How Race Extinction Happens

“The whole world is singing, but we’ve stopped listening.” The greediness of humans is causing a ticking time bomb to the state and conditions of Earth. The things that we do on a daily basis is causing Earth’s health to plummet quickly before our eyes. With a little more awareness about the world around us, we can put our destruction into reverse. Prior to watching Racing Extinction, I knew that the state of Earth was rapidly declining, and life as we know is starting to change. Carbon Dioxide emissions is practically killing our planet. Carbon Dioxide is needed to assist process like photosynthesis, where CO2 is taken in by plants and released as oxygen for us to breathe, but too much of something is never good.

America is the second leading country in CO2 emissions, emitting 5.27 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Everyday activities that we partake it ? driving to school and work, turning on the lights, making dinner on a gas stove, are all contributing to this outrageous amount of CO2 emissions going into our atmosphere. The high levels of CO2 is the leading cause for the climate change taking place before our eyes. Another reason Earth is deteriorating is because we are cutting down trees, to meet our own needs (to make land to grow food, fire wood, paper, etc.). Trees absorb carbon dioxide and turn it into oxygen for us to breathe, so by us cutting down trees, we are asking for more CO2 to be in the atmosphere. The scene where the photographer talked about the barrier reef forest caught my attention.

The photographer showed the first panoramic picture of the underwater forest back in 1960. It was a beautiful sight. The reefs were alive, bright, and vibrant and wildlife there flourished. When the photographer came back almost 20 years later, the once beautiful scene was dead. This made me think about how miseducated we are as a whole and how ignorant we are to the world around us. Everything we do affects our environment deeper than what it seems. When we burn fossil fuels, not only is the CO2 being released into the atmosphere, it is also being absorbed by the oceans, causing a disturbance to the rest of life around us.

The oceans produce most of the oxygen that we take in, (thanks to phytoplankton). But with us releasing obsessive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we are causing not only the Earth’s temperatures to rise, but we are also spiking the ocean’s temperature as well, ultimately causing wildlife in the ocean to decrease, including phytoplankton, our oxygen producers. Another scene that caught my eye was the bird scene where the male was calling out for a female companion but never got a response because he was the only one left, and he ended up going extinct. The scene showed me how quickly a species can go extinct, especially because the human race is doing things to cause it, like cutting down their habitats. If we don’t soon come together and reverse the damage we have done to this Earth, there will most definitely be a sixth mass extinction. The Earth and oceans are heating up. Phytoplankton population is down forty percent.

Our oceans are becoming acidic. We are seeing the population of species go extinct more rapidly than they should. If we keep moving in the same direction that we are heading, we will be the cause of the sixth extinction. One person making a change can cause a chain reaction. According to the Japanese Reverend, it’s “Better to light one candle, than curse the darkness.” This statement is very powerful and it is taking place around us today. In the film, a famous delicacy in China, shark fin soup, was causing many sharks to suffer alone in the ocean with cut off fins, causing many of them to die.

When people started finding out about this problem, they began to protest to save the sharks, and former NBA star, Yao Ming, starred in a commercial persuading people to protest the soup. With enough awareness, it finally became illegal for the soup to be sold in China, ultimately benefiting the population of the sharks. When the final credit of the film rolled, I knew that there is still hope on saving our planet. One thing that I could do to improve biodiversity around my community is turn off lights and anything else that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This would reduce the amount of CO2 my community emits into the atmosphere. I would urge my family and friends to do the same and spread the word to make them conscience of how they are affecting the environment. It is up to us when it comes to how the story of Earth ends or continues. 

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