Environmental Apathy in Young Adults Essay

"Save the Planet," "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," "Go Green." Quotes like these have become a commonality in today's age. We all are familiar with the large efforts to help preserve the environment. In "Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments," Thomas E. Hill Jr. sums up his essay by stating, "The point is not to insinuate that all anti-environmentalists are defective, but to see that those who value such traits as humility, gratitude, and sensitivity to others have reason to promote the love of nature" (688; par. 4) This excerpt provides the thesis behind Hill's argument. The author found that

We have become a very wasteful society where it seems as if everything is disposable; as a society, we need to be conscious of just how much waste we produce and what we are able to do to reduce that amount to protect our environment.

Everyone in my generation has probably grown up seeing ads or watching videos about pollution or about the environment in general, so much, to the point that these constant reminders about protecting our planet are already part of the norm for us. While these reminders have had positive effects, like how more and more people have become informed of the Earth’s condition, many people, myself included, still remain indifferent to the threats our environment faces. I won’t lie; I’m no saint or crusader for the cause, but every now and then certain videos or articles strike a chord within me and makes me reflect on the way how I’ve been living affects the environment. One such article was the one we read last week in class, “The Sixth Extinction” by Elizabeth Kolbert in the Upfront magazine.

Many Americans do not realize the full extent of how much we negatively affect the environment. There has been quite a bit of research and studies conducted on how to become more environmentally friendly; however, these are simply ideas and without action taken from citizens it is all worthless. It is quite exhilarating to have a goal and then have that goal be achieved; you get to see all your hard work be paid off. Many goals are inspired from one thing or another. The documentary No Impact Man makes you feel motivated to take a stand and help the environment. In the documentary, it is awesome to see how hard this family worked through the year to make a change and aid the environment. After calculating my carbon emissions, finding out how

Aldo Leopold laid the foundation for environmental awareness decades ahead of a “ecological conscience” (257). There have many pleas to reconnect humanity with nature since the release of Leopold’s cherished book. Intuition and reason tell us that living in harmony with our world is more than idealistic—the future of our planet depends on it. The desire for harmony is not new one. Humans have long time sought to live in peace. It is genuine feelings of love and

I know today that it takes more than activism to create change. Hailing from a family deeply involved in environmental politics and science, the wellbeing of the environment has always been something I’ve

Specific Purpose Statement: To persuade my audience to make recycling mandatory throughout all of Colorado. Thesis: Colorado should make it so that recycling is mandatory throughout the state. Pattern of Organization: Problem/Solution Introduction I. Attention Getter: Imagine a future where the Earth is covered in so much trash that we don't have room to live.

How is picking up trash going to help our environment? Research has shown, you may or may not know that our Earth has a hole in its ozone layer, due to society littering and polluting the air. Not only that, but by picking up everyday items such as soda cans and plastic bottles you can save hundreds, if not thousands of Animals, such as birds, bunny's, ducks, deer, fish and not to mention seals and many more different kinds of Animals from choking and eating trash that can potentially kill them. Of course it may not seem like just the two of us can do much, but remember in theory a little can go a long way.So if each individual in this class could vow to just clean up after themselves, Recycling

Ever since I was young, I’ve always wanted to change the world. I suppose I got this notion by watching superhero shows as a kid. However, unlike the heroes on television, I didn’t have any powers; therefore, I had to think of a new way to change the world. Thus, I came up with the idea of recycling. Annually, we dump over two billion tons of waste into landfills. The waste from these landfills contributes to environmental problems. Consequently, we can’t go a day without recycling, or we risk the chance of destroying the Earth through accumulation of pollution. Unfortunately, recycling is taken too lightly; that’s why I’ve made it my mission to inform my community of the necessity of recycling.

But it’s important for people to keep a strong and positive mentality. If every person were to tell themselves “what I’m doing isn’t going to make a difference, so I should stop” nothing would ever change. It’s incredible what positive impact we could have if we all did tiny things to help our oceans, and that’s what I want people to realize. Our oceans are danger, it’s because of us. These oceans provides us water, air, food and so much more. By all of us stopping/reducing the use of single-use plastic (plastic bags, water bottles, straws, cups, utensils, dry cleaning bags, take-out containers), microbeads, by doing weekly beach cleanups, and by supporting organizations and bans that help with our ocean, we would quickly begin to make a difference in our polluted waters. Many may say this would take to long, or that nobody cares. Which is true. It is going to take a long time, and many people don’t care but that’s because there not informed. We only have one planet, we can’t run anywhere else if destroy this one. We need to realize the importance of taking care of our oceans. It will take a long time, but we all need to start

III. Speaker Credibility- Recycling helps improve the environment and it's also a very simple task that we can perform in our everyday lives so why are we not doing it?

Along with my love for the environment came a pain in watching it suffer around the world as human development encroached onto once untouched regions. I felt powerless and desperate to somehow use my individual influence, no matter how small, to slow the damage to the planet and lessen the impact a growing population was having as we dive deeper for resources.

Though people are uneducated about the problems we have at hand and even some still seem to not care when informed, I still hold out hope. There are people who care, and those people will make a difference because every small difference leads to a bigger difference. “Attitudes are also changing… the thousands of protests against chemical plants and waste incinerators show the extent of concern about the environmental health.” (320-321, When a Billion Chinese Jump). I hold out hope that we can change the global environmental problems we faced and make a difference. Though this won’t be easy to change it won’t be impossible.

Deep ecologists are concerned about the protection of both human and non-human life forms. It is the belief of deep ecologists that equating value solely to monetary values to humans was prejudice toward other species. This means that regardless of whether or not saving the environment would be profitable for mankind, we must protect the environment. If there was no environment, we would cease to exist; therefore, whether money is involved or not, saving the environment is always profitable because even if humans do not gain money from it, another species will gain something from it. Deep Ecology can be contrasted by its opposing theory in the way that it expresses a more genuine concern about the environment as opposed to the ideas expressed in shallow ecology, which is that the preservation of mankind should be our main focus.

Arne Naess said that deep ecology is “The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movement”-