What Is Man Doing To The Earth Religion Essay

What Is Man Doing To The Earth Religion EssayTHREE HUNDRED twelvemonths ago, man lived practically closer to nature. For the most part, he was not threatened by man-made changes to the global environment in the way he is today. The industrial revolution had not begun. There were no diversityer stations, factories, automobiles, or other sources of widespread pollution. The thought of mans dampening the whole nation may construct been hard for him to imagine.Yet, take down back then, a warning approximately global ruination was in wide circulation. That warning was found in the last book of the Bible, and it foretold a cartridge clip when God would intervene in mans personal business to bring to ruin those ruining the soil.-Revelation 1117,18.How comforting for all who atomic weigh 18 c formerlyrned about modern mans mismanagement of the earth to know that the Creator of our glorious planet bequeath ease it from ruin But, you may wonder, pretend we really reached such a critical situation that Gods intervention is needed? Well, consider round of the facts and judge for yourself.Forests beautify the earth and provide food and shelter for several trillion different species. As trees grow and manufacture food, they perform other zippy services, such as absorbing nose candy dioxide and releasing precious oxygen. Thereby, National Geographic says, they offer cardinal antidote to the global warming that threatens life on earth as we know it.But man is ruining his forest heritage. North American and European forests atomic number 18 dying from pollution. And the demands of industrial nations argon decimating tropical forests. An African bran-newspaper explained that in 1989, 66 million cubic metres of tropical wood were expected to be exported-48percent to Japan, 40percent to Europe.Also, in rough lands, farmers burn forests to hit farmland. Soon the fragile forest soil becomes exhausted, and the farmers train to burn to a greater extent fore st. It is estimated that in this century alone, nearly half the valet de chambres forests have vanished.OceansEarths oceans as well as play a vital role in cleaning the atmosphere, and mans activities are ruining them. Vast quantities of carbon dioxide are absorbed by the oceans. In turn, phytoplankton absorbs carbon dioxide and releases oxygen. Dr.George Small explains the importance of this life cycle 70percent of the oxygen added to the atmosphere each form comes from plankton in the sea. Yet, some scientists warn that phytoplankton could be severely depleted beca mathematical function of ozone reduction in the atmosphere, which is believed to be vitrined by man.Also, man dumps garbage, oil, and even toxic wastes into the ocean. While some countries agree to limit the wastes they allow to be dumped at sea, others refuse. One Western nation even reserves the right to dump nuclear wastes at sea. Famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau warns We must save the oceans if we want to save mankind.Drinking WaterMan is ruining even his imbibinging piss In poor lands, millions of people get around each year because of contaminated body of water. In richer nations, water sources are contaminated by, among other things, fertilizers and pesticides that wash into rivers and seep into fuzeewater. In 1986 the world production of pesticides was 2.3 million tons, and the rate of increase is inform to be 12percent per year.Another source of pollution is chemical dumps. The metal drums containing the chemicals, explains Scientific American, are nothing less than time bombs that pass on go off when they rust finished and through. This type of pollution, the journal adds, is happening worldwide in thousands of chemical waste dumps.The result? All over the earth, once pure rivers are creation turned into industrial sewers. It is estimated that 20 million Europeans drink water from the Rhine, yet this river is so polluted that sludge dredged from its bed is as well as dangerous to use for landfillFarming PracticesAlarmingly, man is even ruining his farmland. In the United severalizes alone, 20percent of the land set aside for irrigation has been damaged, according to Scientific American. Why? Because overirrigation adds withal much salt to the soil. some countries have ruined much valuable land in this way. As much land is now world interpreted out of production due to salinization as is being brought into production through new irrigation projects, states The Earth Report. Another widespread problem is overgrazing,which may be contribute to the spread of deserts.Too Many Motor VehiclesSo much for our planets land and water. But what about its air? This too is being ruined, and the culprits are many. To mention conscionable one, consider the automobile. Following are warnings from ternary influential scientific journals Motor vehicles generate to a greater extent than air pollution than any other single piece activity. (New Scientist) T here are currently 500 million registered automobiles on the planet ... Filling their tanks consumes about one third of the worlds production of oil. ... The number of automobiles is increasing more quickly than the population. (Scientific American) Petrol gasoline in all phases of production, use and disposal is a major source of environmental degradation and malady.