The real pandemic is humans

by Aiden Moore

Have you seen how clear the water is in Italy since the citizens have been quarantined? Pollution has been a major crisis in the world for hundreds of years, and it hasn’t gotten any better, in fact, it’s actually gotten worse. Us humans are actually killing the only planet that we can sustain life on as of now, which is not going to end well for us. The fact that prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, countries already had their citizens wearing masks and such due to smog and pollution is absolutely insane to think about. It’s honestly very sad that it takes a global pandemic to clean the earth up.

The earth has been around since before man and has been the only stable thing that everyone can rely on, but we destroy and damage it every day for our own well being. Now obviously just one person can’t change the world as far as cleaning it up, but if all of us pitch in even in the slightest bit. Even if you don’t think you partake in hurting the earth, you can always help clean it up. If we want a safe place for our children and their children to grow up then we need to start cleaning up the Earth now.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of ways to clean up the Earth too. Reusable glasses for water and other drinks are a major way of helping. One plastic water bottle takes almost 1,000 years to completely decompose, and over 80% of water bottles end up in landfills. This makes water bottles one of the worst items in pollution.

Plastic bags are also in the same area as water bottles. If we reused bags or bought the reusable bags for groceries and such, rather than the plastic bags, we could save marine life. Almost 300 known species of marine life are affected by plastic pollution, and around 100,000 of those animals are killed annually from plastic pollution. The fish you eat at restaurants may have at one point had pollution in its digestive tract, which could make you sick.

So before saying that the pollution doesn’t directly affect you is wrong. It isn’t just in the water either, it’s in our fields, forests, and cities too. Plastic can sink into the soil of a field, and release harmful chemicals into the groundwater that can potentially cause harmful effects on the plants and any animals that come in contact with the water.

The Earth is the only thing that humans have been able to rely on for millions of years, don’t kill it now for your own reasons. We need it to survive, while it doesn’t need us at all, so we should be grateful for what we have had for this long. There isn’t another Earth, there is no known planet that we can survive on as of now, so is it really worth it to destroy the only thing that we can live on?

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