Okay, everyone, the joke is over: we need to stop treating Mother Earth like a garbage can.

People all over the world throw their trash out like it's nothing. This trash gets everywhere: from our oceans and water sources to our forests and beaches. We walk around like this planet isn’t our ONLY life source. Our trash ends up swallowed by whales, caught in a turtle shell, eaten by birds, and killing our wildlife. We need to start thinking about the other species that inhabit this beautiful world and stop acting like we are too good to clean up after ourselves.

Let’s face it: with the way things are headed, the world would be a happier and healthier place without humans. If humans were eradicated, we wouldn’t be destroying the earth’s natural resources. We wouldn’t be extracting every ounce of oil, coal, natural gas, and lumber we possibly can in order to better our lives. We wouldn’t be here to destroy every ounce of rainforest left. Rainforests used to cover 14% of the world’s land. However, within the last 40 years that 14% has dropped to 6%. SIX PERCENT. Humans have destroyed thousands of entire populations of animals, insects, and plants.

We need to stop arguing whether or not climate change is real. Scientists have proven the climate (and yes, the climate is different from the weather, for anyone who didn’t know) has been increasing at a much faster rate than normal (170 times faster than normal, to be exact). The constant increase of the climate can, AND WILL, cause worldwide droughts, extremely strong natural disasters, an increase in sea level, and the loss of ice in the Arctic Ocean by mid-century. These problems will cause COUNTLESS other problems within every single region of the globe.

It is because of us that this world is dying. We have the resources to reduce our carbon footprint, start fixing the environment, and treat this world better than we have – yet many refuse to do it. Instead of preserving our natural resources and switching to mainly using renewable resources (such as hydroelectric, solar, and the wind), governments have decided that we would rather save a little bit of money and just run the world dry of these nonrenewable resources, and make energy the problem of future generations.

We have giant holes in the ground that we stuff full of the trash we no longer want. We spend tons of money on things that we do not need, and will later be laying in a ditch somewhere, unable to be destroyed. We cut down trees to “make a better view”, we spend an extreme amount of money to hunt endangered species in Africa, we try to argue when the EPA regulates corporations and where they dump their slush, and we ignore the obvious signs of death. The ocean’s acid levels have steadily increased since the Industrial Revolution. Living creatures are becoming extinct at a much faster rate than normal, with 52% disappearing since 1970. Groundwater supplies are diminishing. How many more signs do we need before we actually step up and change?

As of right now, planet Earth is our ONLY way of surviving. From a single household to an entire country’s government to the entire world, we need to band together and we need to save our planet. She’s dying. She’s begging for our help. If we keep destroying the environment, she won’t be there to take care of us anymore: and that’s when we really are going to be in trouble.