-The Ecologist.Yes, our planet is being abused, ruined. Its seas, drinking water, farmlands, and even its atmosphere are being polluted to an enormous extent. Surely, this alone would suggest that the time is near for God to intervene and bring to ruin those ruining the earth. (Revelation 1118) However, there are other, even worse, ways in which the earth is being ruined. Let us see just what they are.A World GovernmentThe save way to combat thegreenhouse effect and other emergingenvironmentaldisasters is a world government, says Dr.Kenneth Hare, renowned geographer andclimate-change expert. Humanity is mounting a pe stiferous aggress on nature, Hare warned. The planet is threatened not just by a nuclear holocaust but by ecological misuse, reports the Calgary Herald, a Canadian newspaper. Hare claims that three billion tons of carbon are spewed into the atmosphere annually by automobile exhausts and industrial smokestacks. Computer studies show that even with mark off economic growth, carbon-dioxide levels would double by the year 2075. Weve created a global problem, and without regulation of the environment on a global scale, well be in trouble, give tongue to Hare.What Dr.Hare recommends is indeed logical. Still, can man ever hope to establish a global government that would be able to do such things as regulate economic growth, uprise nonpolluting energy sources, and convince humankind to embark on a program of worldwide environmental care?Hardly Gods excogitate clearly says To earthling man his way does not be longsighted. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step. (Jeremiah 1023) However, this does belong in the work force of God. As the Prince of Peace, his Son, Jesus Christ, will administer a world government that will rule in justice and righteousness. Under his heavenly rulership, mankind will not imperil the environment.-Isaiah 96,7 119 Daniel 244.Oh, for Some Fresh AirBY AWAKE CORRESPONDENT IN BRITAINWHEN you breathe, do you inhale fresh air? Present-day air pollution is a bigger enemy than smoking, claims a doctor quoted in The Times of London. In England and in Wales, contaminated air kills an estimated 10,000 people e really year. Worldwide, especially in large cities, the situation is serious.Many blame the automobile industry for polluting the atmosphere. To reduce dangerous exhaust, new vehicles in many countries now come fitted with catalytic converters, which reduce pollution. The hydrocarbons in exhaust gases have dropped to 12 percent of the 1970 levels, with similar reductions of atomic number 7 oxides and carbon monoxide. Babies in strollers are particularly vulnerable because they ride at the level that cars spew out fumes. But air pollution threatens car occupants as well. Reportedly, the contamination is three times higher(prenominal) inside cars than outside. Further hazards come from inhaling benzene fumes from fuel as you fill your cars fuel tank.Now the most prevalent form of air pollution worldwide is Suspended Particulate Matter, says a 1993-94 United Nations environmental data report. Apparently, tiny bits of soot, or particulate matter, have the ability to dawn deep into the lungs and there deposit damaging chemicals.The depletion of the ozone layer high above the globe attracts much press comment. At ground level, however, sunlight acts on the nitrogen oxides and other volatile elements of air pollution to produce high levels of ozone. These levels have doubled in Britain during this century. These gases damage paint and other building materials, cause malady in trees, plants, and rat ionalises, and appear to trigger respiratory problems in some people. Although most of the ozone pollution occurs in towns, surprisingly it is the rural areas that suffer the worst personal effects. In the urban areas, nitrogen oxides mop up the excess ozone, but where these oxides are sparse, the ozone has free rein to wreak damage.Additionally, air pollution is up to 70 times higher inside homes than outdoors, reports The Times. Here the fumes from air fresheners, mothballs, and even dry-cleaned clothes pollute the air. Cigarette smoke likewise adds to health risks indoors.What, then, can you do to cherish your family? The Times of London offered the following suggestions. Reduce your use of the car. If possible, share transportation with others. Drive smoothly. If stuck in a traffic jam or otherwise nonmoving for more than a couple of minutes, switch off the engine. If possible, on hot days park your car in the shade to reduce pollution produced by fuel evaporation. Choose to ex ercise in the early mornings when ozone levels outdoors are generally low. Outlaw smoking in the home. Keep bedroom windows slightly untied at night to lower humidity and move allergens outside.No head you agree Oh, for some fresh airWarning This Water May Be Hazardous to Your HealthCAN you imagine turning on the water tap at your kitchen sink, belongings a lighted match to the faucet, and witnessing a monstrous eruption of flames? Can you imagine a freshwater river that bursts into flames at the drop of a lighted cigarette? Would you be appalled if your bathwater was too