Have you ever polluted? Every time you pollute, you are single-handedly contributing to the
slow, painful death of the earth. Would you rather see lush meadows, or empty food wrappers
and soda cans all over? Think about these factors the next time you have garbage in your hand,
think about the earth.

It is a fact, air pollution is very harmful. The way it can be harmful to humans directly is smog.
Smog is a thick, brown haze formed when fossil fuels are burned. Of course, a big contribution
of this is from factories, but an even bigger one is the burning of gasoline from automobiles.
The city with the most smog in the world is Beijing. In fact, smog is so bad for your health,
many Olympians refused to compete in Beijing unless they did something about this problem.
So, they closed factories and limited the amount of motor vehicles the first months before the
competition. This type of pollution also harms humans indirectly. This is through acid rain.
Acid rain forms when nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides reacts with water vapor. This then
forms nitric and sulfuric acid. It can occur in rain, sleet, snow or fog. Acid rain can kill plants,
like trees which gives off oxygen for humans. Pollution can harm anything from plants to
humans.

In addition to things just not looking pretty, pollution harms living things. A big type of
pollution is water pollution. This has been around for a very long time. People have dumped
their garbage in the ocean in the past resulting in a giant garage pile in the Pacific Ocean that
takes up about 10% of the Ocean! This can harm things like fish by poisoning them and their
environment. Then, when people eat the fish, they can be poisoned too. This does not
only take place in Oceans, sadly, it happens on land too. Rings from packs or cases of soda
brutally suffocate animals such as birds. They could also mistake things like plastic or balloons
for food, which could wrap around their lungs and slowly choke them to a harsh death. A big
percentage of litter from humans are plastic bags, and they are a big culprit in the death of
animals. If the bags somehow find their way on the animal’s dainty little heads, they would
most likely be suffocated to death. Poor, innocent animals are killed, because some people are
too lazy to throw out or recycle their garbage. You may not know it, but you could have single-
handedly murdered wildlife.

Most significantly, people who pollute are killing the earth too. That’s right, you and
everyone else who has polluted is partially responsible. Planet Earth will most likely, eventually
be extinct. This will be because of Global Warming. Global Warming is the result of a type of
pollution called air pollution. Some people try to hide the indecency of humans by saying they
are not the cause of the rise of the CO2 level in the earth’s atmosphere. When the CO2 level
rises, it makes the Earth’s temperature hotter and hotter and eventually it will be too hot to live
on. This has been a problem ever since the Industrial Revolution. Many factories were formed
during the Industrial Revolution that let off smoke into the air. This is still done by many places
throughout the world. Most people in the world have cars and they are all hurting Earth and
not even knowing it. Almost all cars in the world run on fossil fuels such as gas that harm the
air, producing things like smog. This is why humans are to blame for Global Warming.

Pollution needs to be stopped because it harms Earth, and the things living on it. Is it really
worth potentially killing a poor, harmless animal so you don’t have to use the trash? The next
time you see trash on the ground or you can make money in a factory, just think about all the
good times you’ve had on Earth. Don’t you want other species and people to have the same
thing? Think about this the next time you can make a change in pollution.