Trees make up the majority of the products humans use on a daily basis. For example, books, paper, wood, food, and pencils. Over the years, humans have learned to adapt their life around these objects. With deforestation becoming so popular in the world today, humans may be forced to find a new way to make products using a different resource.
Over half of the world’s forests have been destroyed in the last 10,000 or so years — the majority of this loss has occurred in just the last 50 years, occurring simultaneously with a massive increase in the human population (Deforestation Effects, 2012). As the world’s population increases, more products are demanded and more factories are required to produce those products. However, these factories need a place to be built which more often than not are in forested areas continuing the process of deforestation. As these factories are produced on clear cut land, they pollute our environment by the excess waste through the smoke stacks. Although humans think they can find another way to clear the pollution from the air, our greatest source of decontamination are trees. According to American Forests, trees clean our atmosphere by intercepting airborne particles, and by absorbing ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and other greenhouse gases. A single tree can absorb 10 pounds of air pollutants a year, and produce nearly 260 pounds of oxygen- enough to support two people (Clean Air, 2016). Although trees cannot remove all air pollutants, the efficient decontamination of most of it is very beneficial to living organisms. As trees are being cut down, the amount of pollutants in the air being removed are decreasing leaving the air to be more toxic and unhealthy to breathe. The World Health Organization says air pollution is the world’s largest environmental health risk, as it has killed an estimated seven million people in 2012 alone. The vast majority of those deaths were due to cardiovascular diseases, namely stroke and ischemic heart disease (2015). Aside …show more content…
Therefore, there is a decrease in the amount of rainfall causing areas of cleared land to result in drought. Drought can be very dangerous for maintaining life on the planet. If clear cutting of trees continues at the rate it is going today, the lack of fresh water may lead to ‘water wars’ throughout the world. Water is a major resource for all living organisms whether it be for hydration or habitat purposes.
Not only is water a major habitat for many living organisms, land is a well. Seventy percent of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests, and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their homes (Deforestation, n.d). One of the most common causes of deforestation is humans seeking land for agriculture. Though humans believe they are doing the right thing by providing more land to grow crops for food, they are destroying the lives of other animals including their