Mehmet Murat once said that “the more we pollute the earth, the less we deserve to live on it.” I
always connect his quote with Amit Ray’s saying that “caring a tree is caring for your soul.”
Everyone here must have heard of the call for everyone to conserve the environment, but only a
few might have asked themselves what has went wrong about the environment that it needs
conservation or why we have to do it. This is question I want to answer and bring to you
attention about what has happened to the environment and why it needs our care.
What are we doing wrong? The issues behind destruction of our environment are concerned with
industrial pollution, farming, mining and putting species in habitats where they were not there
before. The consequence of these actions is the increasing of populations without clean water
and inadequate sanitation, increasing incidences of sicknesses resulting from breathing polluted
and dangerous air, decrease of farm produce among poor farmers due to inadequate rainfall and
deteriorating soil nutrients and increase of populations in verge of famine. The consequences of
trying to fool Mother Nature are slowly coming back to haunt us and from that, we learn the
following lessons on the importance of taking care of the environment.
First, a clean environment is indispensable for a healthy living. If the environment is not taken
care of, it will become polluted with toxins and contaminants that will affect our health and
cause sicknesses like asthma, bronchitis, neurological disorders, reproductive problems and
premature mortality, among others. As Aboriginal activist and poet, Bobby McLeod said, “when
the earth is sick and polluted, human health is impossible.”
You are here today at the mercy of those who lived before us and unless you have superpowers,
you will not live forever, but will leave this world to others as our forefathers did. The question,
however, is what type of world you will leave to those who will come after you? If the
forefathers polluted and left the environment world inhabitable, would you be here today? Your
future generations will suffer from the problems that we create today so make a sacrifice and
leave a good place for your grandchildren.
There are those that say that climate change is a hoax and global warming is a conspiracy theory
based on manipulated data. Implementing changes to conserve the environment is, thus, a deal
that will punish the people rather than benefit them. How is that true?
If you have been observant and following the news, the world is experiencing a change in
average temperatures that result to change of weather patterns, deadly storms and worst wildfires
in some areas. Can we say that global warming and climate change is not real with such
occurrences? Wait until these catastrophes hit us and that is when we will realize the danger of
releasing greenhouse gases. The 12 hottest years in history have been recorded in the last 15
years and this is not a coincidence. It is time we agree with the judgment of science and correct
our actions before it is too late.
As I conclude, fact has it that, out of all the millions of planets floating on the space, it is only the
earth that can support life. The earth is our everything so we better be aware of that and take care
of it. If it becomes uninhabitable, we will have nowhere to run to. While there are so many ways
to take care of the environment, the three simple ways that can go a long way in conservation are
the three R’s – reduce, reuse and recycle. Be a responsible citizen and conserve the environment.