Over the past few centuries’ industry has grown starting in the UK and spreading into Europe, USA and East Asia. Disasters striking the environment a long time ago were local and reversible. But today they are over the whole world and not reversible. Example – Global warming is over the whole world in the atmosphere and can’t be changed back. A large impact is also the extinction of large animals by man, this has led to a change in how many plants and grass grow, some species have taken over because there were no animals to graze. Probably the greatest change that has taken place is deforestation. The forests of Europe, North America, the Mediterranean and China have been all wiped out by workers or people. England is now the least forest covered island in Europe. Deforestation has made the soil erode with much soil lost.
We also lose many medicines because many different plants have now disappeared.
Noah’s Ark is a story that Jews and Christians believe is the proper way of how humans should treat the environment. This is an important teaching by god because Noah saves and preserves lots of species on which we depend, meaning humans should treat animals and the environment with respect. Some views of Christians are that the species are a part of God’s good creations. Wanting to kill or injure creatures on purpose would be a religious offence. This view is shared by a famous poet called Samuel Taylor Coleridge who published in 1798 a well known poem called ‘The Rhyme of the ancient mariner’ in which the mariner killed a sea-bird and his ship was driven to the South Pole by storms. It is a type of punishment given to him by God. This is a warning to us all, according to the Christians, if we don’t treat other living things with kindness.
This view contrasted with the view of the western world that humans were apart from the natural world and had the right to control and use it as they wished. Coleridge’s idea was further developed in the 19th century and might be seen as the predecessor of today’s conservation movements. Each species has a place on earth, according to this view there is something bad about a species being lost. One of the ideas Greenpeace movements are fighting for, is the equal right for all species to exist and flourish, an issue advertised in their campaign of the mid-1980s against the wearing of fur coats.
Despite the fact that, as far as we can tell from the fossil record, extinctions are a normal part of evolution, the current rate of extinction is the cause of our concern. In Britain, 6% of our species have become extinct during the 20th century. Once a species becomes extinct it has gone forever. We depend on other species for our livelihoods and our health. This is well explained in publicity material from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, who recognizes the need to retain genetic diversity in plants and through the Seed Bank Appeal they aim to have conserved by 2010 living seeds from 10% of all plant species for the benefit of future generations. In principle we should hand on to the next generation an environment no less rich than the one we, ourselves, have inherited.
There should be a feeling of partnership with nature. We should all be responsible and committed to make sure we achieve sustainability on earth. To change people’s attitudes we must all treat each other as equals, with specific attention given to the needs and rights of the ‘weak’ in our society, that is the poor, the landless, the homeless, the sick.
