The Decline of Biodiversity: The Humanity Effect

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In the early mornings, animals of all different species can be seen roaming around any normal suburban back yard. The common animals that can be observed are rabbits, squirrels, birds and many more. What if those animals slowly started to disappear never to be seen again? This is the sad truth that is starting to unfold on planet earth. Earth is currently undergoing one of the largest mass extinctions in the history books. Why is this not being placed on the front page of every newspaper? The answer to that question is time. Humans do not take as much notice of things that happen over the course of millions and billions of years, because those same humans will not be around long enough to see the damage that is being caused here and now. These extinctions happen over millions of years, and even a few species dying every year is enough to add up over the course of millions of years. With this waning state of diversity on the planet earth, how will it affect all of humankind. Together with all of these other species a web has been formed, and although it is an extremely large and convoluted web it is also very fragile. The biosphere of Earth is just one potential species death away from catastrophic consequences in some cases, but the issues are still not addressed. Humankind’s overuse of planetary resources is part of the problem, but it is definitely not the only problem. Every step we take can have a potentially devastating impact on the environment. A few of the main problems facing our decrease in biodiversity are pollution, natural habitat destruction, and unsafe environmental practices such as drilling for fossil fuels or various precious minerals. Something must be done to help conserve the biodiversity on Earth before the...

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...e the main culprits behind the towering extinction numbers are fossil fuels, it would seem a simple choice to eliminate them from use. Not only would this be infeasible to do in a complete and prompt way, but it would bring a slew of new problems economically and conceptually. Various solutions do need to be enacted with haste, but the solutions to the carbon problems need to be diminutive and farsighted in nature. Creating policy to better clean up our outputs while finding ways to slowly grasp our dependence back from fossil fuels. One of the ways in which the need for fossil fuels could be suppressed is to increase technology in renewable energies. Renewable energies such as hydrogen power and solar power are becoming more feasible every day as the cost of traditional energy increases, while the cost of energy produced by renewable sources is steadily decreasing.

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