Water
Water in my opinion is the most valuable and precious resource available to us humans. Westerners waste between 30 and 100 gallons of water daily. The average American flushes away more water every day than a Madagascan uses in three months. Water is essential to all existence on earth and we can't seem to get an adequate amount of it. If all Bostonians ate one less hamburger per year it would save . . .? 552 million gallons of water. With 326 million cubic miles of water on our Earth, it is our most abundant compound. Yet only 3/10,000 is fresh water that we can utilize it for drinking, washing, and bathing. The rest is stored up in our oceans, glaciers, icecaps, inland seas, ground water, and atmosphere. We need to remember the water we have today is all the water will ever have.
Nutrition
Currently 1.2 billion people across all continents are obese. The average
American consumes 2,750 calories per day, far beyond the 2,200 calories recommended for most children, teenage girls, active women, and sedentary men. Although on the other hand, we as Americans are subject to look at a person for what they look like rather than the person they really are. The average American woman is commonly name Emily who is 5'4" tall and weighs 152 pounds and a size 14. Marilyn Monroe would be considered overweight by today's standards. She varied between the sizes 14 and 18 dress. I believe she was a healthy woman who didn't look fat to anyone. Oppositely, the average U.S. male is commonly named Michael stands 5' 9.1 tall and weighs 180 pounds. Even then, the healthcare costs of obesity is $US 117 billion. A greater concern on my Navajo Reservation would have to be diabetes. More than 107,000 Native Americans and Alaska Natives, or 14.5% of the population, receiving care from Indian Health Services (IHS) have diabetes.
Vehicles
There are 549 million cars in use in the world as of 2000. I’m sure with the year 2004 arriving the numbers must have sky rocketed higher. Population of the world is roughly 6.2 billion. With that in mind, there is one car for every eleven people around the world. I found that in a long research held between a husband and his wife you’ll save a quarter million $$ within 48 yrs by not having a vehicle. I found this very interesting that in one of our state’s town, everyday, in Boulder alone, more than 2.5 million miles are driven more than 10 times the distance to the moon.
Paper
The average American consumes over 700 lbs. of paper a year. Guess how much of that is "junk mail?" 34 lbs. According to the American Moving and Storage Association, the average American has how many pounds of stuff? 1,950 lbs of crap. The average American uses 7 trees a year in paper, wood, and other products. If there are about 275 million Americans, how many trees are used in a year? That’s a whopping 1,925,000,000 trees. Wow, where do we get our paper from if that’s the average consumption? The average American consumes 115 times as much paper as the average Indian, provided the American recycles most of the paper (at present, only 41 percent).
Recycle
0 out of 5 of us recycle, although at our parent’s home 4 out of 5 recycle. For example at home in Shiprock NM, I recycle aluminum cans and newspaper. Occasionally I’ll take some clothes over to the Home for Woman and Children. I now realize what resources are available to me and that I shouldn’t take them for granted. Recycling helps not only us as individuals but the environment too.
Litter
Litter is unsightly and it pollutes and clogs our waterways. Litter such as metal, plastic, paper kills fish and wildlife and contaminates water sources. Dispose of trash properly. Do not throw cigarette butts on the ground or discard them from vehicles.
Furthermore, Americans seem continuously able to buy and use an ever more remarkable share of the world's output. And because of this relentless consumption, the economy continues to expand no matter how devastating the nation's job market or manufacturing industries may be. In everyday life, most people understand that they have to manufacture more, and get paid more, before they can purchase more. Then there's the question of how long the rest of the world will consent in America's consumption boom. The world cannot manage to pay for America's consumption habits. It is not practical for western environmentalists to inform people in 'third world' countries to cut carbon emissions when their most important concern is regarding the next meal for their starving children.
In conclusion, we must look at ways to narrow the gap between the amount of energy we use and the amount we produce. I myself as a daughter, sister, friend, niece, and etc will try to be a model citizen when it comes to saving our planet. I will try to be more environmentally conscious. I also found that it doesn’t matter what nationality you just that you know facts about what you are putting out. There is no one single solution, achieving the goal of secure, affordable and environmentally sound energy will require diligent, concerted efforts on many fronts on both the supply and demand sides of the energy equation. We are the most voracious consumers in the world... a world that could die because of the way we North Americans live.
