Did
you know 40% of our oxygen comes from rainforests, but we cut down 80,000 acres of it everyday? If we continue at this rate
rainforests will all be gone in 30 years. And, in many parts of the world a drink of water can be deadly!
Everyone can
help reach goal #7 by changing our everyday actions! Goal #7 is about keeping our environment clean and healthy. We
need to keep what's left of our rain forests. We need to keep our air and waters clean and our lands safe from over
development.
Goal #1
is about helping people out of poverty, and to help people out of poverty they need jobs, but we need to make sure
those jobs don't harm the environment.
Also we
need to change the way we affect the environment. Many studies from around the world say the United States is the worst polluter of the world.
We
consume more energy and produce more waste than any other nation. We need to erase our footsteps on this earth as we
take them. That means we want to give something good back to the earth when we take something from it.
Next
time you go to the store think about walking or riding your bicycle instead of asking your mom or dad or friends
for a ride.
Have
you heard of global warming? The temperature of the earth is rising. This is not good for many reasons.
The
world is becoming warmer because of the exhaust from things like factories and cars. Factories and cars use fossil
fuels which destroy our ozone layer and, when burned, trap what are known as greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere. We are destroying our air through all of this pollution.
A warmer earth creates such high temperatures
that growing food is difficult. When food can't be grown people can't eat. When people can't eat they suffer from hunger.
When you suffer from hunger you eventually become too weak to work and you become sick. When you're sick you can't earn money
to take care of your family. This cycle must be stopped and you can help!
80,000
acres of forest disappear everyday and at least another 80,000 are degraded. The rain forests provide us with 40% of
our oxygen. We also get about 1/4 of all our medicines from discoveries found in the rainforest.
A
certain type of leukemia is 99% curable because of a periwinkle flower found in rainforests. If we cut down
the rainforests if we make the air so dirty that the trees become sick, if we make the air so dirty we become sick,
then what will happen to us?
Did
you know that in many places in the world just taking a drink of water can make you so sick that you can die? Goal
#7 wants to change this too.
Often people
living on less than a $1 a day do not have access to clean water. They are often living in slums without proper sewage
treatment.
If
you have to wash your clothes or get your drinking and bathing water from the river right by where
all the dirty water from the sewers and gutters pour in, you will probably become sick.
There
are at least 100 million people in the world today living in slums without proper sewage systems and clean water.
If
we clean our waterways and build proper sewage systems people will be healthier and so will the species living in the river.
If we make factories clean up and stop sending bad things into our air, and if we
control the cutting down of our forests, we can make the world a better place.
We
first must start with changing our own actions to reduce the damaging imprint we leave on the world. Let’s
get started!
