Earth has been changing since the beginning of time. The organisms that live on it and the climate that surrounds it have constantly evolved. However, in the past 200,000 years since human civilization has existed, the environment has changed more than ever. Humans created and continue to create new chemicals, machines, and technologies that harm Earth and its creatures. We expect Earth to adapt to our new alterations, as it has done in the past, but we are introducing foreign, vexing materials much faster than Earth can keep up. Humans and humans alone are responsible for the substantial amount of damage Earth is facing. The three most damaging things humans are doing to nature include emitting gases that cause climate change, releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment, and polluting the oceans with trash, oil, and noise. If we continue to treat nature as we have for 200,00 years, ignoring the damage that is being done, Earth will soon tire out. When it does, what will be left for us?

The first example of humans’ negative effect on Earth is found in the air all around us—climate change. Earth has always gone through cyclic global warming and cooling periods. This is the argument that people use to shade themselves from the truth. In recent years, however, scientist discovered a pattern to the past climate changes. The current warming period is happening around ten times faster than previous climate changes and does not fit in the pattern (“Climate Change: How Do We Know?”). The warming of the Earth is caused by the emission of gases that are creating a greenhouse layer around our planet. These toxic gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases. Carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere through “the burning of fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil), solid waste, trees and wood products.”  Methane is “emitted during the production and transport of coal, natural gas, and oil.” Methane is also emitted from the waste of livestock, especially cows, and by the decay of organic waste in landfills. Nitrous oxide is released from agricultural and industrial activities and the combustion of fossil fuels and waste. Finally, fluorinated gases like hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride, and nitrogen trifluoride are powerful, synthetic gases that are released from a variety of industrial processes (“Overview of Greenhouse Gases”). The greenhouse layer produced by these gases, weakens the atmosphere and allows the Sun’s powerful rays to warm the planet. A warmed Earth causes horrible occurrences such as droughts, dangerous storms, and the melting of glaciers.

Climate changes takes the biggest toll on glaciers. The magnitude the melting of glaciers has on the world is unprecedented. Glaciers are the most visible manifestation of climate change on the planet. In the documentary, Chasing Ice, environmental photographer James Balog attempts to capture the changing glaciers by using time-lapse cameras. In this quote, he explains how he came to photographing ice: “I did a couple years of research on the climate change story, trying to find what you could photograph about climate change that would make interesting photographs. I eventually realized that the only thing that, to me, sounded right was ice” (Orlowski, 2012). Balog created a program called Extreme Ice Survey or EIS that placed twelve cameras in Greenland, five in Alaska, and two in Montana. These cameras took millions of pictures over the course of several years. The pictures were then compiled into time-lapse videos that displayed the drastic changes of the glaciers. Extreme Ice Survey’s goal is to bring “tangible, visual evidence of the immediacy of climate change itself” (Orlowski, 2012). 

Glaciers are like big vaults, holding information from the past. Paleoclimatologists, scientists who study past climate, and glaciologists, scientists who study glaciers, work together to study the changing glaciers. They “use core samples of ice retrieved from glaciers to study the annual accumulation patterns over thousands of years. Air bubbles trapped in the ice and other clues, such as dust particles, can help us reconstruct the past climate” (Balog, What story does ice tell?, 2014). Bubbles contain gases from years past that scientists use to find out what the temperature was like many years ago. What they have discovered is that in “the past 200 years, human activity has increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 40 percent” (Center, n.d.). The carbon dioxide is causing glaciers to melt at speeds must faster than ever before. The difference only a few years has on the glaciers in breathtaking. Some glaciers have shrunk in heights as tall as the Empire State building and in widths miles long (Orlowski, 2012). 

When glaciers melt, thousands of gallons of water flow out. The gushing water forms glacial rivers that flow out into the ocean. This causes ocean levels to rise. Evidence of flooding can be found in the Nile River and in the Ganges River. Flooding caused by glacier melt has killed many people and displaced thousands more (Hodgkins, 2017). The only way to stop glacier melt is to drastically reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we are releasing into the air. This can be done by carpooling and using alternative energy sources like solar and wind. 

