Environmental Argumentative Post

Environmental Argumentative Post

        "With population and consumption continuing to grow, the per-capita resources left to be harvested are shrinking. The long term prospects are not promising"(Wilson).

        As time has gone on and society has progressed, man's relationship with nature has grown to be increasingly volatile. Humans have taken for granted the resources that the natural environment has supplied them with, and have used the finite resources in excess to supply selfish greed. The roots of the problem lay within the desire to progress and the inability to understand how important it is to progress with the environment, not despite it. This understanding of how humans degrade the environment and how that degradation is going to be felt in the future is represented in Edward O. Wilson's text, The Future of Life, and is an accurate discussion of human's corruption.  

        Primarily, Wilson's articulation of how the growing population is draining the earth of it's scarce resources is a precise depiction of humans impact. Today, the earths population of over 7 billion is putting immense pressure on earth's natural resources. As more people are born, more and more resources are required to supply the increasing demand, however, earths resources are not finite, so the supply continuously decreases, and in turn causes serious damage such as causing individuals to live within impoverished conditions. The magnitude of the effects of overpopulation on poverty are easily comprehended when viewing the income differential of the fifth of the worlds richest and poorest countries over 35 years, which was 30 to 1 in 1960, 60 to 1 in 1990, and 74 to 1 in 1995(Wilson). The the growing disparity between the poor and the rich is very alarming and is an indicator that world issues will continue to worsen. And although arguments may be made that correlation does not equal causation, this is critical evidence that demands that further analysis must be done to correctly understand how and how seriously humans impact the earth. Therefore, the ever-growing population of humans is causing the finite resources of earth to vanish and the effects are being felt now and will only strengthen as time goes on.

        It is imperative that humans begin to make changes and serious efforts to change their impact on the environment or the rate at which earths resources are shrinking will become too rapid to overturn. The time to realize that people are indeed damaging the environment is over,  change must be made now or the fate that humans have brought unto themselves will come into fruition and sustainable changes will no longer be an option. In an effort to save the planet, and therefore save themselves, humans must address their population and the effects of their population size.