thick to drink but too thin to plow and piling up in one end?Does it boggle the mind to think of river water that can develop a picture from a negative before your eyes? What would be your reaction if your tap water came out with a head on it, aspect like bock beer? Do you have to open the window at your sink so as not to stink up the house when water is drawn from the faucet? Does your marriage mate leave the morning pot of deep brown untouched because of its unusual strength, only to discover later that no coffee had been added yet?Or is your water crystal clear, pure in taste, but your family repeatedly suffers from headaches, dizziness, dysentery, or skin rashes after drinking it? Or would the suffering of tremors, blindness, and harm of the central nervous system best describe the symptoms?Did you know that not long ago one third of humanity was in a sodding(a) state of illness because of impure water and that ten million people were dying each year, not for the lack of it, but because of it? Can all of this be the figment of a wild imagination-the stuff of science-fiction movies? Unfortunately, the scenarios are true.It has become obvious that man today has the awesome genius to poison completely all reinforcement thing on the face of the earth and in the waters below. Most of this has come about through his efforts to make life easier-mitigating pain and disease, bringing the world closer to his living room through communication, pursuing his quest into outer space, and makingdestructiveimplements of war.Most of this is caused by mans creation of new but deadly chemical compounds. Six years ago, over 60,000 such chemical concoctions were on the market-35,000 of which were classify as either deadly or extremely hazardous to our health, with thousands more being formulated each year. From these chemical cocktails have come equally dangerous and highly toxic wastes that are inclined of by dumping them into the earth, rivers, and streams, with midget thought of the consequences it would have on people or environment.A Boon to Farmers, a Bomb to Earths WatersPesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers have been a boon to the worlds farmers, but they have been a bomb to earths waters. For years farmers in Californias San Joaquin Valley sprayed their grapes, fruit, and tomatoes with the pesticide DBCP, only to discover in recent years that it can cause cancer a nd sterility in humans. Although the spraying has stopped, the poison hasnt stopped percolating through the layers of the earth and into the underground water system. Thirty-five percent of the wells in the valley have DBCP, give tongue to a spokesman for the health department. In one county in California, 250,000 people run the risk of DBCP contamination, reported Newsweek magazine. Other pesticides affect the nervous system. Still others are suspected of create various other illnesses. Some herbicides have been observed to have serious effects on the brain, rendering the victim immobile. In many agricultural areas, fertilizers have raised nitrate concentrations above health standards set out in some countries. These chemicals, too, have infiltrated aquifers.Detergents, solvents, dry-cleaning fluids, septic-tank cleaners, to mention a few, have been highly developed through chemistrys progression. The result has been marvelous benefits to mankind. However, as these products perc olate through the earth, the result has been a contamination of earths pure waters for generations to come. We are poisoning ourselves and our posterity, utter one environmentalist.Many of the millions of underground gasoline storage tanks at the service stations dotting the highways and city streets leak, as reports show, and their highly explosive contents seep into the ground and percolate through the well-water systems. They can cause houses and barns to burst into flames when the fumes reach a lighted match. Flames from a water faucet are all too common as a result of this underground witches brew of death-dealing chemicals oozing into the water system.It was thought that the earth itself would purify these chemicals as they trickled through the layers of the earth, rendering them harmless. In the past decade, however, it has been discovered that many of these dangerous chemicals have not been filtered out but go right through to the aquifers, contaminating them for generation s to come. drop anchor-water contamination is the result of sins committed a long time ago, said James Groff of the American Water Works Association. Nobody had the foresight to predict it.The sins, however, continue to be committed to this date. The environmental Protection dresser estimates that in the United States alone 1.5 trillion gallons of hazardous waste leak into the underground water system each year. Much of it is deliberately dumped by unscrupulous and greedy men without regard to the terrible, terrible damage to mans water and health. Just 1 gallon of solvent will contaminate 20 million gallons of ground water to exceed safe levels set by most states, said one scientist. When one thinks in terms of a trillion gallons of waste, then the expression, water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink, looms up as being a potentially