World On Fire

I am 28 years old as of march this year. I remember being in the 3rd grade and learning about climate change. I also remember the many adults who would roll their eyes and tell me I didn't understand what I was talking about when I tried to explain what we were learning.

Since then it's only gotten worse and my passion for raising awareness while helping reduce the pollution and help make changes has only grown.

Two years ago I published this article.

It was one of the first steps I took to becoming a published writer.

Stuck in a dead end job that I despised , losing time with my family and hating waking up every morning to go do what I did I asked myself.

If you want to be a writer why aren't you?

The answer was just a bunch of hasty excuses.

" I didn't go to school for journalism , I don't have the experience to apply for a writer at a newspaper and why would anyone read my writing."

Truth be told . While I hope that people come to love and read my writing it doesn't matter. In fact none of those things matter. Writing makes me happy and it's the perfect way to speak up about issues surrounding us such as pollution. I didn't know if I'd be good at it but it made me happy.

This article from two years ago it's not the best. It has letters missing from the end's of words and run on sentence's but I like to think I've improved a lot from that.

I'm actually really excited to be working on this piece because its another environmental piece and its by far one of the things I am most passionate about.

Clean Air , Water , and Food .

These are the three basic necessities we need to live a healthy life.

That doesn't include shelter of course being the fourth which is just as important; however I will cover housing and shelter in a different article.

This article is just about the environment , those three basic necessities for life and speaking out where others aren't.

I also wrote about kids striking for climate change last year. Something that was quite the controversy.

Many kids ended up with In and Out of school suspension over the walkouts & strikes however I think we as adults missed the more important parts.

See teens , middle school students & young college students alike were forewarned of the consequences of participating in the strikes and walkouts.

Yet they still did it.

Why would they do that?

Easy. To get our attention . To get law makers attention.

To get their teachers attention. To turn our eyes away from our phones and our busy lives to see the damage we are causing everyday that they will someday be left to clean up and bear the consequences of our actions as well as our inactions.

See it wont be our kids who can't breathe because of the air quality- at least not while they are young, maybe when they are 30 or 40 and it will be their kids or their grand kids that get the worst of it.

This is one reason why I find Greta Thunberg to be both inspiring and honestly extremely admirable.

She has given up so much of her childhood to fight a fight that she shouldn't be concerned with. To raise awareness about a world that she and millions of other kids will have to grow up and live in. Even while she is ridiculed by Adults three times her age. She speaks out because someone needs to and its clear that us Adult's aren't cutting it or taking enough action.

See these are the issues that our congressmen and women and our world leaders should be finding solutions for and raising awareness about. Gretas speech at the 2018 United Nations Climate Conference which was held in Poland she made a point to call world leader out for causing problems for our future generations by not doing enough for climate change.

"Why should I be studying for a future that soon may be no more, when no one is doing anything to save that future?" - Greta Thunberg 2018.

The thing is though, shes not wrong. Neither were the thousands of students who participated and continue to participate in climate change strikes, walkouts and protests.

Slowly we are seeing things such as plastic bag and straw bans.

Hawaii was the first state to fully ban plastic bags at grocery stores. Which is honestly admirable and makes sense considering Hawaiian islands are surrounded by a ocean.

Speaking of the ocean its one of the most effected areas of our Earth. It's estimated that by 2050 , a mere 30 years from now there will be more plastic in them than fish. Now not only is that concerning but the coral reefs are experiencing complete bleaching for the first time, the acid and temperature levels continue to rise and because of temperatures changing due to climate change places like Alaska and the Arctic are experience record breaking temperatures in the 70s and 80s. Which is causing fish to die off and ice to break and melt. Which impacts sea levels and in turn effects land levels.

So as I'm already illustrating we are experiencing quite the domino effect.

Things are heating up, we are adding immense amounts of trash to our oceans and ice is melting causing sea levels to rise and our air is also being effected by high CO2 levels due to air pollution.

So much in fact that in 2019 our CO2 levels hit a high that we haven't seen in 3 million years.

Read that again to make sure you understand it.

Our CO2 levels are at the highest they've been at in 3 million years.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit 415.39 parts per million (ppm) over the weekend of May 14th 2019—this being the highest level seen in some 3 million years, before humans existed, according to scientists at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. CO2 levels are now rising 3 ppm each year, up from an average 2.5 ppm over the last decade, the scientists said.

Ralph Keeling, director of the Scripps CO2 Program, said in a statement. “This increase is just not sustainable in terms of energy use and in terms of what we are doing to the planet.”

