I think we don’t realize just how much humanity takes the world for granted, especially places like the United States. Our lifestyle is that of greed and  arrogance, fighting and fighting and fighting to be on top. Well, guess what? We aren’t the only ones living on Earth. The U.S. is the model country, the place everyone strives to go to, the country every other country follows. The United States is considered a place of hope, similar to Zootopia (Zootopia), “where anyone can be anything.”

Somehow, we can’t see the problems facing us right in the face, staring us down from on high. We protest for equal rights, and freedom, and just a chance to live life. But, the thing is, all of that, it won’t mean anything in the near future. Problems like animal endangerment, global warming, pollution… We look at them, and we acknowledge them, heck, some even mock them, but we don’t do anything to stop them.

Global warming, the one horrifically dangerous situation we’ve put ourselves in that we can’t seem to unanimously greed as either a hoax or the truth. And why is this? The answer is two words: money, and politics. So many high ranking political figures receive yearly revenues from the fossil fuels industries, thousands, possibly millions, of dollars streaming in from a business that many would like to see eradicated. As long as those people remain in power, their outright denials leaving the public in a chaotic spree of arguments, tearing views in two and keeping the steady stream of money fresh. So many people are swayed by politicians with absolutely no scientific backgrounds, forsaking years of research that so many people have worked their entire lives to gather.

What we have done to the world, what we are doing, it is criminal. We punish poachers, when truly we should be punishing ourselves as well. Every person on the planet is an unintentional poacher, slowly killing off hundreds of thousands of animals every day. Endangered species aren’t solely caused by poachers. For most species, poachers are actually the minority of the reasons their endangered. Most times, the reason is us. It is human development, deforestation, habitat loss… The list goes on and on. We’ve killed off hundreds of animal species in the last few centuries, destroying hundreds of millions of ecosystems. It works similarly to the lost pen meme actually. This lost pen could easily be an animal, and without that animal, the ecosystem collapses.

Pollution is a disease we keep spreading, and one we barely try to stop. Sure, we see people and organizations speak of pollution and how to stop it, but truly, do we ever listen? Do we really think about the words flowing past our ears? Or does it all come in one door and straight out another. We hear of place like China with serious air pollution, or Flint, Michigan with a polluted water crisis, but do we care? No, no we don’t. And for many of us, we never will.

We as humanity are evolving, taking life to new highs, but also new lows. The seas rise while we play in our backyards. Global temperatures skyrocket as we eat at our favorite restaurants. The ice caps are melting, as we do nothing. Life that we consider lower than ourselves is dying beneath our feet, and those that aren’t trying to stop it are having little to no impact. So many care for the planet, wanting it to last for all the years to come. But with the way we are living now, it would be a miracle to last even a century.

The problems we have created are affecting the world now, not in some distant future, not in the distant past, now. Global warming isn’t some science fiction fantasy, some made up problem with a scripted solution. No. It is here now, and it won’t be going away. Not unless we find a way to stop it, and we do so quickly. The world is fading fast, much faster than many of us would like to believe. So, what are we going to do about it? What are you going to do about it?