Pollution affects poor coastal regions

     Have you ever woke up one day and decided that you wanted to go for a walk? Have you ever went on that walk at a local park and noticed small pieces of trash floating around the ground, being pushed by soft breezes of summer air? Here's a better question: does it bother you? In today's society, it is far too common for people to overlook the issue of pollution. Most people consider pollution to be some sort of myth conducted by aliens from NASA who want to rule the world, and not the McDonald's bag full of trash they threw out of their car window while driving back to school after lunch. Most people think: "eh its just one wrapper how bad could it be?". Well... that's exactly the type of thinking that has created the situation that earth is in. What those people polluting don't realize is that the human race itself is a species on the brink of mass extinction. Those people don't realize that their little polluting acts are just one little piece of a much larger modern day culture that i refer to as "pollution culture" and if you think that a solution to this "tiny" issue can be fixed by throwing trash into a trash bag as opposed to the ground, you're still dead wrong. Allow me to tell you why. The pollution culture stretches far beyond the realm of littering. The pollution culture includes every act of pollution committed by society day by day, more specifically, the American society. This includes: agriculture, raising livestock, driving cars, making products, littering, eating, shopping, wearing, walking, talking, lighting, living. Every little action done by the classless modern day human ties to pollution in one way or another. lets take ground beef for example. Billions of humans eat ground beef everyday. Ground beef comes from cow, ergo, billions of cows are raised every year dedicated to human use.  These issues not only affect humans everywhere, but especially affect people in poor coastal regions.
  
      One issue that affects poor coastal regions Cows take up: 1,110 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 sq ft. of forested land, and 20lbs of carbon emissions. So when you take into consideration that not only is the human race is limited on fresh water supply (we only have access to 1% of fresh water resources) and we are using over 1,100 gallons of water per cow, and that these cows also emit ten times more methane than a human being, you can assume that the results will be quite disastrous. Raising these animals is also severely bad for carbon emissions. Many live stock farms emit more carbon than factories, cars, and humans combined. We can clearly see the effects of extremely high carbon emissions  (the earth is obviously much warmer considering as a species, our activities emit 40 billion tons of carbon every year). With Carbon emissions like this, the ice caps have began an extreme melting phase, where they are declining at a rapid rate. This is an extreme problem for people in coastal regions. When the sea level rises, it can flood these coastal regions leading to high death numbers. This is also a problem because with a warmer climate comes more extreme drought. For these countries already in drought, that can be devastating.  Many People in poor countries like Haiti resort to going hungry, and satisfy their imperative hunger by eating cookies of dirt, Since they often lack the water and food they need. Many of the people in poor coastal regions also rely on fish as a source of food. The fish that swim in these oceans often nibble on bits of plastic that float around freely in the ocean. The islanders then capture those fish and use them to feed their people, and as we in educated countries are aware, eating plastic is in no way safe. So now you realize that A) these people don't have any water, and B) we are dumping our trash into the ocean that they rely on for food and their food is now contaminated with trash from developed countries.


     Another major issues that directly affects the inhabitants of poor countries is electronic waste. After a computer has reached the end of its life ( or any electronic device such as a television) they are often shipped off to poor countries and dumped in landfills where villagers then scavenge for parts from these electronics and sell them in their country to make a living. Doesn't seem so bad right? One mans trash is another mans treasure. Well, the problem isn't actually that its trash, the problem is that the screens of these electronics often contain high amounts of lead, mercury, etc. (things you do not want to step barefoot in or inhale).  In one Nat Geo article, the author even said "E-waste has many types of poisons built into it. Some of these toxic substances are what make the devices safe when they operate" (E - Waste) Electronics are not the only thing we ship off to these countries either, often we will send even our typical trash to landfills across the world, where the same exact situation I described only a few sentences ago occurs. Many times these landfills and extremely polluted areas lead to high amounts of disease, birth defects, and ultimately death.


      We has humans, or more specifically American's have failed to realize the very dangers of our careless, reckless, non nonchalant, polluting behaviors as if the earth could simply process all of our pollution in such a way that it would keep the resources we need (air, water, food) for us to thrive indefinitely as a species. The failure to recognize the issue has in it's own unforgiving way become apart of modern day culture. As of now, we are facing extreme droughts, heat waves, natural disasters, loss of habitat, loss of biodiversity, change in global climate, change in ocean currents, change in wind currents, and we have left our own permanent scar on the earth from the trash we have dumped in our oceans. All of this has promoted a new study of science called  anthropogenic studies (the studies of pollution). The fact that we have, as a species, as a whole, done this to the earth is completely catastrophic and embarrassing. If we as a species are not wiped out as a whole by our own mistakes, then we shall pay a devastating price for our actions. It has become a cultural norm to overlook the effects of pollution. People have become so obsessed with social media, television, movies, sports and every other little thing they could choose over our environment. Culture has been destroyed almost entirely by things like selfies, parties, and substance abuse. Especially in places like America, where every day millions of Americans indulge in fast food, use plastic bags to shop for food, and drive their cars to work. The worst thing of all of this is that even if some people do care, the majority does not. The majority of American's do not care that the last working anti-biotic failed, the last black rhino died, or that the fish we consume from the ocean eat the plastic we throw in there. If we fail as a country to come together and stop our own ignorance of the true issues we as a species face, then we will perish, and that is something i am not willing to give up. If you wish to look into the facts for yourself, you can check out these links, and read for yourself.

Cowspiracy

Climate change

marine pollution
E waste