frightful reality.A Time Bomb, Slowly Ticking AwayGround water and its contaminants, said the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Environm ent, Energy and Natural Resources, represent a potential time bomb, slowly ticking away. Theres a suppuration belief that this problem will be the next great crisis of the 1980s. The New York Times reported There is wide agreement, however, that the contamination of ground water is by far the most serious and difficult problem affecting the quality of drinking water and now constitutes a subterranean time bomb. Theres no doubt we have a time bomb on our hands, warned a University of Arizona scientist. The question is how big the bang will be.A person does not have to put his ear to the ground to know how big the bang will be. Already the world shudders in fear of the coming explosion. For example, it has been estimated that by the year 2000 a fourth of the worlds water supply could be unsafe for drinking.A third of the water in Chinas major rivers is polluted beyond safe limits for human consumption, said Worldwatch Institute. According to Thane Gustafson, a specialist on Soviet Un ion affairs, that country will face a greater demand for water by the year 2000 than its waters can supply because of water pollution today. South America faces a similar crisis-a water supply too contaminated for its people to drink. both we manage to limit the waste of water or by the year 2000 we shall be dying of thirst, proclaimed the United Nations World Conference on water. Without being guilty of exaggeration it is easy to foresee that in the very near future the world will be literally dying of thirst, either as a result of pollution or present wasteful usage, the conference said.People in all parts of the earth experience the devastating effects of the time bomb that appears to have exploded on the world scene already. When one considers, for example, that 70 percent of Indias drinking water is polluted and is the cause of much of the countrys illness, it becomes no exaggeration to say that its waters and all life dependent on them cry out for a cure. And what can be said of the trinity World countries and the dying people looking for clean water? Truly, the world faces a dilemma of unprecedented pro slews.Water-borne diseases kill 30,000 people every day, said Swiss water-treatment expert Dr.Maarten Schalekamp. Only a third of mankind possesses what he called irreproachable drinking-water facilities, while another third of earths inhabitants is drinking contaminated water. The remaining third has very little water of any kind.And so it goes. Poisoned waters percolating through the earth, rushing through its rivers, meandering down its streams, cascading over its falls, while a great portion of mankind inevitably drinks to its death. Truly, a time bomb of mans own makingJehovah God, the Creator of earth, man, and all life-giving waters, has set ticking his own time bomb by which he will bring to ruin those ruining the earth. (Revelation 1118) It is set to go off at his appointed time, and those who have ruined the earth, the air, and the water will not be able to defuse it or to escape its destructive forces. The year 2000 continues to be pointed to by man as being a critical time. Whether the guilty live to see that feared year remains to be seen. Only Jehovah knows. Following the destruction of those whom God now holds accountable, the earth will be restored to a paradise, and rivers of waters of life, clean and pure, will be abundant for every living thing.Our Beautiful Earth-How Much of It Will We Leave Our Children? correspond to published reports, 1.7billion children have been born into the world since the year 1970. If they constituted a nation, it would be the worlds largest. Is it not fair to ask, What kind of world are we departure them?Over 25 years ago a prominent doctor of the U.S. Public Health Service observed We all live under the dour fear that something may corrupt the environment to the point where man joins the dinosaurs as an obsolete form of life.In the intervening years, that fear has intensified. Las t year a interior(a) forum, addressed by nearly a ascorbic acid biologists, warned that coming was a wave of mass extinctions such as wiped out the dinosaurs, only this time it would not be by a natural development but by human activities.This year Worldwatch Institute released its report State of the World 1987. It said A sustainable society satisfies its needs without diminishing the prospects of the next generation. By many measures, contemporary society fails to meet this criterion. Questions of ecological sustainability are arising on every continent. The scale of human activities has begun to threaten the habitability of the earth itself.The Institutes report said that the demands of over 5billion people-and their numbers are increasing by 83million a year-are overwhelming the regenerative capacities of earths biological systems.Chemical pollution is thinning the atmospheric ozone and may lead to causing more skin cancers, impairing human immune systems, and retarding crop g rowth.If acid rain continues, not only will more lakes and forests die but soils will acidify further and may take decades, if not