Cause and Effect: the Environment

Daniel W. Hosaka

Professor Corinne Tatum

English 101

15 January 2013

Cause and Effect: The Environment

In 2011 a very popular animated family film was released that highlighted the effect humans have on the environment. It emphasized the damage industry does to the air, creatures, and natural resources. However, The Lorax was actually published back in 1971. Interestingly enough this seems to have been a glimpse into the future as the world now finds itself searching for the very natural resources it is quickly consuming. Society’s actions are damaging and draining the environment and the people in it.

In 2011 a small town in Oklahoma was practically wiped from the map as the people were bought out of their homes and quickly forced from their hometown. All of this was necessary in this old mining town for two reasons. Studies and tests showed that the town was contaminated with lead, in levels that were inherently hazardous to the residents overall health. “Bacterial leaching of zinc from chat (chert) pile rock… was studied... Thiobacillus ferrooxidans at 26°C leached 38% of zinc from pulverized rock in 15 days,” (Harrison, and Hsu 169-179). The second problem was that the areas under the town that had been mined had created large sink holes that were beginning to pull the city under. Both of these perilous occurrences were due to the mining for lead and zinc that left behind toxic, metal contaminated soil, water, and small mountains of exploded rock remnants the citizens called “chat”.

Just a few years ago there was a huge crisis in which the public realized crude oil was becoming scarce. Prices at the pumps rocketed and automobile makers began making adjustments to their vehicles to allow consumers to use less gas and save money. However, despite the pain in the pocketbooks of people worldwide, the focus here should have been on the resource that is being depleted. A few years before this epidemic there was a campaign to “save the...