What on earth are we doing?! (pun intended)

Many scientists consider humans as the most invasive species, as humans can greatly change an environment and impact living things that reside there. Are we being stewards of the world? Take a look at an issue in which human intervention has positively or negatively affected the biodiversity of our ecosystems.

With this in mind, are humans stewards of the world?

To help us understand the discussion more effectively, we can define the word “steward” as “a person morally responsible for the careful use of money, time, talents, or other resources, esp. with respect to the principles or needs of a community or group”. With more regards to the environment and in simpler terms for anyone lacking the effort to comprehend the definition, a steward of the world is ideally someone who is aware of the ecological needs of all natural environments and respects this by taking responsibility of the well-being of the earth. Taking this into consideration, humans are DEFINITELY no where close to being stewards of the world.

Since time, humans have been invading the earth’s natural environments causing a variety of ecological alterations such as shrinking glaciers, permafrost melting and more commonly known, global warming. Individually, this might not seem like as big of a deal as it is to many, but these alterations begin to have even more of an effect on the environment that isn’t as easy to recognize. For example, plants are blooming prematurely across Europe, lakes are declining in Africa, flowers are blooming earlier in spring, and birds are arriving earlier during migration periods according to a NASA study. Even though these changes will not necessarily be noticed by the untrained/naked eye, they are significant changes that prove how irresponsible humans are acting, by showing little to no regard about the effects of our actions and how the world we live in is suffering.

I have to admit though, that even though humans are tearing apart the environment, and taking away from the natural-ness of it all (paying no regards to my made up word), it isn’t completely horrible. Many great inventions and discoveries have come from humans due their invasion on the environment. Take transportation for example. If our actions were strictly environmentally based, cars and other vehicles would never have been invented making everyday transportation a lot of effort and even the closest of places a journey, and transportation to different countries wouldn’t be possible without the help of air-polluting airplanes and water-polluting boats making vacationing close to impossible. This proves how humans have been sacrificing the wellbeing of the environment for better living conditions, so that humans may live luxurious lives.

More recently however, societies have been making a greater attempt to slow down the effects that human invasion has had on the environment. Hybrid cars are in the process of being more recognized and used to decrease the amount of pollution entering the atmosphere, public transit, carpooling and high occupancy vehicle lanes are being promoted as environmentally friendly alternatives to everyday life. Cities are implementing recycling and composing programs so that our wastes do not fill up land fills and we can reuse reuseable materials ironic huh?. The city of Toronto and more recently even the city of Markham if I am not mistaken, correct me if I’m wrong has even began charging $0.05 for the purchase of a plastic bag to promote reusing bags. This effort made by humans to slow down because the effects cannot be reversed the effects of human invasion have not gone unnoticed, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that humans are about 99% (in my opinion at least) at fault for letting the environment get to the state that it currently is in. Trying to not sound bitter, I don’t want to say that this current effort is “too little, too late”, but in all honesty it is no where close to making up for even half of the damage already caused to the earth. I think that I can speak on behalf of a vast majority of humans with the idea that we are sacrificing the well-being of the environment for our own personal satisfaction please correct me if I’m wrong. We are completely disregarding the needs of and cries of help from our ecosystems because we continue to alter the environment to better everyday living.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, humans are by far the most invasive species because we are invading our ecosystems and refusing to take responsibility of our actions (until more recently) by altering the world and not catering to the needs of the biodiversity in ecosystems. Yes, for the most part the changes made by humans are significantly beneficial to everyday life but at what cost? We have to become a lot less selfish in the sense that we need to understand what we are doing to the environment, and take into consideration the needs of the environment instead of continuously looking toward how to better the living for humans. As a species, we are no where close to becomming stewards of the world, and we have a loooooong way to go before we learn to put the needs of the plant ahead of our own.

hope you enjoy. COMMENT PLEASEEE! :)


THANKS TOO:

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/human-intervention-alters-natural-systems-nasa-study_10048999.html
http://www.yourdictionary.com/steward
http://moneyning.com/life-style/reduce-reuse-recycle-and-how-it-helped-with-my-personal-finance/
http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/s/stop_global_warming.asp
http://www.physorg.com/news10031.html