CO2 levels were this high was during the Pliocene Epoch, 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago, when the Earth was several degrees warmer, sea levels were an estimated 50 feet higher than they are today, and forests grew as far north as the Arctic. “Earth was a very different place,” Rob Jackson, a professor of earth system science at Stanford University, who told NBC News. “You would hardly recognize the land surface, and my gosh, we don’t want to go there.”

So our air quality is going down hill and just in time for us to have our current administration decide to add a whopping 95 environmental law and protection acts to roll back.

Yes you're reading right.

Our president and the people below him are allowing and voting for the allowance of companies to be able to pollute our air even more.

If you'd like to read more on the 16 Air pollution and emissions rollbacks and the other 9 in progress you can go to this link to learn more.

So about those bag and straw bans . Do you think they help? If not then think again.

Approximately 500 million plastic straws are used in the US every day.

That would be about 182.5 billion straws a year.

A plastic straw weighs about 0.4 g.

Do the math and you'll arrive at about 73,000 metrics tons of plastic straws per year. Which does contribute to the amount of plastic within our oceans which is around 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes of plastic entering the ocean each year, according to figures published in the journal Science in 2015. Plastic can enter the ocean as large, identifiable items or as micro-plastics - pieces under five millimeters in length. Speaking of which did you know that alot of our towels and clothing include micro-plastics ? Even your toothpaste can have it in it.

Plastic bags you may ask? Well Americans alone use 100 billion plastic bags a year, which require 12 million barrels of oil to manufacture.

Shockingly it only takes about 14 plastic bags for the equivalent amount of the gas required to drive one mile. The average American family takes home almost 1,500 plastic shopping bags a year.

A noteable raise in awareness & wake up call came last year when Alison Teal, TV star and eco-adventurer filmmaker, recently traveled to Indonesia to work with the conservation group Orca365 and was stunned to see how the global plastic epidemic is impacting some of the world’s most naturally beautiful locales. She literally paddled through mounds of plastic and had bags stick to her face as she swam with sea life.

You can view her video here

As if that's not enough let's briefly revisit my very first story

"What's for dinner? Plastic! .

Yeah the fish that are surviving after ingesting the plastic within our oceans are having chemicals from it leech into their bodies & when they end up on our dinner plates. Guess what that means ?!

You guessed it and if you didn't I'm going to share.

You and your families are eating plastic too or at least you're absorbing the chemicals from it. Of course that's in addition to the plastic you're breathing and eating everyday already.

The Environmental Science & Technology Journal has found that Americans are consuming and breathing in a lot of plastic, the journal concluded that with the data available as of June 2019 we ingest an estimated 74,000 to 121,000 micro-plastic particles every year. That's not just scary , that's astronomical .

So why with all these statistics are Adults and our Law makers still rolling their eyes and ignoring the signs of our world on fire.

All three of our life necessities are being effected as I'm writing this. Sea levels are rising due to increasing temperatures. Air quality is worsening while the protections for it are being depleted and written away for big oil companies.

We are in a constant battle to keep our public parks and lands in the hands of the national forest service and our citizens and stop it from being sold off to be build into resorts or to be used for oil drilling.

See another thing that I remember from the third grade and of course I've researched it more since then is renewable and nonrenewable resources.

For those that aren't familiar nonrenewable resources are resources we use that can't be replenished quickly or at all. Renewable resources can be replaced in a timely manner. If taken care of properly.

For example in 2018 we as humans used a year's worth of resources in only 8 months. To make matters worse we are only using them faster.

Again though our world leaders aren't looking to stop this destruction. Instead they are looking to make it worse. How?

By selling off public and protected lands. It might sound like no big deal to some but I don't think many have actually considered the outcome that can happen if we allow things like this to advance further.

For example the current U.S administration has spent its time in office stripping protections from a staggering 13.5 million acres of American lands and waters. It's all apart of another piece written by By Jenny Rowland-Shea and Mary Ellen Kustin called the 13.5 million acre lie. You can read more of that article here below .

Another great example is this Revisions are being considered to what is known as the Roadless Rule, a conservation initiative of the Clinton administration. Around 58 million acres of road less land in the nation’s national forests, possibly eligible for wilderness designation someday, were protected from development under this rule so as not to spoil the wilderness qualities until a decision on long-term protection could be made. Included in that protection were 9.5 million acres of the Tongass National Forest, in southeastern Alaska, which is the nation’s largest national forest. But according to The Washington Post, Trump has instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to write new roadless rules that would eliminate the Clinton-era protections to allow logging, mining, and energy development.

