Global Warming and Environmental Issues - Part 1

With all the recent talk about global warming, are we becoming more environmental friendly?

Global warming. It's getting to us. We're all feeling it, worldwide. Taking measures to improve the quality of our planet is not an option anymore. It's become a necessity. Sadly, many people still believe that "nature will sort itself out" and tend to shirk on responsibilities to participate in improving the only planetary home we have for now. Many of us take for granted that the "next generations" will find the answers. This is unstable reasoning.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, it was estimated that the earth's population had more than doubled from three billion people (1950 census) to six billion by the year 2000 and will alarmingly reach seven billion people between the years 2010-2020. That is an extra one billion people in less than 15 years. (Note: Refer to the resource links listed with this article to view second-by-second fluctual changes in the World as well as the U.S. population).

When you come to slowly realize that we've reached a staggering statistic of close to 7 billion people on this earth, we all seriously need to take measures to modify the standards of our living in order to accomplish a recognizable future. (Here is a view of the world population clock: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html).

That's a lot of people needing air to breathe. What are we going to do when the quality of air begins to decline faster than what is normally needed? Let alone many other significant natural resources which we will be needing to keep ourselves away from total extinction. This is not an unrealistic thought. It's wise to be seeing what's taking place at this point in time. We need to seriously reflect on what will be in store for the future generations of incoming people, that will unfortunately have the tedious task of having to find solutions for severe environmental problems which have culminated due to nonchalant attitudes.

We have reminders every day of environmental problems or issues which need to be addressed. Such as sitting in a traffic jam, smelling the exhaust on a hot summer afternoon during rush hours after work, only to much later arrive home with a migraine. Or seeing and hearing planes departing and arriving on an average of every 10-15 minutes over our heads - for those of us living near huge airports. Leisurely walks through neighborhood parks can rob the peaceful ambience they rightfully deserve when trash and litter are skewed everywhere, if park maintenance is unkempt.

Watching rats around town and city trash bins can especially be disturbing events. As well as chemical smoke rising out of industrious factories way out in the distance, creating toxic residue in the very air we breathe, let alone settling on the very water we depend to survive upon.
We're all aware of what our oceans are being subjugated to, but it hits closer to home when we have to go buy extra Brita filters (famous for their water filtration of removing from tap water harmful substances) or bottled mineral water if we want to keep toxins out of our bloodstreams.

There are solutions to help maintain a cleaner environment. If adopted by large numbers of people, they will have an immeasurable effect for the whole of this planet. Each of us can and should do something, however minute the task at hand.

After all, it's the only world we have.

Sources:

U.S. Census Bureau
U.S. and World Population Clocks - POPClocks
U.S. POPClock Projection
Brita