Hey you! Yes you… Have you ever wondered what’s inside, say, you’re cell phone? The modern cell phone alone contains rare materials like gold neodymium and tungsten. Parts the sizes of pennies are manufactured in dust free factories by special machines to nanometer tolerances. We are running out of these resources and need new ways to acquire them if we want to keep expanding, inventing, and innovating at our current rate. However, we need to protect our environment while still gathering these essential resources. Strip mining, hydrofracking, and deforesting are all things we have to avoid using to protect our planet.

Resources are being depleted faster than you can blink. According to Diane Toomey, an author of Yale Environment 360 “we are going to the last places left on earth that haven’t been exploited: the Arctic, the deep oceans, the inner jungles in Africa, Afghanistan.” Even once common materials like copper, tin and zinc are starting to become scarce. We have to start reusing these non-renewable resources instead of just burying them in the ground.


Now, just because we are starting to run low on resources isn’t an excuse to turn the whole world into a giant strip mine. Without regulations things will start getting out of control. We need green in our lives; shrubs, grass, and trees. Not the gray and brown of dirt and concrete. There is a difference between surviving and living. Surviving is being able to stay alive: Having enough food, water, a place to sleep. To truly LIVE one has to find enjoyment in things, to be happy, to smile.
Everyone knows about Chernobyl, The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and The BP oil spill… the list goes on and on. We need to stop taking risks, cutting corners, and exploiting loopholes. The BP oil spill was a perfect example of what to do. First off, the well pipe which was supposed to be filled with a special substance to prevent the oil from rushing out was filled with only seawater. Secondly, the device that was supposed to stop the flood of oil was broken. It had been this way for a long time. BP had known too. They decided to save a little money and left it. Broken. Waiting for a burst to happen. And then, on April 20, 2010 the inevitable happened. The well head burst totaling the Deepwater Horizon oil platform and releasing over 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico before the wellhead was finally capped on July 15 of the same year. Even today marine life is still found dead or mutated. Tar balls and pockets of sunken oil still exist around Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and California. We need to prevent more unnatural disasters from occurring if we want to keep our planet habitable.

However, many people don’t believe these facts. The Republican Party as a whole refuses to acknowledge the existence of global warming. The entire American society centers itself around the belief that the earth is full of boundless resources which we don’t have to worry about running out of. In essence, people believe that the earth is at the complete disposal of humans and we can do whatever we want with it. However, things like acid rain, smog, and holes in the ozone layer; things that didn’t exist 100 years ago should be a wakeup call to all the aforementioned people: “Hello, our world is changing and I’ll bet it’s got something to do with us…”

Our world is running out of steam and what are we doing? We’re throwing sand on the fire, burning the firehouse down, digging our own graves. We have to develop safer more environmentally friendly ways of gathering resources. Everyone can make a difference whether it be recycling, turning down the thermostat, walking instead of driving. Every little thing YOU do can make a difference.