Global warming is much more than just abrupt temperature change or melting icebergs, it is affecting every living organism and leading to an imbalance in our ecosystem. These calamities like droughts, and floods caused by our irresponsible behavior towards the planet lead to a crunch of food items and safe drinking water. Animals on the other hand are in grave danger just like us and have to face exploitation, poaching, and ultimately extinction. Clearly, global warming and environmental pollution are a harsh reality of today’s time that is depleting our only HOME. The situation is getting worse by the day. Still, the question is, what are we doing to safeguard our planet? Just making banners, posters, and giving speeches won’t help unless we actually take a step forward for the betterment of our Mother Earth.

Let us first know about some causes and significant areas of improvement, so that we can adopt some easy steps in our daily life to protect the planet. Firstly overuse/ over-exploitation and wastage of resources like water, fossil fuels, wood, etc. needs to be reduced to a certain level. We have been exploiting the planet and its resources with such impunity as if we can move to any other planet after Earth dies.  Non-renewable resources like minerals, precious metals and fossil fuels are getting exploited by humans at a larger scale and people are not aware of ways to lessen the degradation and exploitation of resources. We need to opt for the alternative sources, like solar power, biofuels, wind energy and so on, because these renewable energy sources help in reducing the level of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.

Pollution caused due to industries, vehicles and other greenhouse gases like methane, and carbon dioxide directly impacts the atmosphere and increases the temperature as well as worsens the air quality. To reverse this, we should start planting a lot of saplings to control this harmful effect of pollution/ so that this precious green cover doesn’t fade away.

Thus just with a little bit of awareness, concern and changing our lifestyle by including effective measures like recycling, reuse and preservation of resources, we can definitely improve the current scenario and bring back the lost glory of our planet, our home.

Are these kind of lifestyle changes easy to adopt?

A change in habits is never easy to bring. However, there are some easy and effective steps to adopt, which will be beneficial for us and the planet:-

1-    Buy only what you will use- Excessive consumption of goods means environmental pollution caused due to exhaustion of natural resources during the manufacturing, transportation and dumping of goods. Hence we should buy only those goods which are necessary for the time being and shouldn’t waste the resources.

2-  Donation of used goods- we can donate the used goods like clothes, appliances, books and other items to needy people rather than throwing them away.

3-  We should use cloth or jute bags instead of plastic bags.

4-  Upcycling- Use plastic items again in a creative way like as planters or organizers, so that it doesn’t go in the trash and harm the environment.

These easy steps can be taken to protect the planet and its resources.

* Can you please name some steps that we can take to safeguard our planet?