Tag: climateleadership

What Does The Earth Day Signify to You?

I hope you are paying attention to the amount of garbage that people throw into our environment and our nature, almost everywhere. At least here in Finland, some people think it is normal to throw all kinds of garbage e.g. through the car window, from their boat etc. It looks horrible when you walk on the streets, and in nature. All the garbage on the walkways and streets, in the forests, lakes, everywhere. Throwing garbage into nature should be illegal.

You are smarter than that. You do not throw any kind of garbage/waste into nature. Perhaps you make others aware of this too, or even pick up some garbage while walking in nature.

Natural resources are becoming scarcer and more vulnerable. Our environment and nature cannot keep up with our current consumption habits. It is time to rethink, recycle, manage our resources better and with improved sustainability, because with a rapidly growing world population this planet becomes more crowded than ever before, while our environment has already suffered significantly. The evidence is everywhere: in our air, in our soil, in our water bodies.

In many major urban areas and cities worldwide, the air has become so polluted that people have to wear respirator masks due to toxic air quality. In many polluted cities, the air quality is so poor that you cannot even see the sky, at least not a natural sky. Instead, it is blocked by dirt and pollution, falling down on the ground as toxic rain or simply as toxic particles.

As a result of poor soil and wastewater management, whereby most of all wastewater is being dumped directly back into nature without any kind of prior purifying treatment, our soils are suffering from many kinds of problems, including acidity. Poor soil management leads to many additional problems, such as erosion, and a significant fall in nutrients in crops and plants.

Our water bodies, rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans, are more acidic than before. The actual numbers may sound low, but even small changes in acidity or chemical structure of a water body will have significant impacts and (possibly) lead to major problems not only in the water bodies themselves, including flora and fauna, but also to all life on Earth.

All vegetation on this planet, including forests, protect us from harmful toxins in the environment and in nature. Forests and trees all around our planet absorb much of the carbon dioxide and other pollution released into our atmosphere by human activities. Growing deforestation and poor forestry lead to additional environmental problems. Depending upon the environment and type of tree, it takes many years, even several decades, to replace a cut down tree by a new one.

Environmental protection and sustainable development is not only a task for environmentalists. It is something that concerns all of us. Every day. Everywhere. Us human beings cannot keep up with current practices, or how industrialization in the past century or two have impacted our environment and nature. Protecting the environment is not equal to giving up a good lifestyle. On the contrary, protecting our environment and developing sustainable economies will in fact improve our lives in terms of a healthy environment, air, soil, and water quality.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Looking forward to your comments. If you found this post helpful, do share it with your digital networks.

Connect with me on Twitter @annemariayritys – for climate/environment-related posts only @GCCThinkActTank. Subscribe to Yritys Executive Services to receive my newsletter delivered personally to you.