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By 2030, two-thirds of all fish is projected to come from fish farms. The industry is booming with its use of aquacultures. However, this rapid expansion is coming at a price. Chemical treatments infecting, farm fish escaping, and parasites spreading are all hurting native fish populations. In addition, omega-3 levels in salmon are dropping as producers use vegetable oil instead of fish oil to save money.
The environment will begin to degrade if the fish farm industry continues to grow without regulations. Native fish populations could get killed off, creating instability within the food webs and food chains of the ecosystems. In addition, consumers hardly know if fish were caught in the wild or farmed, and such information should be open to encourage conscious consumerism.
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The use of road salt is becoming a destructive task. It is not so much the actual road salt as it is that people are excessive in its use. For half an inch of snow, people use a disproportionately large amount of salt. This surplus salt then often finds its way into rivers. For instance, Mary C. Massey of Silver Spring wrote that Muddy Branch Creek's "chloride levels jumped four to five times from what they had been two months prior" after road salt was used on icy roads.
Advocating the absolute banning of road salt would be ridiculous, as many states in the U.S. truly need road salt to prevent accidents during the winter season. However, a more conscientious use of it can protect the environment as well as prevent tragedies on the road. Glitter is annoying, pointless, and, now, found to be bad for the environment. Since glitter is essentially microplastics, they can pollute marine environments, leech chemicals into the water, and potentially pose harm to marine life if ingested. To combat these pollutants, the UK is implementing a ban on microbeads, a type of glitter found in face washes and body scrubs.
I have never been a fan of glitters, and I have never understood why they were in body scrubs. It is not as if it helps in the cleaning process; if anything, it impedes it. Luckily, some companies are moving towards biodegradable forms of glitters to reduce the environmental impact. However, I never purchase glitter products anyway. As investors worry about the Bitcoin bubble bursting in the near future, environmentalists are worrying about the excessive energy use of the crypto-currency. Bitcoins are "mined" by computers in vast data centers that guzzle large amounts of energy in the process. Bitcoin uses 32 terawatts of energy every year, enough to power about three million U.S. homes. And energy use is only to increase by crypto-currencies. This energy use is tied to uses of fossil fuels.
As of now, I am quite uneducated on the topic of crypto-currencies. I am not sure if it is a fad or the future of the world. Nobody knows. However, it should be noted that mining for gold, the resource that backs our current forms of currency, also require vast amounts of energy. A classic debate I have heard during the holiday season is regarding what type of Christmas tree one should get: real or artificial? While real trees fill the house with the scent of pine, we are cutting down trees, which couldn't be good, right? Moreover, using plastic trees eventually just dumps them into landfills. It has been found that the decision should be based on how long one plans to use the tree. For instance, people that prefer a new tree every year should get a real tree to reduce resource production. However, if one plans to keep a tree for over nine years, plastic is the way to go, as this portion of time is the "break-even point."
As a child, I would always ask my parents for a real tree, wanting that pine scent, but we always kept the same artificial tree since I was 6 years old. Looking back, I see they were keeping environmental interests in mind (and likely economic interests as well). I will likely continue this tradition with my children. Studies have found that food production including growing crops, raising livestock, fishing and transporting all that food to our plates is responsible for 20% to 30% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. However, altered diets that reduce meat consumption could lower it to 13% to 25%. Thus, a healthier diet leads to a healthier environment. Eating meat is the most inefficient of all food sources, as it has the least amount of energy density compared to plants and grains.
These studies may prompt individuals to soon relinquish their meat-heavy diets. To ask everyone to immediately go vegetarian may be a stretch, but to at least have "meat-free" days several times a week may be the first step towards a vegetarian-Earth. I hope to eventually become a vegetarian in the future. On December 4th, President Trump reduced the size of two national monuments by two million acres, the largest rollback of federal land protection in our nation's history. Bears Ears National Monument, shown in the image above, will be reduced by 85 percent. These decisions to rollback land protection come to please many of the big oil companies who wish to extract resources from the land. Many fear that this decision to open this conserved land to oil extraction will set a dangerous precedent to remove the protections of other lands.
The fight to protect Bears Ears is the most important, as if we lose this battle, other long-protected lands are at risk of being opened to private companies. Who is to stop Trump from opening Yosemite to logging companies? The legal battle that is to follow will be paramount in the American conservation movement for environmentally-conscious citizens across the country. At 8 PM Pacific time on December 6th, an alert was sent to millions of Southern California residents to warn them about the impending wildfire which had been spreading in the area. The extraordinarily high winds combined with it being nighttime prompted authorities to alert citizens of the impending fire using this service usually reserved for Amber Alerts.
This move to use the phone messaging system is notable as it represents a transition from how authorities hesitated to alert citizens in the recent Napa/Sonoma fires. By monitoring the wildfire situation early and alerting citizens prior to the situation becoming too dangerous, citizens had ample time to evacuate and save belongings. In a climate-change riddled world we are to live in, quick communication will be necessary to ensure the survival of all. Keystone pipeline spills 210,000 gallons of oil on eve of permitting decision for TransCanada11/16/2017 Today, on November 16, the Keystone Pipeline running from Canada to the Great Plains spilled about 5000 barrels of oil or 210,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota. This event preceded the upcoming vote on Monday regarding the Keystone XL pipeline which has been protested for its environmental effects. In the past, President Trump has "given the green light" on this project, but the Public Service Commission of Nebraska must vote on this Monday. Luckily, no bodies of water were contaminated.
Hopefully, this unfortunate circumstance can end up being beneficial in the fight for environmental preservation, as this event can be the reason why the Keystone XL Pipeline debate is finally put to rest. This tragedy can be the stepping stone towards more renewable energy to replace the expensive, destructive fossil fuels on which our society has become too dependent upon. |
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