The environmental crisis is threatening humanity
Recently, while the radio announcer warned his listeners about environmental pollution, he said that the world needs people’s help. Undoubtedly, these words were said with good intentions to draw attention to environmental pollution. However, in the words “the world needs people’s help” expressed in the last part, I got the thought of how much people care about themselves.
Why? While the age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years, human beings have been on Earth for the last 200 thousand years. To put it simply; If we consider the age of the world as a 24-hour day, the existence of human beings corresponds to the last hour at the end of this day.
If an unpredictable cosmic event does not occur, the world will live 7 billion more. The one that will bring the end of the world is the Sun that gives life to it today! As the solar fuel decreases, it will start to grow, and after swallowing Mercury first, then Venus, it will be Earth’s turn.
Earth has gone through 5 known mass extinctions. The most well-known of these is the extinction of the dinosaurs with a meteor strike. After the extinction of the dinosaurs, the rise of mammals began. With the evolution of man from among mammals, the age of humans began. Unlike dinosaurs, which did not bring about their own demise, humans will bring their own demise. Human influence initiated the 6th mass extinction. Species are disappearing fast. Changing climatic conditions will eventually affect people as well.
As humans, we may think; If mankind somehow goes extinct, it will be the end of the world! Yes, it will be the end of the world for us, but there will be no end to life or the world. After human influence disappears, evolution will take control again, and this time new species will begin to dominate.
Since the first creation of the world, evolution has worked flawlessly, enabling living things to emerge for all conditions. Some living things perished under changing conditions, while others adapted to new conditions and continued for generations. But the key point here was how quickly conditions changed. The change that spread over a very long time allowed living things to adapt.
But mankind has changed the rules of the game. His insatiable appetite for comfort and consumption caused factories to produce continuously without interruption. But production requires resources. The source was our world. For the last 100 years, we have unconsciously exploited the planet we live on in order to produce more without thinking if there is any living creature on this earth other than us! As a result, living things have not had the opportunity to adapt to this rapid change we have brought about in the world.
We are currently facing a huge loss of biodiversity. Species are disappearing fast. It’s because of us, but unfortunately, we don’t even realize it.
In conclusion, what I want to say is: the world does not need our help! We urgently need to help ourselves. We must understand that every living thing on earth, including human beings, is interconnected. We may be overly confident in our minds, which distinguishes us from other creatures. Can we overcome all kinds of problems with our minds?
Didn’t the Covid-19 pandemic actually tell us how fragile we are in the face of nature? Didn’t a particle which is called the virus that we can’t see turn the whole world upside down? This pandemic was actually a reaction of nature to humans. This was just a warning for what might happen to us in the future.
Scientists have developed a vaccine in a short time. However, the rate of vaccination of more than 7 billion people will unfortunately not catch up with the rate of change of the virus and we will be faced with new variants of the virus. Of course, the technology we have will overcome this pandemic. But we must understand that this is just a warning.
How resilient can people be to environmental disasters? Global warming is the result of human activities. Global warming is an important cause of extreme climate events. While some places on earth are struggling with drought, some places will be devastated by floods. It is a fact that we are very vulnerable to the destructiveness of nature.
We need to listen to nature. If we can’t understand what nature tells us, we should listen to scientists. Not to save the world, but to save ourselves. Otherwise, this is not going to end well!