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Sustainability
If there's one thing I remember from ninth grade biology, it's the main dynamic of an ecosystem. Each and ebery ecosystem has a carrying capacity, or a limit on the population it can withstand based on the ecosystem's resources. According to logic, the earth itself has a carrying capacity. Humans are notorious for disturbing ecosystems, which had been successful iin reaching equilibrium, and reducing them to nothing. Oil rigs, forests, the ozone layer, freshwater, and the arctic have all fallen victim to resource depletion. Resource depletion occurs when a population grows and takes more resources from an ecosystem than it can supply. Even before things took a turn for the worst during the industrial revolution, overgrazing and water contamination were imminent problems. People misused their farmland and destroyed the soil, only to move on and continue to do the same to an increasingly vast plot of land. This issue is even more grave in desert regions, where the desert inches closely behind each destroyed plot of farmland. In addition to wasting land on poor farming in the past, humans today are eating up the land the earth provides through overpopulation. There is increasingly less space for people to live. Overpopulation also is beginning to cause droughts sporadically. These minor incidents are a constant reminder that one day water will run out. Whether or not that will occur before we find an efficient way to renew our water sources, one can't tell. However, there are efficient ways to prevent resource depletion altogether. A strict set of rules will create a dystopian effect, and our relaxed commercials and show tunes about the environment aren't effective. The message needs to be avidly spread. World leaders have to be more willing to face the growing problem, rather than selfishly ignore it and save it for future generations to deal with. It is important to educate young people in order to make environmental care a way of life. The path to environmental improvement begins with acceptance, education, and action. Anybody can take action, but if Nobody does, Somebody will get angry, thinking that it's Everybody's job.
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An interesting quote shared by my coach influenced the theme of acknowledging the problem.