The Impact of Human Selfishness on Nature

Humans seem to love putting themselves first above all else. It already came to a point where selfishness has become one of the things we acquire because this is us and there’s really nothing we can do about it. We tend to always seek for something greater and something beneficial and as humans, again, no one can or/and should stop us from having that ‘something’ within our reach. You see, what most people fail to understand is the fact that we lose a big part of a whole when we let our selfishness consume us and we turn our humanity off. By the time that happens, someone suffers. Something loses. Sadly, nature is currently undergoing both. Nature is and will always be better off without humans, they said. Truth be told, it doesn’t need us as much as we need them. Yet why do some people love doing things that contributes to its demolishment despite knowing the fact that nature is something that is hard to save? As much as we hate to admit it, self-gain would be the answer. We wish to speak three reasons as to why we claim that humans and their inhumanity has a great effect towards nature and by effect, we meant a really bad one.

Animals are considered part of our nature too. As a matter of fact, they play a big role on giving us one of our basic needs which is food. Some humans make a living through these wonderful and amazing creatures as well, which has no problem with us at all, or at least not until some companies start to exhibit acquisitiveness and become abusive which makes them deserving of the appellation ‘money-grubber’. With that, we want to tackle the first inhumane act namely factory farming. In simple words, factory farming refers to the process of maximizing the production of what farm animals can give but with a minimized cost as much as possible. The meaning may not raise some red flags but surely, the methods will. I mean, who would be clearly fine with the thought of confining a large number of pigs on a very small space supervised by some factory farm that displays improper policy and weak health regulations? According to Merkel (2019), over the last two decades, the production of dairy, hog, and beef cattle has declined sharply which implies its overproduction on the years before that. Furthermore, the animals aren’t the only ones who suffer from this act but the surrounding as well. The aforementioned process produces millions of gallons of manure and of course – we think no one would be surprised by this at all – it will go directly to the waterways which will soon result to pollution. Moreover, what’s more saddening is the fact that no one seems to be addressing this. Humanly reminder, just because you aren’t the ones affected, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is not happening.

The second inhumane act that we wish to discuss is industrialization. This problem that has been going around for decades became a relevant one due to the current issue between the Amazon tribes and oil companies who plans to auction the aforementioned rainforest for oil drilling. On the 13th day of August, the said tribes won against them along with their pride to protect the rights they have and the huge contributor of oxygen which is also considered to be their home. Days after the good news for the Amazon tribes came around, a wildfire occurred. Yes, we are included to those that believe that this maddening event is an intentional one, done by those people involved with the verdict. Thus, we could say with our whole hearts that this, by far, is the worst product of industrialization driven by selfishness. Is it really worth the price to lose something that provides life? Is it worth it to drown in a pool of money, getting ready for a future we may not have? Indeed, money can take your breath away, literally and figuratively.

In line with the point above, the third inhumane act that needs to be stopped is deforestation. Due to the humans’ addiction to create manufacturing establishments and make an urbanized world to live in, numerous amount of trees need to be cut off. According to an article by World Wildlife Fund, we are losing 18.7 million acres of forests each year, which equates to 27 soccer fields every minute. Some reasons behind this would be road expansion and urbanization that are now a necessity for the growing population around the globe, which is a different problem that needs to be tackled as well. It is clear that these laid out acts which contribute to the ruination of our nature are solely done by humans and their inhumane behavior. Acts like factory farming, industrialization and deforestation all comes down to one reason : self-gain. The need to own something great, the hunger for power and the addiction for attaining superiority is intensified by the selfishness which humans normally possess. Some may believe that we should just come to accept that humans are truly selfish and greedy. But we believe that as humans, again, they are capable of showing care and compassion too. If we learn how to overpower the inhumane behavior with those two, maybe this world could be a place that makes living a little less easier and nature? Nature would be nature. It would be something that is far from the harm and pain inflicted by humans, yet will always be openhanded. As of now, we are running out of time. Might as well try to reverse things and act like actual humans who are grateful enough to pay back for what nature has done so far. It has been giving us almost everything we need, but as humans continue being inhumane, how long can that really go?