7 Scary Human Impacts On The Environment

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read a piece of environmental news and feel a pit in my stomach. It scares me, obviously not in the ways I like to be scared, because this is real. However, scary or not, it’s important that we educate ourselves on these issues. That’s why I’m highlighting these 7 scary human impacts on the environment.

When we see the state of things for what it is, it gives us an idea of how the future would be like. The more we know, the better we can respond. There is power in knowledge!

#1 Destroying rainforests

More than 46,000 fires were burning in the Amazon rainforest in August, and parts of it are still on fire. Since Brazil’s new president, Bolsonaro, took over in January this year, there has been a 92% increase in deforestation in the first 8 months of 2019 compared to the same period last year. He’s all for opening up the Amazon for development, mainly in cattle and soy farming.

So farmers have been burning the rainforests to clear space for cattle ranches and prepare the ground for crops.

Local farmers benefit from the development, but it comes at a cost. Already, streams are drying up, temperatures in deforested areas are rising, and shrublands are forming. According to the scientists, if deforestation reaches 20-25%, half of the Amazon rainforest could turn into a savannah. This could happen as soon as 2030. At the moment, up to 17% of the forest has been lost already.

Whatever economic growth the farmers and corporations are pursuing are short-lived. The saddest part is knowing that the corporations would simply move on when the rainforest has been depleted, but the farmers will be left to suffer the consequences. Eventually, the rest of the world will feel the effects too.

(Source: The Amazon Rain Forest is Nearly Gone by Matt Sandy on Time.com)

#2 Fossil fuel consumption is still on the rise

If you want to know if the governments have been listening to the scientists’ warnings about the climate crisis, you’ll only need to see if global fossil fuel consumption has decreased. It hasn’t.

As the global population grows, nations get wealthier, and more people gain access to flights, cars, and electricity, fossil fuel consumption will increase. Unless we all turn to renewable energy, of course.

In addition, fossil fuels can be made into another widely consumed commodity – plastic. Plastic alone uses 6% of global oil consumption. In 2015, an estimated 330 million barrels of oil were used to make synthetic fabric like polyesters.

According to the International Energy Agency, the use of plastic and other petrochemical products is set to increase as emerging economies like China and India grow. So, oil companies like Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell are investing in the petrochemical industry in the coming decades even as climate crisis makes its presence felt around the world.

There’s hope that the recent movement to avoid single-use-plastic will put a dent in that trend though. So keep it up, people!

#3 Plastic Pollution

To date, 6.9 billion tonnes of plastic have become waste. Yet, every year, we produce 300 million tonnes of plastic, half of which are for single-use packaging.

Somewhere along the way, recycling is no longer a sufficient solution for our overwhelming plastic problem, not like we’re doing it in the first place. Only 9% of plastic waste gets recycled.

Our plastic problem has clogged rivers and littered beaches. More than 8 million tonnes of plastic ends up in our oceans annually. As mentioned in this video, that’s the equivalent of dumping 1 garbage truck of plastic into the ocean every minute.

Seabirds and marine wildlife die from plastic consumption when they mistake floating plastic debris as food. As of 2014, the ratio of plastic to fish in the ocean is 1:5 by weight. It’s projected that in 2050, there’ll be more plastic than fish in the ocean.

#4 Overfishing and bycatch

Yet, plastic isn’t the only thing fishes have to contend with. Sometimes I feel like humans are on a race to remove all traces of life from the ocean. Aside from plastic pollution, we have an overfishing problem. According to the World Wildlife Foundation, 29% of the world’s fish stocks are overfished, 61% are fully fished. Fully fished means the fishing is at the maximum limit – any more activities would result in overfishing.

When we overfish, we’re taking too many fishes out of the sea, faster than they can repopulate. What’s worse, we also have the problem of bycatch.

Bycatch describes non-target fishes and other marine animals that have been caught by accident. These animals are simply tossed back into the sea, dead or nearly dying. Every year, 63 billion pounds of marine life ends because of poor fishing practices. This includes sharks, whales, dolphins, sea turtles, seal, and even fishes we do eat.

I can’t help but feel like marine life is under assault…

#5 Water pollution

Water pollution has existed in different extents since cities and factories came into existence. In the 21st century, it’s still a problem, and likely worse than ever. We have more pollutants and humans, and we’re consuming more than ever.

Only 2.5% of the world’s water sources are freshwater, and we only have easy access to less than 1% of it.

Even though developed countries treat most of their wastewater, that isn’t the case with underdeveloped or developing countries. Globally, more than 80% of wastewater enters the environment without proper treatment.

Every pollutant that enters the rivers eventually ends up in the ocean. How many sources of water pollution do we have?

All over the world, water sources face pollution from trash, chemicals and heavy metals from factories, human waste, animal waste from factory farms, pesticides and fertilizers from agriculture, dyes and microfibers from textiles, and so on.

We rely on water for our survival, sanitation, cultivation of food and production of things. Water is essential. In 2016, the World Economic Forum identified the water crisis as the most important concern for humans in the next 10 years.

Living in developed societies shielded me from these problems, but it exists and it’s bad.

#6 Overconsumption in a linear economy

The modern economy encourages a buy, update and throw attitude. With more than 7 billion human beings in this world, this type of economy and behavior is clearly unsustainable.

For instance, 150 billion pieces of clothing are made every year. In 2018, 1.56 billion smartphones were sold. Without proper material recovery methods in place, these numbers equal to a lot of resource-depletion and waste-generation.

An estimated 60% or 90 billion pieces of clothing end up in landfill or incineration within a year of production.

Developed countries generate approximately 50 million tonnes of electronic waste every year. A lot of these waste end up illegally in countries like India, China, and Africa, where its sheer numbers overwhelm and pollute entire cities.

People in these cities use poor techniques such as burning or corrosive chemicals to recover precious metals from the e-waste, causing immense harm to their health and the environment.

Remember those days when we wore hand-me-downs and electronics lasted forever? When we wore out our things and repair something if it broke? Those days weren’t that far back. It’s an indication of how far and how fast we’ve come when it comes to overconsumption.

#7 Climate departure years aren’t that far away for some countries

This is really a result of human impacts on the environment, but I included it because it gives us an idea of how soon we’ll see a permanent change.

Climate departure is the projected point in time when the climate of a region will be changed to a state never experienced before.

Earth’s climate departure is around 2047, but countries near the equator have earlier climate departure dates. For instance, the climate departure for Singapore is 2028 – after which the coolest year will be warmer than the warmest years on record between 1860 to 2005. It’s just 9 years away!

It’s already hot in tropical countries. With this change, there’ll be increases in heat-related illnesses and droughts, and instabilities in the food supply. The population of animals sensitive to temperature changes will be affected too.

I worry about Singaporeans at times, we import 90% of our food and 40% of our water. What would my Singaporean family and friends do when there are food and water shortages?

Yet, this is the reality more people will face as the climate crisis deepens. Unless, of course, we come together to tackle it.

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In conclusion

I hope I haven’t traumatized you too much. Next week, I’ll make it up with an entertaining post. In the meantime, go on and scare your friends with these scary human impacts on the environment.

But, don’t stop there. The scare isn’t the point, the point is to inspire conversation and action.

I realized now that even if we didn’t have a climate crisis, our crazy consumption habits will exhaust our resources sooner than we think. So, our unsustainable actions matter even to climate change deniers.

We’re at a crossroad here, and time is running out. Know that we’re all in this together. And we’re strong together. We can turn the tide!

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