I experienced the magnitude of glacier melt first hand while on a month long backpacking trip in the Talkeetna Mountains of Alaska. My group and I were attempting to cross the rushing Talkeetna River which is fed by the ancient Talkeetna Glacier. The river gets very deep, wide, and swift farther from the glacier, and is at its mildest at the toe of the glacier. The group decided to hike to the glacier to insure safety crossing the river. According to the maps, the glacier was only two miles up-river, but the maps were made in the 1950s. We began our trek and were appalled to discover that the glacier was now seven miles shorter than it was in the 1950s. The next day, after finally reaching the Talkeetna Glacier safely, we began a hike to another glacier, and saw that it too had receded miles. Catherine Rocchi, a friend of mine on the expedition, wrote about our glacier experience:

The rivers are rising. We had to trek all the way to a glacier twice in the last two days because the water they feed are simply too violent where the hiker had crossed last year. The rivers are rising but the ice is receding, and one day the last little chunk of Alaska’s Holocene will melt and there won’t be any river at all—just an empty streambed and purple fireweed building a pretty scab over the gaping wound we left.

This poetic quote rung true to me and sparked my interest in preventing climate change and protecting the environment. Hopefully, it will do the same to you.

Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, highlights the second way humans are damaging nature—by using agricultural chemicals, or pesticides. Although Silent Spring was written in 1962 and its facts are no longer accurate and up to date, its material, thesis, and conclusion are still relevant in 2017. Carson is often referenced in environmental discussion, and Silent Spring is considered the book that kick-started the Environmental Movement. This novel has several anecdotes that still apply to today’s world. Pesticides are used to protect crops from the harm of insects. However, much to the users’ surprise, pesticides “have been found in fish in remote mountain lakes, in earthworms burrowing in soil, in the eggs of birds—and in man himself,” nowhere close to where the chemicals were first released (Carson, 1962). This proves that when pesticides were first created, their makers did not predict the harm they would have. Nowadays, pesticides are considered “elixirs of death” because of their harmful effects. They cause chronic poisoning and impede essential heart enzymes, disintegrate liver cells, and instill carcinogens in mammals, including humans (Carson, 1962). Nonetheless, they are still used in the agriculture industry and ingested by humans and animals every day. 

Pesticides are categorized into two large groups. The first group, chlorinated hydrocarbons, contain chemicals like DDT and chlordane. DDT, or dichloro-diphenyl-trichloror-ethane, was first used in World War II as an agent of chemical warfare. Now, however, it can be found in organisms all around the world. When the body ingests DDT, it is stored in fat cells that innately multiply the chemical. Furthermore, DDT and other pesticides are very slowly excreted from the body (Carson, 1962). Chronic poisoning is a huge threat because of this. DDT is omnipresent because it is passed through the food chain. For example, when a chicken eats contaminated alfalfa, its eggs are then contaminated and distributed to people all around the world. The harm DDT has on animals was seen in my hometown, Williamsburg, VA, when it nearly wiped out the once bountiful bald eagle population on the James River. In 1995, an Allied Chemical Company factory in Hopewell, Virginia illegally released a chemical called Kepone into the James Ricer as chemical waste. Kepone contains dangerous levels of DDT that were ingested by fish in the river. Bald eagles then ate the fish and were contaminated by the chemical. The DDT made eagle egg shells brittle and caused reproductive failure in the United States’ National Bird. Thankfully, Kepone has since been banned. In 2014, there were 220 breeding pairs on the James River and our National Brid as almost made a full recovery. (Foster, 2005) (Dietrich, 2014). 

The second pesticide category is known as organic phosphorous insecticides, also known as organophosphate compounds. Organophosphate compounds include malathion, parathion, diazinon, fenthion, dichlorovos, chlorpyrifos, and ethion. Organophosphates can be used as nerve gases, ophthalmic agents, and anthelminitics as well. Organophosphates have been used as deadly weapons in several cases such as the Jamaican ginger palsy incident in 1930, the Aum Shinkrikyo incident on a Tokyo subway in 1995, and the Magrawa, India incident in 2005. Exposure to organophosphate pesticides has been connected to neuropsychological problems in farm workers (Kenneth D Katz, 2016). These do not only have to be ingested to cause harm. They can be absorbed through the skin or inhaled through the mouth or nose, which makes it extremely difficult to control (Carson, 1962).

