Living Deficiently or Energy-Efficiently :: Economy Pollution Papers

To live deficiently or energy-efficiently: that is the question. Although the majority of us are aware of the pressing environmental problems we face daily, we are not very aware of the urgency to find a solution to them. Life on earth is built up like a wagon wheel; we can remove a few of those spokes and we might still be able to travel safely, but eventually the wheel will weaken and collapse. At that point, no amount of human ingenuity will allow us to reconstruct the wagon wheel so we can keep traveling on to the future. This fact is obvious, given our inability to completely clean up any damage our pollution has done to the environment—how can we expect to rebuild or repair a collapsed planetary ecosystem? We cannot keep consuming resources and damaging the environment at our current exponential rate. Exponential growth implies infinite expansion, but our Earth is finite, and its resources are finite. If something is not done about our wasteful use of the planetâ₠¬â„¢s energy and resources, our lives will be made miserable and desperate as the natural processes which support human life collapse like a flimsy wagon wheel made of sludge and decaying tree stumps. We will be living deficiently, if at all, according to our current standards of living. Pollution cleanup is no good; continuing to use the current rates of energy that we use without change is no good. We must concentrate on preventing environmental problems in the first place, and what’s more, we must figure out a simple, economical, and practical way that each of us can do it. This solution is energy-efficiency. Series of Topic Sentences to Follow Outline: It is necessary to find a practical resolution to environmental problems. Examples of these environmental problems include: These environmental problems pose a serious threat to humans because the planetary ecosystem is being slowly destroyed. We often like to use the less-impacting terms â€Å"degraded† or â€Å"injured,† but we shouldn’t use diction to hide the truth. By flagrantly using unnecessary quantities of energy, we are gradually destroying our environment—not â€Å"degrading† or â€Å"injuring† it, but destroying it. Our environmental problems are caused by pollution release, resource overuse and destruction, and carelessness towards the environment. The source of all these problems is the lack of human energy-efficiency in manufacturing products and, with greater contribution to the problem, the lack of energy-effiicient lifestyles.