To add to this destruction our administration is covertly and quietly leasing off public lands for oil and gas which is accelerating in popularity across the West. Companies are locking up tracts of federal land for 10 years while paying minimal fees.

“We’re going to have repercussions about these decisions for decades to come,” said Jayson O’Neill, of the Western Values Project, a conservation nonprofit focused on public lands.

A great blow to our environment came On Monday, December 4,when President Donald Trump signed proclamations eliminating protections for more than 2 million acres of Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The action, which puts wild red rock canyons; prized hunting and fishing areas; and tens of thousands of Native American archaeological sites at risk of destruction, was the largest elimination of protections for public lands in American history. Yet you didn't hear much about it in the media and that brings us back to why our kids and teens are skipping school to hold up signs and march for our environment and THEIR futures.

They aren't lying, they aren't crazy and they aren't spoiled kids. They are concerned , they are paying attention and yes they are a little angry, because they don't have the power to do anything right now and the people who do are abusing their power and using it in the wrong ways while creating issues that they won't see the consequences from.

Currently as of today March 14th 2020 these are the temperatures in Antarctica. 36 and 37 degrees isn't normal for these areas and in the summer of 2019 it reached all the way into the 70's. Making ice shelves crack and break off even faster. Left to float into the oceans and melt.

This isn't just effecting sea levels and land levels though. No this is effecting entire ecosystems. Entire species . Polar bears are starving off at a rapid rate. Their food sources scarce or nonexistent due to the weather changes and pollution levels. People feel threatened because they are coming into towns in search of food but what else are they suppose to do . we the humans are causing their suffering and we the humans are the only ones who can reverse the damages we've done and have been doing.

Speaking of the polar bears and their ice disappearing , have you ever heard of the albatross ? It's a seabird and they too are feeling the effects of humans and our waste. You see there's actually a island inhabited only by birds. This was something that I learned about in my senior year of high school so I'm sure it's only gotten worse and I know for sure that it is now effecting other animals including turtles , whales and other sea life. However these birds were killing their chicks and not intentionally . You see a animal rather its a bird or a turtle cant put something in its mouth and go "oh wait , this is plastic" No see when a turtle is under water its near impossible for it to tell a bag from a jellyfish and a bird can't tell a bottle cap ring from a bug or a cigarette butt from a beetle, especially when ; its all that they can find.

I encourage you to look up albatross island and if you don't and if the information in this article hasn't been enough yet then consider this.

Many whales washed ashore in 2019 , and so did dolphins and sea turtles. All of which had one thing in common. Their stomachs were full of plastic. A pregnant sperm whale washed up, dead, on a sandy beach outside Porto Cervo, a resort town on Italy’s island of Sardinia last week. When scientists and veterinarians cut open her womb and stomach, they found a horrifying sight: A dead baby whale, and nearly 50 pounds of plastic waste jammed into her belly. The plastic filled more than two thirds of her stomach. They could also see the remains of some of the squid she'd eaten—but the nutrients from that food likely never made it into her bloodstream, because her intestines were blocked by the morass of plastic waste.

Not only is this heartbreaking but its eye opening . It's why we as Adults need to pay more attention, do more research and speak out.

Speak up and out for ourselves , but more than that for our kids , for their kids , for the generations that will be here in 5 decades after we are gone and 5 decades after that. Instead of worrying about NASA finding the next earth why don't we worry about taking care of the one we have.

I have two kids. A girl who is 8 who loves animals and a boy who is turning 7 in a month he too loves animals and is a avid ocean lover. I don't want their only animal experiences to be when we visit the zoo. I don't want to see the day where I have to tell them that polar bears don't exist anymore. I don't want to be 90 years old and hear my daughter tell my grand-kids that they can't go to the beach that is in their books because its nothing but a plastic wasteland and toxic slush. I don't want to see the day where hikes and outdoor picnics are a thing of vintage past.

Where we as a country or a world have to wear masks or have oxygen supplements because our air quality has gotten so bad.

Just think . I haven't even touched fresh water pollution yet. I don't know if I will too much because its obvious that we are at a air climate and ocean crisis so it only stands to reason that our fresh water resources are at risk too. I will however touch on it a little bit.

It's 2020 and Flint Michigan still doesn't have clean water. That's a sad fact. However it puts in perspective that if the rest of the world had the same issue, we probably wouldn't get the help or response we need. I think people have forgotten that its We the people not I the government and have forgotten that we can speak out , demand change and write our own bills and laws to enact that change. It's not easy and it doesn't happen overnight but it can happen . Also voting for people who's plans include helping our environment vs damaging it more. That isn't the only water crisis in our world though.

Ever heard of Bellandur Lake ?

