The Environment

In this weeks readings', Smallman and Brown discuss the importance of the environment, the environmentalist and how people affect the environment in the past, present and so to be future. Smallman and Brown also dedicated a whole section to the Amazon Rainforest Forest, located in South America, is the biggest rainforest in the world with a river just as amazing and tremendous. First before I go into to the vast ecosystem in the rainforest, let me inform you on the background of the environmental movement that was established in the early nineteenth century but only became a true movement in the early twentieth century. This movement shows high importance to deforestation, global warming and species loss. Many of which people today do not see but have a huge fear of it like a ghost. It was due to disasters like damage to the Great Lakes, growing concerns about nuclear energy or the nuclear disaster that occurred in Japan in 2011 that released radioactive water in the North Pacific Ocean did the world start worrying about the environment to the point it became a visible globally and politically. Even after all these cases about the environment and how important we, as people, rely on it, their are still people who deny this proof and simply tries to counteract that case with another. Anti-environmentalist Bjorn Lomburg , Danish author, and many other anti-environmentalist authors disagree with these occurrences and suggest that the environment today is improving. Now that you have a little background on the environmental movement and how it came about, let me write about the importance the Amazon has in today's environment. Smallman and Brown say "The Amazon is a powerful symbol for environment destruction, given the issue of deforestation and species loss." The Amazon Rainforest houses more then a thousand different plants and animal species and till this day more and more are being discovered. The Amazon also houses the world's biggest river stretching throughout most South America. The Amazon River Basin is so large it would cover most of the United States. This river basin is important to the world because it has freshwater that constantly flows off into the ocean and if you know geography you would know that the world is 71 percent water and 29 percent water. In the 29 percent of water, 97 percent is salt, which is not suitable for drinking, and only 3 percent is freshwater. As I stated the Amazon is the largest forest in the world, but Smallman and Brown also stated that forest is has a subpart, The Atlantic Forest, which stretches from northern Argentina to northern Brazil and only about 7 percent of the actual forest still remains. This is a major disaster only 7 percent or less is still remaining to once a vast ecosystem housing probably more then a thousands of different species now it merely base ground for many cities throughout this what use to be forest. As you know the Amazon is home to many diverse species of living things and taking away there land or home is immoral in every way imagine. They rely of their ecosystem for food and shelter just like we rely on the rainforest to produce oxygen for us to breathe, for freshwater for us to drink, for special plants to use as medicine and many more things we do on a daily basis that we sometimes take for granted.