There's not a great deal you can do, so just lead the best life you can and keep the important issues in mind at voting time.
Yeah, I basically read only the beginning and the end... But, our current world, at this rate, will probably screw us over. It has been proven that rainforests are being cut down, and at this rate, will ALL be gone in about 90 years. Governments are somewhat stepping in to help the environment, but many species are endangered and critically threatened due to commerical industries. In some cities, especially Calcutta, India, pollution is so bad they say if you stand on a street corner for 2 hours, you will inhale the same amount of pollution you would in a cleaner environment in 5 years. So, not in our life time, but at the same rate in the next few generations, the world WILL SUFFER from starvation (since environments are destroyed, which kill animals, which does not allow us to get sufficient protein, which makes us eat tofu for the rest of our lives) and lack of resources.
It's very difficult to get a sound perspective on something as sweeping and big as what you talked about. You covered a lot of subjects, from broken politics to overpopulation to climate. It's worth taking a swipe at the big picture once in a while. And you brought up some serious problems, no question. (Some I couldn't entirely see, though.)
As far as population goes, yes... there is a carrying capacity for the amount of animal meat that can be supported by plant chlorophyll (which is about 100% of where animal energy comes from.) Humans and their domesticated animals occupy more than 99% of the total mass of all land-based animals, now. We've cut down more than 50% of all the forest systems. We've quilted the remaining forests into varying sized patchworks, where animals must travel across reaches to get to other forest "islands." We've fenced, we've cut roadways and railways, and in short we've decimated the size of the habitats. (If you are interested, Dr. Lovejoy [at the time in the 1980's, doing research in Brazil for Woods Hole] wrote extensively and quantitatively about the effects of our cutting up large forest systems into patchwork systems separated by large and small gaps.)
Fresh water resources are a little more nuanced. Some additional trapped energy goes into latent heat of evaporation of water, increasing the amount of H?O present in the atmosphere. This must eventually come out as precipitation. When it does, the extra can be caught and used. What is a concern is dwindling water tables, fracking, the loss of fresh water lakes, and most significantly the loss of the glacier systems on mountains, which acts as a storage reservoir and saves a great deal of effort elsewhere in trapping fresh water. I'm not certain what, in balance, the effect will be here. But with increasing populations, chances are it will not be in a positive direction.
To add to your woes, long term, is then the loss of species and species' diversity. Things are tightly interwoven on earth. Humans are turning large stretches of very diverse ecologies into farming monocultures. The number of species lost each day is innumerable, now. It's been called the Sixth Extinction event by some. And the rapidity is unparalleled. Why keep a forest intact when it increase in value about 1-2% a year and when an investor can make significantly more than that on the open market, if they just cut the entire thing down and sell it off for cash? There is no incentive to keep it. Why keep a diverse system when a monoculture is far easier to manage and sell?
In 1944 the US Coast Guard introduced 29 reindeer onto the remote St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea, in order to serve as the backup food source for the 19 men stationed there. When World War II ended, the base closed and the men left. David Kline, a biologist from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, visited St. Matthew in 1957 and found a thriving population of an estimated 1350 reindeer. They were feeding on a 4" thick mat of lichen that covered the 332 km2 island. (There were no predators.) In 1963, he found 6000. And then, in 1966, he discovered an island strewn with reindeer skeletons and very little lichen. 42 reindeer survived: 41 females and 1 male in poor health. No fawns.
The remaining reindeer had died off by 1980.
I sometimes wonder if, in the end, humans will be capable of showing themselves as any more intelligent than bacteria in a petri dish.
What you do now matters. What you do politically matters. But one thing you must realize is that you can't do it alone. But together, we can do a great deal. Seek enduring relationships with people who have the courage to act with you. Also, you can't see the future and you can't predict what actions will have more important effects. So keep the pressure on. Don't give up. Keep pushing in many ways. Some things will push, some won't. But keep shoving all the same. When something does give, go with it. You just won't be able to predict which effort will be more important. So you have to stay active all the time.
Best wishes.
