Today, I am going to narrate you all, about a beautiful planet. That planet carries trillions of trees, beautiful creatures, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, Oceans everywhere. There, mountains are touching the clouds and birds chirping at the first ray of sun every day. It is the one and only our blue planet, Earth.

But now, time has changed. I only see the forests of concrete, water trapped in plastic bags, the noise of the morning & evening traffic, and huge mountains of garbage. One day, I went on a journey to find the cause of all these problems and I found something surprising. I searched out that it was a lack of awareness in people which was leading to the cutting of 15 billion trees per year and generating mountains of garbage which equals 200 Eiffel Towers.

From the last 10000 years, the earth’s temperature has remained constant. But from the pre-industrial 19^th century, the temperature of the earth has risen 1 Degree Celsius and now we are approaching 1.5 Degrees Celsius really fast. If we reach 2 Degree Celsius things would really turn disastrous. You must be thinking that .5 Degree Celsius doesn’t sound much. To put things in perspective at 1.5-degree increase, arctic ice will still be there during most summers.

But just a half a degree more and artic summers will be ice-free. That means polar bears, whales, seals, and seabirds will lose their habitats, mostly starve to death and go extinct. At a 2-degree increase, the urban population will be exposed to water shortage. Shimla, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi and so many cities in other countries are already facing water shortage.

At one hand, there are going to be severe droughts, while on the other, sea level will rise which would result in flooding of coastal cities, small island countries will vanish from the face of the earth. India and Maldives have already lost a few small islands due to global warming. At 1.5 degrees 6% insects, 8% plants, and 4% vertebrates will go extinct from the face of the earth. But just .5 degrees rise in temperature and these numbers will increase very much. This means that climate change is really happening.

Even if we fulfil all the promises of Paris agreement still the temperature of the earth will rise by 3 degrees by the end of the century. When India gained independence from the British empire each person had 5000 cubic. litres of water but now it has decreased by 1500 cubic litres.

India itself dumps 60% of the world plastic in oceans and by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish in it. The main root of these problems is population. In the last few decades, the human population had reached 1 billion but from the last 200 years, the human population has reached 7.5 billion. By 2021, India will be the most populated country in the world which will affect our environment. This shows the seriousness with which we are dealing with the issue at hand. We have still some time to save it from becoming worse by taking action right now. 

First, we must spread more and more awareness of this issue to the people around us. Second, to stand up together to save our mother earth by planting more and more trees, saving water and electricity, using an alternate source of energy like wind and solar energy, avoid wastage of anything which requires natural resources and energy to produce.

Here, I would like to emphasize that we should think wisely when we shop unlimited apparel, home accessories, or any other thing as excessive possession of these things ultimately leads to more destruction of our natural resources and creates lots of wastage and pollution in this process.

Let’s gift our future generations a Green, beautiful & Healthy Planet otherwise they are the ones who are going to suffer because of our ignorance and carelessness. We do not have much time to wait and waste. So, my dear friends, we have only one planet to keep us alive, we should not miss a chance to save it to make a better place.

Let’s not destruct earth, let’s construct Earth.

(The views expressed in the article are the author’s own. Let Me Breathe neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)