by Throughout humanities greatest endeavors, discovering and exploring unknown or extreme parts of the Earth has always been at the heart for the bravest of humanity. From the deepest depth on the Mariana Trench to the arduous and dangerous journey to the south pole in Antarctica. With the help of curiosity and scientific equipment’s, humanity has conquered them all and made our impact as mankind truly global.
Unfortunately, while these feats of achievements are commendable and surely a proud milestone for humanity, it seems that something else has beaten humans to that milestone. Of course, no creature is as ubiquitous and overwhelming as Homo Sapiens, that said the thing has beaten humanity in terms of presence is… plastics? Well yes, to be more accurate, it is our impact as humans that has a far greater presence than anything in this world. Put simply, there is not a single step human has taken without our impact being there first. In fact, almost 95% of the Earth’s surface has been modified by humans directly or indirectly (Kennedy et al. 2020).
Take the Mariana Trench mentioned at the beginning as an example, when American explorer Victor went on to break the record for the deepest dive ever, he found exciting new species, crustaceans and pink snailfish never seen before. But the only familiar thing near his submersible is plastics. Plastic bags, and sweet wrappers to be exact. This is unsurprising to scientist since we have known that humanity dumps millions of tonnes of plastic every year to the ocean, its presence is bound to be expected (Morelle 2019).
All these examples come to show that humanity has a far greater impact than one might expect initially. What we do can have implications for even the most extreme part Earth that no one will expect. It is safe to say that most of us will never experience nature’s pristine beauty in its purest form, but there have been efforts to preserve its beauty albeit with human intervention such as national parks and convention sites. However, it is up to us to preserve the remaining 5% of untouched land, nearly 7 million km², most of which is found in the tundra, deserts, and forests (Kennedy et al. 2020).
Source
Kennedy, CM, Oakland, JR, Theobald, S, Baruch-Mordo & Kiesecker, J 2020, ‘Global Human Modification of Terrestrial Systems’, NASA Socioeconomic Data and Application Centre, viewed 2 March 2024, <https://doi.org/10.7927/edbc-3z60>.
Morelle, R 2019, Mariana Trench: Deepest-ever sub dive finds plastic bags, BBC News, viewed 2 March 2024, <https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48230157>.
Whoa, how interesting! How would you describe the changes in human lifestyle over the years and how they affect the natural world around us?
Humans have definitely become more civilized over the centuries, congregating means producing things at scale with standardization. This will inevitably reflect into our environment where diversity is definitely more homogenized compared to our hunter gatherer days. For example, large acres of land being planted with a few species of crops and the flattening of lands for human development.
I noticed the topic you discuss is mainly surrounding that plastics as the product of humanities are one of the rudimentary of reason for the impact in our current environment. Can you talk more about the aspect of internal factors such as humans’ activities, including factory urbanization and agriculture and how does the impact plays into the side of climate change and degradation of the ecosystem?
Human urbanization and our widespread agricultural practices certainly affected the ecosystems that surrounds it. The most noticeable effect of this is the homogenization of ecosystems around the world in the form of homogenous commercial crops and livestock in large acres of land. The example of this is corns and mazes, and cattle and rats in cities. In terms of climate change, large portions of a city is laden with roads which heats up the city more that usual since they absorb the sun’s heart. This in turn causes people to rely more on air conditioners which contributes to climate change.
Indeed, humanities have made so much impact on the earth, amusing and of course worrying at the same time. However, seeing the raise in awareness and environmental activism gave me a bit of relief 🙂
PS: nice blog btw
Haha thanks, thats what im trying to achieve with this blog.
As it was mentioned that plastic was found at the bottom of the dive, made me wonder about the impact of micro-plastics to the environment too. In what ways do microplastics differ in their environmental impact compared to larger plastic items such as bottles or bags? It could be anywhere, probably inside our bloodstream too. So while Victor have findings of the large plastics at the bikini bottom, is it possible that he was surrounded by microplastic too?
Victor isn’t surrounded by microplastic since about half of it floats and half of it sinks to the bottom of Bikini Bottom. It doesn’t permeate water per say but that doesn’t mean its impact isn’t as ubiquitous, SpongeBob will still feel it though. The main difference between microplastic and larger ones like plastic bags is its uptake into the food chain. For example, the vegetables in the Krabby Patty will consist a small amount of microplastics, and when SpongeBob eats a million (conservative estimate according to experts) Krabby Patty’s in its lifetime, it will eventually total to a significant amount that can cause many adverse health effects compared to a single big piece of plastic floating on the ocean.