Over the years, the silt has been collecting in Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, and it is predicted that over the next few hundred years this lake will fill up with silt. This could threaten the entire Colorado River reservoir system. Just in the past 10 years, Lake Mead’s water levels have dropped by more than 100 feet and the basin is only half full. Something needs to be done to stop the trends and even
The working group in Lake Huron have invested over $500K in their project to help clean up the pollution (Lakes Huron). Research states, "salmon have all but disappeared from Lake Huron, and so have the anglers who spent tens of millions of dollars annually chasing them" (Sentinel). The Environmental Protection Agency have also devoted billions of dollars due to the pollution. In 2003, " Michigan's 10 busiest ports on Lake Huron saw about 1.2 million recreational fishing hours, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Last year, that number dropped to approximately 300,000- a decline of 75 percent"
But if my opponents did any research, they would realize that there is plenty of evidence to show that global warming is a real threat to this earth. In his essay “Now Or Never”, Bill McKibben writes: Consider hydrology, for instance. Warm air holds more water vapor the cold air, so there is an increase in evaporation in dry areas, and hence more drought—something that has been documented on every continent. Once that water is in the atmosphere, it’s going to come down someone—and indeed we have seen the most dramatic flooding ever recorded in recent years. In 1998, 300 million humans, one in twenty of us, had to leave their homes for a week, and month, a year, forever because of rising waters.
This devastation affects a majority of the U.S. being one of our largest sources of fresh water, and will only continue to deplete, as companies carelessly dump their waste into the lake. Consumption of fish from this lake will soon be obsolete if immediate action is not taken. These are all things that need to be considered by industrial businesses, families, merchants, fishermen, and environmentalists. As long as the waters are polluted the economy will experience great loss, and may even see jobs created by the Great Lake, eventually
A spill in any of the deep sea areas would reduce the biodiversity of that area through reductions of bird populations, fish-stocks and populations of marine mammals. All of which are already under severe threat of over fishing and habitat disturbance without this imposed threat. Furthermore the contamination of coastal and coral ecosystems will all lead to to damage on the livelihoods of fishermen and people involved the local tourism. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been described as the worst environmental disaster in the United States, releasing about 4.9 million barrels of crude oil making it the largest accidental marine oil spill. Most of the impact of this was experienced by the marine species.
New Mexico’s people use water to their advantage by expecting more to come. Understanding the difference between how the water retrieves itself proves that the amount of water being used is remarkably high. As Bruce Selcraig states “Albuquerque receives’ their water by an aquifer that led the public officials to believe it sat atop an underground Lake Superior but it was perpetually replenished underground by the Rio Grande (173)”. It had left the officials questioning about the amount of water that they thought was really there. Test showed the underground water basin had dropped by as much as 40 feet between 1989 and 1992 and nearly 140 feet in some places over the past three decades (174).
In this environmental disaster, 10 cubic meters of water and 4.5 million cubic meters of potentially toxic slurry were spilled into virtually untouched forest, lakes and rivers. If something like this happens at the Pebble Mine, then most of the fish and wildlife in Bristol Bay would be in danger of being killed. A species that would be greatly affected by this is the sockeye salmon. More than half of the world’s population of these fish lives in Bristol Bay. This means that the survival of this species would be threatened.
As a result of gas station paying more for their gasoline, this will increase the amount the customer will have to pay for gasoline. According to the Federal Trade Commission, The storm “affected 19% of the United States oil production. Hurricanes Katrina (and a smaller previous Hurricane Rita) destroyed 113 offshore oil and gas platforms, damaged 457 oil and gas pipelines, and spilled nearly as much oil as the Exxon Valdez oil disaster”. This caused oil prices to increase by $3 a barrel, and gas prices to nearly reach $5 a gallon. Because of the devastation of hurricane Katrina many of the United States oil refineries were damaged, causing a decrease in gas supply.
As a result of this, plants and animals are forced to adapt to significant changes that threaten their way of life. As explained by Suzuki in the article, every year at least twenty thousand species disappear forever and the rate of extinction is speeding up largely due to human activity. Many living things are now paying the price for all the man made pollution that has been created as a result of global warming. Furthermore we as a community do nothing to stop global warming and feel no sense of responsibility or duty to care for the overall well being of our world. Big businesses are releasing harmful chemicals into the atmosphere and oceans.
Annin writes, a growing global water shortage will put tremendous pressure on the water-rich regions of the world to open up the spigots (2007). The United Nation predicts that by 2025 two-thirds of the global population will face water shortages. You need to look only as far as what Russian farmers did as they looked to what they thought was a never ending supply of water in the Aral Sea. They began pumping from it’s tributaries to irrigate crops and “bloom the desert,” in little more than 14 years the results are catastrophic, The Aral lost 90 percent of it’s volume and 75 percent of it’s surface area, for