JUNE 5, 2022 is World Environment Day. This Day began on June 5, 1974 through the leadership of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). As nearly all human beings are not suicidal, it is most important to share knowledge about how to save lives. Our Earth can save us only when we save the Earth.
Guest Editorial By Togba-Nah Tipoteh
LET US LOOK at what we continue to do to kill the Earth. This killing of the Earth comes through our actions in bringing pollution on the Earth. There are three types of pollution that we bring to destroy the Earth on which we live: air pollution; water pollution and land pollution. All of these types of pollution are unnatural because they are done by human beings and not by Our Creator.
LET US START with air pollution. Human beings continue to consider themselves to be civilized and educated but continue to kill themselves through gas emissions. In the search for better lives, human beings are building factories to produce products while putting gas emissions into the air. Through the emissions, nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide mix with water to become acids that fall globally as acid rain. Acid rain kills. When acid rains fall on oceans, they pollute and kill fishes, killing human beings before the fishes die and reducing the possibility of human beings eating fishes when the fishes die. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 0f Liberia is now investigating the deaths of fishes in Grand Cape Mount County, Liberia.
THEN THERE IS WATER POLLUTION. Water gets polluted in many ways. water gets polluted through the acid rains. Water gets polluted through the garbage. Water gets polluted through the urines and feces, especially on the beaches. Water gets polluted when sewage overflows or sewage tanks are wrongly built. Waters get polluted through industrial waste. No wonder that the main killer of children in Africa is water-borne diseases (WHO, 2021).
NEXT IS LAND POLLUTION. When acid rains fall on the land, they pollute the land. The land is used by nearly all of the people of Africa for farming, which produces food. Polluted land produces polluted food that kills people. Fertilizers and pesticides are used in farming and they have life-threatening effects. DDT (Dichloroddifenyltricholoroe) used on farms also has life-threatening effects. DDT is used to kill the mosquitoes that bring malaria but its use also leads to cancer (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022).
WITHIN THE GREED-DRIVEN POSTURE, African State managers continue to engage in promoting poverty generation instead of poverty alleviation. These State managers have become dependent on foreign partners whose profit orientation continues to have the African State managers promote the production of the raw materials for export without any prioritization of Value Addition. In the case of Liberia, there are at least 200 species of the finest logs in West Africa; but these logs are being exported when there are inadequate hospitals and clinics and children sit on the laterite floor and in imported plastic chairs, not forgetting the life-threatening dust from the logs enroute for export.
THESE LOGS are being exported from forests that provide solution for the climate change problem. While these forests take in carbon dioxide, from the gas emissions that kill lives, they put out oxygen that saves lives. Instead of promoting reforestation, greed-driven State managers promote deforestation and become dependent on the developed countries for loans and grants, including budgetary support.
WHEN GOOD STATE management prevails over bad State management, Value Addition becomes the order of the day in the self-reliant mode, where developed countries are paying money for reforestation to get rid of gas emissions. Then the global community would be well on its way to meet the COP 21 Mandate of reducing global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade by 2030.
THE EARTH is in urgent need of caring with global warming breaking up icebergs in a world that is 70 percent ocean. Let us take care of the Earth so that the Earth will take care of us. Let us take care of the Earth by getting good State managers through the transformation of the UNFAIR electoral system to the FAIR electoral system. It is only through a FAIR electoral system that good persons can be elected to take the good actions needed for us to take care of the Earth.
HAPPY WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY!