In the past century we have made many great innovations such as automobiles and aircrafts and even pesticides. With these great innovations come consequences. Such as global warming as Bill Mckibben states in his essay “The Environmental Issue from Hell”. In this essay Mckibben talks about how humanity in the past century has contributed to global warming by using fuel burning vehicles and aircraft. Before Pesticides, farmers had a tough time keeping crops alive due to insects. With the creation of pesticides this problem went away, but these chemicals have started to contaminate our air, rivers, and earth as described in “The Obligation to Endure” by Rachel Carson. We have 2 serious environmental problems and these are the possible solutions.
Innovations in the way we travel have had a very big negative impact on our planet like global warming. As Mckibben describes in his essay that “OF you switched today from the average car American car to a big SUV, and drove it for just one year, the difference in carbon dioxide that you would produce is equivalent to leaving your refrigerator door open and forgetting to close it for six years” (748).
What Mckibben means is that our minds are more geared towards comfort and looks and by buying these big nice looking trucks and SUV’s we are killing the environment because we are releasing twice the amount of carbon gasses than your
The Essay on Global Warming 49
The problem of global warming has become a topic of concern not just for politicians, but for all Americans alike. The earth’s core is not only becoming warmer, but it is also causing million year old ice packs to melt and weather patterns to change. What is the cause of global warming? It is said the leading cause of global warming is the burning of fossil fuel and the SUV is amongst the biggest ...
average vehicle from the early 1990’s did. Mckibben also talks about how even if one person changes there would still be billions of others emitting tons of carbon gasses. The only solution is for the government and private organizations to come out with no or less carbon dioxide producing fuel. There is still the electric car which can cut carbon gasses in half if everyone drove one. The only Carbon gasses would be emitted is from the power plant and that’s better than have millions of cars pumping trillions of pounds of carbon dioxide gases.
Pesticides have been adopted in the past century to keep plants healthy and alive but by using these chemicals we have started to contaminate our planet. As Carson describes in her essay “the most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and lethal materials” (751-750).
What Carson is saying is that by producing chemicals we are contaminating everything we eat and breathe and since we have got so used to using these chemicals it would take more than hundreds of years for mankind to undo the contamination. By this, the only thing we can do is endure the consequences and try to come up with change which is not very likely.
The last one hundred years we as humanity have made many great innovations but these innovations have led to great consequences which we are forced with every day. Such as global warming and contaminating our planet with chemicals.
