Exploitation Of The Environment

It’s sad to say that my children may experience the earth at a time where they may be a serious shortage of water, food shortages, and extreme climate which will make survival difficult. The continuous exploitation of the earth resources through the 19th to the 21st century has slowly crept up on the world and we are facing climate change and environmental disaster. The environmental problem we are challenged with is because of the greed for commodity goods that has led to mass production which has enormous environmental impacts on the earth. At the beginning of the semester in my Consumer Society class each student accessed their own consumer routine and as the course continued we learned about how global trade has expanded from the 13th century …show more content…
A corporation called Smithfield spilled millions of gallons of animal waste into the New River in North Carolina which was twice as big as the Exxon Valdez spill and is one of the largest environmental disasters that still affects that area (Foer, 178). This is concerning because the availability of fresh water is one of the largest concerns of the world, California is already facing fresh water shortages and African countries are faced with insufficient fresh water. The agricultural sector is the leading contributor to the world’s water quality because manure is spilling and leaking into waterways from lagoons that hold millions of gallons of waste (Humane society, 2A). Humans are able to substitute our meat diets with plants, but unfortunately are unable to substitute the need for water. The lavish lifestyles to include meat in our diet like mine are the reason why freshwater concerns are a major problem in the world. There’s a famous saying, not until the last resource is extracted from the earth, will humanity realize that we cannot live off money. It’s very sad to say that if I don’t change my diet of eating mostly meat along with billions of other people, then my children may live in a world where climate change and the inability to sufficient freshwater will devastate billions of people. Eating a high meat diet does …show more content…
Antimicrobial- resistance is happening because 24.6 million antibiotics are being fed to farm animals so they will not develop sickness and also so they gain more weight so more money can be made from their meat (Foer, 140). So many people like me that have a high meat diet are becoming resistant to anti-biotic because through the meat they eat they are building up immunity to anti-biotic. This is a major problem because pathogens are adapting to anti- biotic and turning into zoonotic diseases like the Spanish flu in 1918 where it killed 50-100 million people (Foer, 124). This is extremely scary because outbreaks like Swine-Flu are becoming a huge risk that could potentially whipe out millions of people on earth. Lastly, the relationship between the biggest national killers like heart disease, cancer, and stokes has a strong correlation with meat consumption because of the high cholesterol meat products posses (Foer, 143). As more Canadian and American’s eat meat products from Macdonald’s and other fast food chains their risk of obesity and other related illnesses like cancer and heart disease increase. People are dying from heart attacks at a huge rate because of their poor food choices and daily meat reliance. It worries me how much my family eats meat because as my parents get older the risk of health concerns increase and eating a huge meat based diet increases these risks. I’m so