By participating in this program you will consider how your lifestyles and daily consumer choices impact the environment. You will also explore how you, as an individual or part of a concerned citizen group, can bring about change in government policies and environmental practice.

Background Information

Do you need to be concerned about the environment? Certainly yes! If we do not make changes in our attitude towards our resources and the environment we might damage our planet beyond repair. To better understand the urgency of the problem let's look at our planet as it exists today.

On New Year's day, January 1, 2000 some people believed the world would end. The world didn't end but it does have a problem; over 6 billion people entered the new millennium. The population of the earth is increasing at an alarming rate. Between 1980 and 2000 the earth's population increased by 1.5 billion people. The US Census Bureau predicts that the world's population by the year 2025 will exceed 10 billion people. What effect do all of these people have on our planet?

• Abundant energy use, fueled by the prosperity of industrialized nations, is a major source of stress on the environment. According to the World Resource Institute, energy created by burning coal, oil and natural gas produces carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for about half of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Nitrogen oxides and Sulfur dioxide also created by burning fossil fuels are the precursors of acid rain. Together these emissions harm wildlife and wildlife habitat, lakes rivers, soils, crops, materials and buildings.
• The extraction of coal, oil, and gas causes environmental damage. Oil spills from tankers and offshore drilling platforms pollute coastal and marine environments as well as people dumping oil from their car into the sewer. Mining can destroy or displace farmland and wildlife habitats, pollute groundwater and change groundwater characteristics and flow patterns. The solid wastes left over from mining are a source of air and water pollution. According to the EPA in 1998, the cost of environmental damage from fossil fuel use has been estimated at $100 billion per year in the United States alone.
• The amount of waste the average U.S. residence produces in a year is well over 1,600 pounds according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The waste results in over 3,500 landfills, many of which contain chemicals, oils, solvents and toxic metals that may dissolve and leak into the surrounding soil and groundwater. Landfills also take up considerable space that is becoming increasingly harder to find. The waste also results in the building of incinerators that produce smoke, gases and fumes. Burning mixed wastes produces harmful chemicals in the smoke, and the ashes that are left behind also contain toxic metals and must be put into a landfill.
• The world is experiencing the greatest episode of species extinction since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The species are disappearing as a direct result of human influences. "Of all the global problems that confront us, this is the one that is moving the most rapidly and the one that will have the most serious consequences. And, unlike other global ecological problems, it is completely irreversible." Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Gardens and Home Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences (USA). Everyday habitat destruction extinguishes roughly one species every hour, or maybe even one every minute. The Book of Extinction Rates edited by John Lawton and Robert May (Oxford University Press, 1995).
• Our natural resource demand rises with an increasing population. Unfortunately as resources become scarce poorer nations suffer. According to the World Resource Institute about 13-18 million people die each year due to starvation and everyday about 25,000 people die as the result of using unclean water.

The world's population is increasing at an alarming rate and so is our need for its natural resources. We are already experiencing a time when many third world countries are without clean water, adequate nutrition and other resources we take for granted. Young people and adults need to start reducing our resource demand, which as the program Hey, It's Your Backyard illustrates, means changing some of our everyday habits. Young people also need to be aware that they will soon be taking on responsibilities as adults in our society and will ultimately be responsible for the well-being of our planet in the future.

We only have one planet let's protect it!

Exciting Activities

This Web site has been created for the
MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences
and the National Institute of Health Sciences

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