doesn’t have that big as an effect as people like me are saying; well we are looking at it from a scientific view. These kinds of people are saying that what we are doing has nothing to do with global warming; they are saying our efforts are being wasted. Now, why would I be telling you things that are going completely against what I’m fighting for? Well, I need everyone to know that I understand what others are saying about the world today, I am telling you that I am taking into consideration what everyone else is saying and what they think, I have read and listened to many other perspectives, but I still do not see enough “evidence” of what they are saying. I have actual scientific proof in graphs, surveys and the amount of people in the room who have asthma. There is evidence everywhere, you just have to look for it, and actually acknowledge that it is true, that this is a serious problem that is happening in the world today, it is taking an effect on us humans, animals and micro organisms, everything is in a chain, and everything is contaminated, because of what we have done to this world, I don’t believe, no, I know we cannot take away what we have done to the earth thus far, but we can certainly limit the amount that we produce now, we can lessen the amount of chemicals that we expose to the animals in the world, if only, if only people in the world today, really understood the effects of our daily activities.
I hope from this you are going to take into consideration everything that you, probably learned today, and I thank you very much for taking the time to listen to everything that I had to say, and I thank all of you who are going to recycle the program guide when you are leaving, for that is just one step, to a better life for all.