Anna Miller

Giambanco

ENG170

8 February 2023

A Life Without Plants

Forest fires have become increasingly normalized and are predicted to get worse over time. This not only brings devastation to the beauty of nature, but to our health and our ecosystem. The overpowering demand for wood exploits these events, taking away the natural ways of life and causing a disturbance in our ecosystem which will end in tragedy for our planet. Humans are the biggest cause of all nature crises. The pollution that is left in our air is slowly killing all life on earth—something we have control over and the power to change. We as humans are destroying all life on earth and forest fires are a huge danger to the planet that can be prevented. Learning about this topic can help save lives or help repair the damage we have produced. Ignorance on the topic leads to the abuse of natural resources—forest fires caused by the greed of mass production in the forest industry not only leads to air pollution, but also takes away animal habitats. With no place for these animals to thrive, they can not live life efficiently which leads to extinction. Every plant and animal life directly relates to our lives and our sustainability.

All animals have a purpose to keep other animals regulated, for instance, if snakes were to go extinct there would be fewer predators that prey on warm-blooded species like mice. This could cause an infestation or overpopulation of a species which affects the next animal on the energy pyramid, again causing an imbalance in the food chain. When an animal becomes overpopulated it can throw off the entire ecosystem by causing a decline in its prey’s population. Eventually, this could lead to the extinction of many other species. Not only do forest fires affect animals but it affects plant life as well. The same ecosystem rules apply, each organism helps another one live. To take away plants is taking away our clean air, and food availability, even limiting medication accessibility. Plants give us a large variety of benefits. Without them we can’t grow fruits and vegetables, we can’t extract aloe vera for example which is used to medicate the skin and body. The biggest help plants give to all life is the filtration of clean air. Plants take in the carbon dioxide we breathe out and replace it with oxygen—clean healthy air we can breathe in, making it incredibly important as its use is necessary to maintain life. I believe we as humans are a part of this ecosystem and just as these other species benefit each other to sustain life, we need to benefit organisms to keep us all alive. When we abuse the use of natural resources it takes away the sustainability of all other life. Forest fires are caused by deforestation which takes away plant life, whose job it is to provide an energy source for animals and filter clean air. Animals not having necessary access to energy leads to a decrease in animal life alluding to distinction. If the natural wildlife is not there to go through the natural cycles that keep all life living there will be no life. I do not want to live on a planet that has no color, or other life, where its stability depends on our abilities to innovate in order to compensate for earth’s downfall. Knowing how a break in the ecosystem chain can cause a multitude of issues, could possibly change the way you treat the environment around you and change your point of view on how nature relates to you.

An organization called United Nations Environment Programme, which has advocated for environmental awareness provides a lot of information about the environmental crisis. They talk about organisms and how their daily living directly relates to human’s ability to sustain life. Showing their readers why it is important for their own benefit to take care of life on earth. They show us that humans are the issue in this global crisis because of our daily activities. Statistics have sown, “ 66 percent of ocean area is impacted by human activities, including from fisheries and pollution” (UNEP). Where nature is supposed to be at peace we as humans interrupt and destroy life because of the daily activities we choose to take. The United Nations Environment Programme not only gives its audience information about the undergoing changes in the environment, but also provides alternatives to reduce the harmful effects we cause to keep living a sustainable life. Under their “Sustainable Development Goals” section they enforce guidelines to help clean up the environment. Recycling as an example is talked about using statistics to show how much it can decrease pollution. I hear people say that recycling does not do anything because they don’t think a single person can make a difference. They go on to further prove my belief that recycling is extremely beneficial, whilst some might think one person can not make a change you have to remember people will follow your lead if you give them a reason to. This reason is the endangerment we face between life and death because of our nature’s health. It takes a team effort to make a difference, but reducing the damage wildfires have caused is a realistic possibility.   

I argue that deforestation and human activities are contributing to the rise in environmental destruction due to wildfires. Other people have argued against the claim that our actions are causing detrimental damage and instead argue that animals will over time adapt to become more resilient against climate change. They believe that these environmental disasters can force species to evolve for their own benefit. Examples specifically used in an ecology journal article called “Costs and benefits of relative bark thickness in relation to fire damage: a savanna/ forest contract” talk about the evolution of tree bark and how forest fires have pushed trees to become stronger with time. The journal uses the observation that years before humans, plant life was large and strong, after industrialization trees became smaller and were now multiplying. This brought more trees to our environment seemingly making it a good scenario but, these organisms were growing back weaker. The argument states forest fires can help plant life evolve to protect themselves and goes along to prove this point by analyzing bark thickness (Lawes, Midgley, Clarke). Their goal is to show that in areas with a higher risk of forest fires, tree bark is thicker in order to protect itself, as a result of adaption. One could use this in the argument that these natural disasters help evolve species of all kinds to be able to protect themselves, in result making these species stronger and more resilient as time goes on.

Evolution takes years to develop and at the rate our environment is declining, we simply do not have the time to wait for life to refurbish itself. We as humans can not wait until all plant life goes extinct to come back and have them be built stronger. Without plants, there is no fertile soil for food production, nowhere for animals to live, and no air filtration to keep the ozone layer (which is the earth’s atmosphere that absorbs ultraviolet rays of light to protect the environment from harm) intact. The argument that forest fires could be beneficial is unrealistic considering the ways it directly leads to the decline of all life on earth. Forest fires are harmful and are only one of the many issues leading to global decline. There are ways to prevent these disasters in an efficient way, but nothing will change without advocacy and building awareness. To teach others their roles in this life is to show them how strongly nature relates to you as humans and what kind of beneficial skills we can have in these roles. With these sources I have cited I can provide accurate information to spread awareness that forest fires are detrimental to humans and give solutions that can be used to decrease the damage we continue to do.

 

Works Cited

Lawes, Michael J., et al. “Costs and Benefits of Relative Bark Thickness in Relation to Fire 

Damage: A Savanna/Forest Contrast.” Journal of Ecology, vol. 101, no. 2, 2013, pp. 

517–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42580278. Accessed 9 Feb. 2023.

 

“Why does nature action matter ?” United Nations Environment Programme.  

https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/ecosystems-and-biodiversity/why-does-nature-actio

n-matter. Accessed 9 February 2023