I WAS walking down Perdices St. when I saw a kid throw a candy wrapper on the pavement. Because the mother was looking at her son on what he did, I was hoping she would pick up the litter and try to find a trash can where she can throw the wrapper. But she didn’t. She acted as if she didn’t see anything. Although I was disappointed, I meekly picked up the rubbish and throw it in the garbage.
Scenes like this irritate me a lot. Being an advocate for the protection of the environment for a very long time, it saddens me to see parents not teaching their children good manners, cleanliness, or being good to the environment.
Indifference
Don’t these parents know that the environment around us is our home? And that everything in it keeps us alive? The food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, our shelter, and everything else in it help us to survive.
Don’t they realize that taking care of the environment is something that should be inherent in us?
The sad reality is, our actions threaten everything that surrounds us, including ourselves. If we use nature’s resources, it has to be a sustainable manner. We need to guarantee that our actions don’t end up destroying the environment as we are the ones to suffer later. But of course, we are so indifferent to nature.
But when floods come and kill our loved ones, we cry. As if we didn’t know that such destruction is going to happen.
The truth we need to take in
While many of us may not take it seriously, it is critical to know that we don’t have anywhere else we can run to. This is our planet and this is where we reside.
If we spoil what we have here, we will suffer the consequences of our actions. If we take care of nature, then nature will also take care of us in return. When we pollute the water sources, we are the ones who will lack clean water. If we cut down all trees for our short-term goals, we will suffer global warming, lack of rainfall to grow our food, and many other hostile situations.
Thus, if we love the life we have right now, we need to love nature too. And not just love. We need to take care of it. If we nurture the environment we are in, the more we can have a cleaner and more habitable home.
If, on the other hand, we neglect nature and take on activities that damage it, the harder for us to access clean essentials such as water, food, and shelter. What’s more, polluted water sources and air will bring about upsetting outcomes like cancer and various respiratory illnesses.
In short, if we damage the environment, we kill ourselves. This is an “old” truth, yet, it doesn’t seem to ring a bell in many of us.
Domino effect
All our activities affect the ecosystem. If we destructively impact the ecosystem, we put various species (including the homo sapiens) on the path to extinction.
Thus, we need to take care of our surroundings to prevent incidences that will be detrimental to our source of livelihood and to the continuity of human life. The many things we use like furniture, rubber, food, and shelter, among others, come from raw materials we get from forests.
Deforestation means that we are vulnerable to shortages or the absence of essential materials. Similarly, forests offer a home to different birds, and animals, and even to some people.
Almost half of the world’s species live in forests. If we destroy our forests, we eliminate the home of multiple species. Therefore, we need to make sure that we use forest resources at a rate that doesn’t affect the life of that forest. Since nature is the source of our livelihood and survival, it’s only fitting that we should also be kind to it.
Each one of us has a moral obligation to take care of nature. Not only because it takes care of us, but because it’s the right thing to do.