Bellandur Lake is a lake in India . A Lake that has been on fire more often than it hasn't.

Yes , literally - on fire.

The lake is a pollution pit more than it is a lake. The fires cause no structural damage and mostly subside after a few days. However sometimes they self ignite or can be ignited with as little as a cigarette butt.

Like many Indian cities,this city is choking from illegal construction, unregulated dumping, official mismanagement and mounting wastes with a continuously growing population.

Some have drawn comparisons to Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River, which was so thick with oil slicks and industrial pollution that it caught fire multiple times through the 1960s — and as a result, is credited with helping to inspire the U.S. environmental movement. India's regulatory agencies are weak and don't have much power or staff which makes it easy for polluters to take advantage. For the last four decades their citizens and children have paid the price. The annual appearance of the white foam is a symptom of the larger problem, activists say. Bellandur lies near the southern end of the chain of lakes and receives more than 130 million gallons per day of untreated or partially treated sewage from homes and industries across the city, far more than it can filter naturally. Scientists say the wastewater also contains detergents that are high in phosphorous, used by Indian manufacturers to soften hard water. That also contributes to the foam. The United States began restricting the use of phosphates in detergents in the 1970's after finding they were killing off aquatic life in the Great Lakes, but India has no such regulations.

Even though it's not quite the same this lake gives a great example on why the protections and laws that our current administration is quickly and as quietly as possible doing a way with isn't good and could lead very quickly to similar issues right here in the U.S

Oh and let's not forget the bees. Yeah that's a issue still too. See Europe quickly banned neonicotinoid based insecticides when it was found that it as well as glyphosate was a cause for our dying bee populations. Neonicotinoids are a group of insecticides used widely on farms and in urban landscapes. They are absorbed by plants and can be present in pollen and nectar, making them toxic to bees. Research published since then clearly shows how neonicotinoids are killing bees or changing their behaviors. However the U.S has continued to use them and has even rolled pesticide restrictions back even more. Bees are responsible for more than $20 billion to the value of U.S. crop production. This contribution, made by managed honey bees, comes in the form of increased yields and superior quality crops for growers and American consumers. Over half of your produce section is provided by honey bees.

See bees are actually really helpful. We need them to eat . Otherwise most of our grocery stores would be a empty abyss. if they die, we die. The bee deaths in 2018 got bad enough that almond orchards in California had to have bees and their hives trucked into their orchards from completely different states. I encourage everyone to plant bee friendly plants in their gardens this year and educate our kids on their important rolls in our ecosystem and lives.

So when young people like Greta Thunberg are telling us that the world is on fire.

They aren't being a dramatic child. They aren't looking for a way out of school and they aren't being "sheep"

Our world is melting .

Our weather patterns are changing and not for the better.

Our animal species are dying off at a unprecedented rate and our natural resources are being used , polluted and depleted in a manner that will leave nothing but a huge mess and a lot of suffering for our future generations. Ignoring it or being upset that changes such as bag and straw bans are a inconvenience for us today is nothing short of selfish and ignorant.

Which is exactly why we need more people speaking up and out about these issues and sharing ways to prevent them and help make our lives easier with alternatives.

Below you will find some useful resources in helping our planet and reducing pollution.

As always thank you for reading and shares are always appreciated !

Replace your straws cups and utensils when eating out with Mermaid Straw Use Lilwritinghood for 10% off

https://mermaidstraw.com/

Replace Saran and Plastic Wrap with BeesWax Paper

https://www.beeswrap.com/

Replace Ziploc bags and Throw aways with Lunchskins!

https://www.lunchskins.com/

https://www.lunchskins.com/products/recyclable-sealable-paper-sandwich-bags-50-ct-box-shark?gclid=CjwKCAjwgbLzBRBsEiwAXVIygO3ORTMecAMJE3KGQEi1W313dA-BZH78ZikZf3k2Echcug59xTOashoCw0MQAvD_BwE

Gatherings , picnics? Don't fret about all that plastic silverware . Eat it instead!

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bakeys-edible-cutlery-1.4763171

Learn More about Bees

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/buzz-about-colony-collapse-disorder?gclid=CjwKCAjwgbLzBRBsEiwAXVIygICAfbcLFn0Y-j8EhgMYuQOUBl-PtEZFlxMBsLyPWCslqrDR6wR-LhoCDuYQAvD_BwE

Learn more about Alison Teals Project https://www.theinertia.com/environment/alison-teal-paddling-through-a-sea-of-trash-is-a-powerful-message-on-plastic-pollution/

Albatross Island

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/albatross-island/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUM58LIU2Lo