Letter to Humanity, Essay Example

My name is Earth. You may know me by other names such as Mother Earth, Planet Earth, Third Rock from the Sun, but all of these names mean the same. You dedicate a day to me once a year where school children in first world countries plant pine trees in order to curtail the mass amount of destruction centuries of industrialization have wrought on me. I am writing a letter to the citizenry of the world: when you fail to rejuvenate me, and I fail to prosper when it comes to crops, water, seasons, then that surely will be the end of both of us I fear. I’m writing you this letter to give you some facts about me and about you. Let’s talk about what it means to live on me, what you’re doing right as a race of people and areas that you need to work on and of course my recourse of action to curtail the End of Times (hopefully it won’t get as dramatic as all that).

Firstly, lets address some problems because we have a lot of them: overpopulation, hunger, diversified food depletion, global climate change, species extinction, and of course holes in the atmosphere. I know that a lot of people are sticking with the “reuse, reduce, recycle” axiom and while does help, it helps only minimally. There are areas on Earth (me) that some generous people have dedicated as nature preserves, wildlife areas, national and state parks, but there needs to be more done. All of the plants and animals that are being protected in these parks are still susceptible to poaching, climate change, or any other human caused disaster, “Even if areas dedicated to conserving plants, animals, and other species that provide Earth’s life support system increased tenfold, it would not be enough without dealing with the big issues of the 21st century: population, overconsumption and inefficient resource use” (Leahy, Stephen. “Earth’s Systems in Rapid Decline”). In fact, the UN did a report (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report) wherein it was discovered that almost “two-thirds” of my “life-supporting ecosystems” (meaning things like clean water/air and global climate change) are “being degraded by unsustainable use (Handwerk “Earth’s Health in Sharp Decline, Massive Study Finds”). Everything on me is a circle. Rain falls from the sky, lands on the soil, is absorbed, evaporated, and then up it goes back into the sky to begin again. Any chemicals in any stage of this process are then transplanted back into the soil and water eventually. Conversation isn’t a quick band-aid for sustainability; it is something that must be worked at daily to achieve long-term goals and change. The UN’s report only emphasizes this.

We are also facing a disaster in which loss of biodiversity is coming to the forefront of my concerns. Here we go back to water, air, and food (you see how important these things are? Without any of them there would be no you), “The loss of biodiversity is a major issue because it is humanity’s only life-support system, delivering everything from food, to clean water and air, to recreation and tourism, to novel chemicals…Right now the dominant strategy to halt the loss of biodiversity is with protected areas. (Leahy, Stephen. “Earth’s Systems in Rapid Decline”). Protected areas however are still no guarded against pollution and sometimes companies win sanctions in which they are allowed to hew trees in a previously protected area and thus deforestation takes place. I’m sorry to say but you humans have caused most of this damage. I’m not here to point fingers but just to name facts and here are some great facts, “global per capita cropland today is little more than half of what it was in 1961” (Engelman ““Population and Sustainability”) – that’s half! America used to have 90% of its land dedicated to farming and now it only has 10% of that land dedicated to farming and most of it is soy, a nutrient that does not replenish the soil with needed minerals (Engelman ““Population and Sustainability”). Most of this has been rising in the last “half century” or so as population increase demands in increase in other things such as “food, fresh water, timber, fiber, and fuel” all of which take their toll on the environment, “The already grim situation may worsen dramatically during the first half of the 21st century, the report’s authors warn” (Handwerk “Earth’s Health in Sharp Decline, Massive Study Finds”).

This is what I say, as your Earth, if you’re already doing your part to pitch in, thank you! Now, get others to pitch in too. If you have a mother or father, then, convince them it’s the thing we all have to do in order to stick around as a race, or, at least, to have an Earth to live on. Don’t think too big on this one, if we focus our efforts locally, and each of us does our part, writes letters to important decision-makers on Capital Hill and tries to make a difference on a small scale in our neighborhood then we stand a chance of making a larger difference. “Humans today extract and use around 50% more natural resources than only 30 years ago, at about 60 billion tonnes of raw materials a year” (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report), now, I know that’s a big fact to take in, in fact, the report states that that number is equivalent to the “weight of around 41,000 Empire State Buildings” (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report). I think we change though, one Empire State Building at a time with the proper guidance, education, and local effort.

Works Cited

Engelman, Robert. “Population and Sustainability: Can We Avoid Limiting the Number Of People?” Scientific American. 17 May 2009. Web. 16 April 2014.

Handwerk, Brian. “Earth’s Health in Sharp Decline, Massive Study Finds.” National Geographic News. National Geographic. 31 March 2005. Web. 16 April 2014.

Leahy, Stephen. “Earth’s Systems in Rapid Decline.” AlJazeera. AlJazeera America. 3 August 2011. Web. 16 April 2014.

“Overconsumption? Our Use of the World’s Natural Resources.” Sustainable Europe Research Institute. Friends of the Earth Europe, n.d. Web. 16 April 2014.