Our Planet
I don’t think anyone understands what’s happening to our world. Our environment. Our home.
The Coronavirus is still a thing, there are people continuing to die from this pandemic. People are walking around mask-less and throwing huge parties like it’s no big deal.
I went to Target and I forgot my mask, so I used the next closest thing to a mask and pulled my shirt over my face. As I’m walking to the self-checkout with an urgently needed eyebrow pencil, this man starts talking to me. He says, “Oh, don’t worry about it!” He’s talking about me having my shirt over my face as a mask. He pulls down his mask and says, “It’s all fake. It’s no big deal. I wear my mask around my chin half the time anyways.” He laughs. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t know what to say. I just walked away. It actually made me angry hearing him say that. I thought to myself, “People like him are the reason why COVID cases are continuing to rise…rapidly!” Minnesota is now one of the top states with COVID cases, and one of the places with the least amount of people wearing masks when entering public places.
As Donald Trump being our president, he should be helping this pandemic end. He should’ve put a mask mandate on the entire United States, but instead he left that to the governors of all fifty states. That doesn’t ensure the entire U.S. wearing masks. Thirty-Seven out of the Fifty states in the U.S. have mask mandates, along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. That leaves thirteen states where it isn’t mandatory to wear masks in public places or where there are large groups of people, allowing more room for COVID to infect more people.
Not just the people of this world are being affected by a sickness, but the planet itself is being affected by its own sickness. A sickness that we the people have created.
It is almost the middle of December. There is no snow and we are experiencing fifty degree weather. Everyone living in Minnesota should know that’s not right. Two years ago, it was negative fifty-six degrees up in Cotton, Minnesota. Everyone called it the ‘Polar Vortex’. The average snowfall ranges from thirty-six inches in southwestern Minnesota, to seventy inches up at Lake Superior. This year, twenty-twenty, the year of disasters, it has snowed around 6–7 inches in the twin cities.
It doesn’t truly feel like the Christmas season this winter because there is no snow on the ground. I can go outside in a sweatshirt and jeans and feel fine. I’m supposed to be wearing a winter jacket and some gloves. I should be scraping snow off the windshield of my truck everyday before I go to work. But I’m not.
I’m not scraping ice off my windshield before work, because the world is changing. It is changing because of us. Because we continue to throw our trash out the window while we’re driving, instead of putting it in the trash can. The garbage we throw on the road gets washed out by rain water and drained into the sewers. The sewers lead to oceans, lakes, and rivers, resulting in things like plastic being wrapped around turtles necks or straws up their noses. Because we’d rather just throw everything away, rather than finding what we can recycle. The world is changing because 18% of the world’s population owns a car, which uses gasoline and outputs exhaust into the atmosphere. Because more and more factories are being built, which let out more toxic fumes that hurt our ozone layer. Forests are being destroyed, animal habitats are disappearing, and the humans are taking over.
Stop and think before you do. Stop and think before you leave your mask in the car. Stop and think before you throw your McDonalds cup out the window. Do something for the people around you and the planet you live on, rather than just for yourself.