centuries, to recover.escalate farming practices have pushed the rate of topsoil loss beyond that of new soil formation.Deforestation reduces the amount of carbon dioxide used from the atmosphere, and the burning of fossil fuels releases more carbon dioxide than the remaining plants and the oceans can take in. The result is an increase in the warming greenhouse effect that may ultimately melt glaciers and flood coastal cities.The loss of tropical forests means less recycling of water for rainfall and may lead to the creation of deserts.Toxic chemicals, raw sewage, crude oil, nuclear accidents, radon, microwaves, asbestos-on and on could go the listing of mans sins against the environment.State of the World 1987 warns Never have so many systems vital to the earths habitability been out of equilibrium simultaneously. New environmental problems also couple t time periods and geographic areas that stretch beyond the authority of existing political and social institutions. No single nation can stabilize the earths climate, protect the ozone layer, relieve the planets mantle of forests and soils, or reverse the acidification of lakes and streams. Only a sustained international commitment will suffice.This commitment is dragging its feet, and time is running out. Hundreds of billions are exhausted in the arms race a mere pittance is spent on preserving the environment that sustains us and the neglect of which can kill us. Since 1983 the United States alone has committed $9billion to the Strategic Defense Initiative research and wants $33billion more for it from 1986 to 1991-but turns stingy on the environment. The other industrialized nations do likewise. The State of the World 1987 puts the crisis in a nutshell The time has come to make peace with each other so that we can make peace with the earth.A sustainable future, this report sta tes, calls upon us simultaneously to arrest the carbon dioxide buildup, protect the ozone layer, restore forests and soils, stop population growth, boost energy efficiency, and develop renewable energy sources. No generation has ever faced such a complex set of issues requiring immediate attention. Preceding generations have always been concerned about the future, but we are the first to be faced with decisions that will determine whether the earth our children inherit will be habitable.The following article shows the crisis developing over toxic chemicals.The atrocious Side of Industrial ChemicalsIT WAS just after midnight on a cool December evening in 1984 that the worst industrial accident in storey happened. A world away from the Republic of India, few people were familiar with the name Bhopal, an industrial city with a population of more than 800,000, located most at the center of the country. Its sleeping residents were unaware of the death-dealing events developing a stone s throw away.At the U.S. Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, a storage tank holding 45tons of methyl isocyanate (MIC), a deadly chemical used in making pesticides, began building up dangerously high pressure. Suddenly, from a give out valve, a cloud of poisonous gas began spreading death and agony over the quiet city. It snuffed out the lives of more than 2,500 men, women, and children. It maimed more than a hundred thousand others.The death of thousands of animals-water buffalo, cattle, and dogs-caused the countryside to be littered with dead bodies that clogged the roads and city streets. Bhopal became a giant makeshift crematory, burning the dead around the clock. 70 funeral pyres, with bodies stacked 25 high, consumed the dead in their flames. Others were buried in hurriedly dug mass graves-scores of bodies at a time.Later another catastrophe dissipate Europe and was called Bhopal on the Rhine. A chemical spill from an industrial plant above Basel, Switzerland, dumped 40tons of po isonous waste into the Rhine. It killed hundreds of thousands of fish and eels as it drifted downriver along the German-French border, into the Rhineland and then through the Netherlands to the North Sea. One newspaper editorialized The Swiss used to be considered clean, their industry safe, and that included the chemical industry. That is all past now.The residents of Bhopal and communities along the Rhine River had become the victims of a technological age that boasts the compounding of more than 66,000 chemical concoctions. Many are formulated to make life easier for man, yet, ironically, a vast number are highly toxic and can cause fatal and devastating side effects, both to humans and to the entire biological system. One expert classified these chemicals as biocides.Many are the chemicals with long names that few people can pronounce and that for convenience bear letters such as PCB, DDT, PCDD, PCDF, TCDD. This alphabet soup of toxic chemicals is a deadly hazard both to human s and to earths resources on which man must rely to live. Thousands upon thousands of releases of toxic substances into the environment occur each year, said a spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Such releases pose a threat to the quality of air, surface water, and underground drinking supplies, and poison the soil for decades to come.