[I'M THE ONLY ONE OFFERING YOU ANY REAL HELP, SO MAKE SURE YOU READ IT ALL]
You say: "One of the main things that freaked me out is that there is a huge aquifer in the hydrosphere that is literally being drained by these giant industries that need it to water crops to produce a ton of food"
I quoted you above because it shows your ignorance [DON'T STOP READING, YOU NEED THIS]. You apparently don't even know how we get fresh water. Where in the world is it that aquifers are being drained so as crops have insufficient water? Learn about the water cycle and stop your absurd worrying:
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercyclee...
DID YOU KNOW THAT WE'VE EXPERIENCED BUMPER CROPS WORLDWIDE DURING THIS SLIGHTLY WARMER PERIOD WITH INCREASED CO2? OF COURSE YOU DIDN'T BECAUSE YOU TAKE ALL THE PROPAGANDA AT FACE VALUE, YOU DON'T QUESTION: HAVE A LOOK AT THE TRUTH:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...
Your problem is that you are propagandized. You are the perfect model of what Leftist want us all to become. Paralyze with fear and the threats are mostly propaganda. It's your lack of knowledge that is depressing you, nothing else.
You take all the gloom and doom as gospel, rather than reading the Gospel.
If you want to get out of your depression, pull your head out of the sand.
You can start by watching these - then at least you will be able to scratch the man-made Global Warming HOAX off your list of things to worry about.
The Great Global Warming Swindle
Mass stupidity has been quite common throughout human history, and across pretty much all cultures, tribes, economic organizations and political systems.
You sound like you are part of the "end of the world" generation. So sorry. Happiness evades you and it's somebody's fault. Good luck in the future.
YOU might be comng to an end, nature ain't. Natures got years ahead before it dies off.
I don't think it is that bad, for a start the climate is not warming (although I wish it would) and CO2 is actually a blessing in disguise, it is causing our planet to be greener and is increasing plant bio-mass,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/31/ag...
Water shortage is mainly a north American problem and changes in farming practices will help.
fracking is underground and doesn't use up land resources.
The worlds population although high now will eventually stabilize as people become more educated, already places like Japan and some European countries have declining populations.
The internet is now making people more aware and less easily led by corrupt leaders.
New technologies are coming maybe fusion or safe reliable nuclear power.
Who knows perhaps the next century will a pleasant place for humans.
I agree with you this global warming is going crazy every day is something new in the news...
ROLL OVER AND GET UP ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BED THIS TIME. MIKE
Everyday I wake up and hear so much negativity. Whether it be on the news, in my science class, or just from my parents or random people talking in my school.
No, i'm not talking about local, stupid celebrity or friendship issues, i'm talking about the natural order of the earth and how in the next 100 years we are not going to be out of water and disintegrating from the heat of the sun.
I always hear about how if we don't stop global warming that eventually we are going to doom ourselves as a human species, and that if we don't change anything, we're basically screwed.
I try to do my best to save as much power, I recycle at my house, and I try to save as much water as possible. But is it all really enough?
One of the main things that freaked me out is that there is a huge aquifer in the hydrosphere that is literally being drained by these giant industries that need it to water crops to produce a ton of food
that really isn't all that necessary.
They say that if we keep draining it at that rate that it could be dried out in a matter of a few years. Then where will we get our food?
Where will we get our water? The hydrosphere is the main source where the liquid that makes up 60-80% of our bodies comes from.
Many other things such as population increase skyrocketing out of control, Fracking causing tons of valuable land to be used to harvest a resource that will just harm our earth even more.
Not to mention the way we humans are being treated.
Counties such as Africa where people are not even receiving enough food to feed a family of two. While Americans and the rest of the Western world stuff their faces, forcing their bodies to weigh 500+ pounds.
Countries governments corrupted.
Stupid wars being fought.
I feel as if the human race as whole is designed to take take take take take take and take. We never give anything back to the earth. Eventually it will be too late, and those who saw it coming will be the blamed by the other imbeciles who used up more energy in their lifetime than the whole of New York City 150 years ago.
Again, back to the reference of my question, I feel as if the natural world as we know it is coming to and end.
Thank you for listening to my rant if you've made it this far. I've had a lot of built up tension about topics such as this for the last few months and I needed to get it off my chest. I just wish there was the slightest bit of positive still left in this world.
Tl;dr: A bunch of worries about our race that i've had built up in myself for a while now.
This was prophesied in the Bible.
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