Pollution and Solutions

Pollution+and+Solutions

Sean Forte Richard (9th), Editor

I know everybody probably knows what pollution is and that it is doing harm to the planet we live on, but do you know exactly how much damage it is doing and how to fix that problem? I will begin with how humans cause pollution with daily activities that we do, things that we do to cause this consists of driving in a car, burning fossil fuels,electricity, heat, burning coal, building houses, cement production, deforestation, and other landscape changes like making new highways or bridges. Now everytime you go into a car or turn on the heater in your house just realize how much damage you are doing to the environment.

 

The pollution that people have caused over a year is a whopping thirty-five billion metric tons per year. This problem is not getting better, because it is actually steadily increasing by 5.5 percent each year. In later years, scientists predict that the concentration of GHGs could reach 685 parts per million and that there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. It is because of this air pollution that 7 million people have died per year, that is why, along with other reasons, there has to be a solution for this crisis.

 

Luckily for us there are multiple ways for us to greatly reduce the amount of pollution on Earth. Some ways that we can do this is by reducing energy consumption, choosing sustainable products, and eliminating the use of fossil fuels. Reducing energy consumption helps because it reduces air pollution, which poses a huge risk to human health. Using sustainable products is important because it can reduce the amount of pollution that goes into the air by just simply replacing energy-hungry incandescent lights with compact fluorescent light bulbs. Another solution is that industries and businesses need to stop burning fossil fuels. People in those places can replace them with solar, wind and geothermal energy.

 

I talked to my friend James about how he feels about air pollution and he said, ‘’We need to stop it. He also said “we got to do something about it and not just ignore it.” The last thing that he got to share with me is that “with us being the new generation and having new technologies we can end this for sure.”

 

I asked my friend Lester about what he thinks about air pollution and he said, “that it is affecting our world by slowly destroying it. He continued to say,”it would really help if we would use bikes instead of cars if you don’t want to walk to go places.”