The current hype over environment issues is unneccesary. Do you agree?

It has become part of our daily life that we hear about the rapid rate of carbon dioxide increment in our air and that the artic glaciers are melting faster than before. Countries are coming together to solve the problem of global warming and our governments are encouraging us to go green. However the question is: “Is our current hype over environmental issues unnecessary?” I do not think so. In my opinion it is necessary to start doing something but at the same time we should not be over exaggerate the situation.

To completely ignore the environment issues is wrong. It is a fact that the environment has been worsening due to the actions of man and that it is affecting our lives. It poses dangers to our future too. The author of article in The Straits Times, “Saving the World”, said that “If we do not have a good way to fix a problem, it might be better to focus on something else first. After all, when you do not know where the next meal is coming from, it is hard to worry about what global temperatures will be 100 years from now.” I feel that 100 years later, we still might not be able to see how bad environmental issues can turn out to be. So are we going to say the same thing again and focus on something else first? Shouldn’t we be taking actions and preventing things from getting worse instead of waiting till the future and regret in the end?

The problem comes in when the mass media tries to exaggerate the situation. From the article of “The truth about the environment”, the author has said that “environmental group need to be noticed by the mass media. They also need to keep the money rolling in. Understandably, perhaps, they sometimes exaggerate.” Indeed, the media plays a big role in educating and informing the masses about environmental issues. However, by exaggerating the situations just to increase profits is going against their professionalism. We should be telling the truth to the public and at the same time encourage the public to play a part in saving earth.

In response to Jinyi’s post, I do agree with her that it needs great cost to move everyone from earth to another planet light. We should not be standing around to wait for the scientists to come up with a solution. We need to conscientiously raise environmental issues in order to raise awareness of the dangers that we will soon be facing. Individuals have a choice to save the world or to be selfish beings and to wait for others to do something. So the challenge is how to spur the urgency in people without exaggerating facts.

To sum it up, I disagree that the current hype over environmental issues is unnecessary. We should still raise awareness in people.