Bill Mckibben: A Wasteful World

Gulf Deep-water Oil Spill The Gulf oil spill is considered the worst oil spill and one of the worst environmental disasters in the U.S. history. It was April 20th, 2010, that the Deepwater BP oil rig exploded and penetrated in the Gulf of Mexico sea. The Gulf oil explosion killed 11 workers but most of the impact was on marine species such as turtles, herons, gulls, birds, fishes, and sea mammals. Moreover, 16,000 total miles of coastline have been affected, including the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida due to the release of about 4.9 million barrels of oil into the sea. The BP oil spill continued for 87 days, and even now, oil is still washing up on the shores, which has caused and might cause long-term damage

Oil burns and releases toxins and CO2, poking holes in the ozone layer. People inhale oil fumes and suffer with asthma. There are a million ways that oil is destroying human lives, but if we get off land and go underwater, oil’s damaging effect on the oceans’ habitats adds the more reasons to strive for the use of alternative energy sources. Since oil began to be used widely as a fuel, there hasn’t been a year without a copious number of oil spill incidents. In the US alone, the Office of Response and Restoration of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) responds to over a hundred oil spills each year (NOAA).

Oceans are threatened daily by both natural and manmade pollution, as the largest factor affecting them is plastic. Over the last decade, there has been more plastic produced compared to the last 100 years (“How Ocean Pollution Impacts Marine Life-and All of Us”). Around 100 millions tons of plastic is produced every year and 10 percent of that plastic ends up in the sea. Many sources are the cause of ocean litter including trash that washes off city streets, waste blown in from landfills, and containers that fall off ships during heavy storms. Many marine mammals mistake these for food (Greer, Abigail).

With that predicted to increase to 99 percent by 2050” (“Ocean Plastic Pollution”). Another similar case states that “Hundreds of thousands of seabirds ingest plastic each year...Nearly all Laysan Albatross chicks -97.5 percent - have plastics pieces in their stomachs” (“Ocean Plastic Pollution”). The next well known animal affected by ocean pollution is fish. “Fish in the North Pacific ingest 12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic each year” (“Ocean Plastic Pollution”). When fish consume the plastic, it will move up the food chain and affect other aquatic animals that consume fish.

College sports are called amateurs, but the schools and the NCAA make millions of dollars a year off the performance of its players. Athletic coaches are allowed to make millions of dollars off the success of their programs. Some coaches make more money than their state representatives all the will their players are only guaranteed a scholarship they can revoked at any time for a various of reason’s. Business across the nation would like to be doing what the NCAA and universities are doing with their student athletes. Nowhere else in America are you going to find that a multi-million-dollar business that gets revenue off its employees that have signed contracts but not pay them.

Explanation: This quote to me seems like Villasenor is trying to imply that getting into the U.S.A is as easy as breaking through a wall of electric fences. He also shows how he views Americans as rich and wasteful since he believes that the amount of food thrown away in one day can feed a whole town. Method #3: In The Color of Crime, Katheryn K. Russell illustrates, "Racial targeting and abuse by police is costly. U.S. taxpayers have paid tens of millions of dollars in police brutality lawsuits. Between 1992 and 1993, Los Angeles county alone paid more than $30 million to citizens victimized by police brutality” (45).

Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds of all time once said, “The world as we have created is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” For the past few centuries, mankind have made thousands of mistakes and faced consequences. However they still move forwards and acted to make an impartial society. Eventually mankind became knowledgeable and started to create products in order to satisfy our own greed. As our greed is ceaseless, humans became irresponsible with their own actions, producing excessive amounts of products, in which the majority of them are either thrown into the ocean or placed at the landfills.

That adds up to about 11,417 sharks per hour and 100,012,920 every year. Co-author of “Sharks of the World” Leonard Compagno said, “The dawn of the latest extinction crisis was less than 20 years ago” (Compagno page 43). This over-fishing is destroying the ocean ecosystem by taking a vital part

Ocean Pollution DBQ Did you know that every year, eight million metric tons of plastic is dumped or somehow ends up in the ocean (Doc. 1)? The following sentences will talk about what people are doing to pollute the oceans and how they are making the pollution better. Humans are the biggest threat to animals in the ocean because they litter so much (OI). Sometimes, people litter without even knowing they're littering.

It is no secret that humans have a large issue when it comes to plastic waste, as we produce over 300 million tons of plastic each year, with 50% used once and thrown away. But where does all of our plastic debris go once we discard of them in the trash? The answer, oftentimes, is the ocean. According to a UC Santa Barbara study, over 8 million tons of plastic is thrown into the ocean each year, and since 10% of our trash ends up in the ocean, 90% of which being plastic waste, it is estimated that 5 trillion pieces of plastic, weighing 250,000 tons, are floating in our oceans right now. However, when you visit your local beach, it is unlikely that you see mounds of trash washing ashore.