The Environment Is Going To Hell Essay, Research Paper

The Environment Is Going To Hell

This is the litany: Our resources are running out. The air is bad, the water

worse. The planet’s specis are dying off-more exactly, we’re killing them -at

the staggering rate of 100,000 per year, a figure that works out to almost 2000

species per weak, 300 per day, 10 per hour, another dead species every 6 minutes.

We’re trashing the planet, washing away the topsoil, paving over our farmlands,

systematically deforesting our wildernesses, decimating the biota, and

ultimately killing ourselves.

The world is getting progressively poorer, and it’s all because of populating,

or more precisely, over-population. There’s a finite store of resources on our

pale blue dot, spaceship Earth, our small and fragile tiny planet, and we’re

fast apporaching it’s ultimate carrying capacity. The limits to growth are

finally upon us, and we’re living on borrowed time. The laws of population

growth are inexorable, Unless we act decisively, the final result is written in

stone: mass poverty, famine, starvation, and death.Time is short, and we have to

act now. That’s the standard adn canonical litany. It’s been drilled into our

heads so far and so focefuly that to hear it yet once more is … well, it’s

almost reasuring. It’s comforting, oddly consoling- at least we’re face to face

with the enemies: consumption, population, mindless growth. And we know the

solution: cut back, contract, make do with less. “Live simply so that others may

simply live.”

There’s just one problem with The Litany, just one slight little wee

imperfection: every item in that dim and dreary recititaion, each and every last

claim, is false. Incorrect. At variance with the truth. Not the way it is, folks.

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