The Future View

 7 April, 2074

Hello Everyone! 

    Today, our world is more than just destroyed. The glaciers have all melted; the sea levels have rose beyond our expectations; the arctic species including polar bears have went extinct; the tropical storms hit our coastlines about every week; we only have a billion trees left in the world; there is more plastic in oceans than water; and many more catastrophic events are yet to happen that cannot be stopped now. 

    But why is this? And more importantly, could it have been stopped? I believe that most of us know the answer to the former question, which is that the environmental damage caused to the world has been due to human activities. The burning of fossil fuels, throwing of waste in the environment, consuming natural resources at a rate faster than they could be replenished – all this led to our environmental condition today. 

    Apparently, we have been doing these activities for centuries, starting with the earliest modern factories of the 1800s. Continuing into the 1900s, and the early twentieth century, we had still practiced those thus polluting the environment. But there was a time when it could have been stopped, and the world could have prevented the situation it has today. 

    The 1800s, and much of the 1900s was not the time we could really have made a change because we were relatively unaware about the effects of our activities. But starting in the 1970s, we began to realize the impact of our activities, and tried to combat it by spreading awareness through the first Earth Day. Although the 1970s was the first major trial to stop negative environmental impact, the most feasible time we could have made a change was in the decade of 2020s. It was the time when we had widespread awareness and knowledge about the environment. It was the time when we had the technology - including electric cars - that we could have adapted to the cause. And most importantly, it was the time when it was not too late to save the environment. 

    So ultimately, our years of the 2020s were one of the most crucial years in which we could have saved the world. And a person could have said in those years that if we now take initiatives to change our impact on the environment, we can still preserve the world. But 2074 is no time for regretting about the past because what is done is what is done. We do not have technology now that can save humanity from acts of its own.