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that in the United States alone, 1.5trillion gallons of hazardous chemical wastes see to it their way into the underground water systems each year. Knowing that just one gallon of solvent will contaminate 20million gallons of groundwater to exceed safe levels, it is staggering to compute what catastrophic damage 1.5trillion gallons of poisonous chemicals are doing.Because of hazardous chemicals and wastes and the careless dumping of them, rivers and streams are being polluted. Fish are dying. As the rivers and streams enter the oceans, the death-dealing chemicals pour with them, an d in some places where ocean life was once plentiful, today, according to famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, fish can no longer be found.Bird and animal life is also threatened by the contamination. Even wildlife sanctuaries turn off to be no haven. Ten national wildlife refuges are contaminated by toxic chemicals and another 74 may be in danger. ... Agricultural runoff containing selenium and other chemicals has killed large numbers of waterfowl in the refuge, reported The New York Times of February4, 1986.World experts do not paint a bright picture for the future. The rapid diminishment of earths resources does not end with the loss of soil and the pollution of air and water. What about earths great tropical rain forests that for millenniums have raised their foliate arms hundreds of feet into the air? Are these too in danger of going the way of other resources that are diminishing before our eyes? Whether we realize it or not, our lives are affected by these luxuriant hand iworks of Jehovah, as the next article will show.What Future for Us and Our Children?A FAMILY cannot spend more than it makes and remain solvent. A nation cannot pay out more than it takes in and still prosper nor can we continue our deficit spending of the environment. We cannot squander more soil than is formed, create more carbon dioxide than plants can use, cut down more trees than we replace, pollute more air and water than earth can recycle. Environmental deficits, like national deficits, will demand an accounting. They will be paid, either in money and international cooperation or in lives-ours and our childrens.Modern technology has made the ruining of the earth possible. It could be used to prevent it. Why isnt it? Love of money. It would cost billions. This world cannot see-or in its selfishness will not see-beyond its own shortsighted materialistic desires. Since it refuses to pay in money, it will pay in loss of topsoil, loss of forests, loss of aquifers, hothouse atmosp here, poisoned water, mounting sickness, human lives. And to hold onto its money, this world is selling off its childrens future.Will it conjure up in time? Historys answer is not reassuring, but Gods answer is. Jehovah God himself says that he will step in and bring to ruin those ruining the earth. (Revelation 1118) He will remove from earth those ruining its environment and destroying its beauty, for he created it to be life-sustaining and beautiful. The heavens are my throne, and the earth is my footstool, he says, and I shall glorify the very place of my feet.-Isaiah 661 6013.He created it to be inhabited by people who love righteousness-and it will be, by millions who once lived in the past, by millions who are living now, and by millions of children yet to be born. This he has recorded in his Word, the Bible, and you can read it for yourself at Isaiah 4518 and John 528,29.Then, cared for by those who love it, the earth will regenerate itself into the beauty with which our Cre ator originally endowed it. Then righteously disposed persons and their children will have a future, a glorious one Just a little while longer, and the wicked one will be no more and you will certainly give attention to his place, and he will not be. But the meek ones themselves will possess the earth, and they will indeed find their exquisite delight in the abundance of peace. The righteous themselves will possess the earth, and they will reside forever upon it.-Psalm 3710,11,29.And never die? And never die God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away. (Revelation 213,4) Too good to be true? No, this present wicked world is too bad to remain.-Daniel 244.But you and your children can remain. Jehovah God makes it possible through the sacrifice of his Son. To learn of Jehovah and of his Son will mean eonian life for you and your childr en-life in a new world wherein righteousness is to dwell. (John 316 173 2Peter 313) This can be the happy future for you and your children. Whether it is or not is up to you.Pollution-Who Causes It?THIS island is government property under experiment. The ground is contaminated with anthrax and dangerous. Landing is prohibited. This sign posted on the Scottish mainland opposite Gruinard Island warns off would-be visitors. For the past 47 years, since an experimental explosion of biological weapons during the second world war, this beautiful island has been contaminated by the disease agents of anthrax.Gruinard Island is an extreme example of pollution. But milder forms of ground pollution are a problem that is widespread and growing.Ground Pollution on the IncreaseOne cause of this ground pollution i