Preserving Our Environment
The environment includes everything, living component and non-living components. The environment, in itself, can be looked at as being composed of two areas - the first includes everything that humans do not have a part in. This includes animals and plants, the atmosphere and the soil, even microorganisms.
The second key environmental component constitutes anything and everything not specifically human-originated, but also lack clear boundaries while belonging to universal natural resources and physical phenomena. Among these are water, air, climate, energy, magnetism, electric charge and radiation.
If you take a look around you, you will see that nature and man’s creations are at odds everywhere. What we have built constitutes the built environment. Any geographic region can be considered to be a natural environment only if the effect of human beings on it is as little as possible.
Wilderness, does not automatically mean a natural environment. Any area where there is no human interference at all is a wilderness. There are other conditions that need to be met if a region is to be considered a natural environment. National forests and nature reserves are considered to be part of the latter.
There are so few regions that can be considered to be natural environments now. Climate changes can account for some of this - climate changes caused by human influence. We have unseasonal rains and floods, melting icecaps and glaciers, and rising temperatures. Natural environmentalist groups play a major role in trying to keep natural environments intact. They try to push through laws and policies that will preserve the environment - keeping what there is safe, and trying to restore what was lost, as well as trying to create altogether new wilderness areas.
There are some common goals that these groups are working towards - reduction of pollution, cleaning up the atmosphere, using recyclable material and actually recycling them, preserving the non-renewable fuel pockets by using renewable energy sources, conserving water, land and air, making sure that habitats of animals are not wiped out and more species are not wiped off the Earth and maintaining the balance that the Earth needs.
The threats that the natural environment faces are many - when land is developed, nature suffers because of the pollution it inevitably includes. Toxic gases are spewed into the atmosphere by industrial plants, just as waste is being dumped everywhere. Global warming is not just a threat, but a reality now.
Taking up the challenge to protect and preserve our environment is everyone’s responsibility. It cannot be simply put off till tomorrow. Global environmental preservation starts right inside your own home.