Despite so many horrible occurrences that have been directly linked to pesticides, either chlorinated hydrocarbons or organophosphate compounds, more and more deadly synthetic chemicals are created every day. In fact, in 1947, “the production of synthetic pesticides in the United States soared from 124,159,000 pounds…to 637,666,000 pounds in 1960—more than a fivefold increase” (Carson, 1962). Nowadays, 948,000,000 pounds of toxic chemicals are intentionally introduced to our food every year (Tupper, 2011). The pesticide business is worth billions of dollars, and the greedy, capitalistic companies involved are making their dirty corporate money off of our polluted health.

In Silent Spring, Carson not only condemns the pesticides, but also the humans who created them. She explains how humans have begun to think of nature as something that belongs to them, instead of something that was created to live and thrive alongside them.

The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that the nature exists for the convenience of man…It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth. (Carson, 1962)

The substantial amount of damage Earth is facing has been brought on by the ignorance and greed of humans. While many people do care about our planet’s well-being and are taking measures to save it, others are simply ignoring the detrimental crisis Earth is facing. The lack of care some in our current generations have for Earth’s health is frightening. The only solution to the pesticide crisis is to ban the use of them. To support this, buy from organic farms that do not use harmful pesticides.

The final example of humans’ negative effect on nature is found in the Earth’s five oceans; the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Southern, and Arctic. They cover 71 percent of the world’s surface, contain over one million known and probably nine million unknown species, and are polluted with billions of pieces of trash, oil, and chemicals (Rinkesh, 2016). National Geographic explains that, “The oceans are so vast and deep that until fairly recently, it was widely assumed that no matter how much trash and chemicals humans dumped into them, the effects would be negligible. Proponents of dumping in the oceans even had a catchphrase: ‘The solution to pollution is dilution’” (Pristine Seas Marine Pollution, n.d.). Evidence shows that oceans have been polluted by humans since the Roman Ages, but the extent of pollution has increased greatly in the past few centuries because of industrialization (Pristine Seas Marine Pollution, n.d.). Pollutants are ingested by organisms in the oceans and then eaten by humans, who are then contaminated. 

The pollutants that are most present in the oceans are pesticides, chemical fertilizers, detergents, oil, sewage, plastics, and other solids (Pristine Seas Marine Pollution, n.d.). Noise pollution is also a concern. Sound waves from ships, sonar machinery, and oil rigs travel for miles in water and can impede the communication between dolphins and whales (Pristine Seas Marine Pollution, n.d.). Oil spills, such as the Gulf of Mexico spill in 2010, are so damaging to the ocean’s wildlife and are completely caused by humans. The Gulf of Mexico spill released at least 3.19 million barrels, or 130 million gallons, of oil into the water. The marine animals which called the Gulf home suffered greatly from the spill. Examples include, “pelicans black with oil, fish belly-up in brown sludge, smothered turtles washed up on beaches,” (Team, n.d.). In addition to noise pollution and oil spills, billions of pounds of plastic waste have been and are being dumped into the oceans. “In the Los Angeles area alone, 10 metric tons of plastic fragment—like grocery bags, straws and soda bottles—are carried into the Pacific Ocean every day,” says The Center for Biological Diversity. Marine wildlife like sea turtles and seals ingest or get entangled in the plastic and die. The “plastic can be found in swirling convergences making up about 40 percent of the world’s ocean surfaces” (Diversity, n.d.). One of the ways to reduce the harm done to the oceans is to reduce the amount of trash being produced. Using reusable water bottles or bags instead of plastic ones, air-drying machines instead of paper towels, carpooling or biking instead of driving, are all ways of reducing pollution. The Earth’s oceans are an essential component to the rest of the world. Life relies on the oceans to survive. The oceans are in serious danger, and so is the human race if ocean pollution doesn’t end now.

Humans’ have left a permanent wound on Earth, one that is not healing anytime soon. If we continue to pollute the Earth with pesticides, trash, and noise, and emit greenhouse gases bringing upon a sped-up climate change, it will soon be past the point of no return. As of now, Earth is our only home, and we are deliberately destroying it. The evidence is indisputable, and yet politicians and world leader write the harm that is being done of as a hoax. This is no hoax. It is a race against time to reverse the damages that have been inflicted. Saving Earth is the only option.
