Exotic Pets: Earth Day - How Have Humans Impacted the Earth?

How can I have an impact on bringing awareness; encourage appreciation, and help preserve our beautiful planet? We as humans have destroyed so much and have given back so little. To make this worst many people are denying that there even is a problem. At least in their own minds, I believe they know better, it is only because of their agenda, and knowing that things like ignoring climate change would benefit them. If they deny that it exists, people would be less inclined to remedy the situation. We can discuss this a bit later.

Let’s look at how the subject of exotic pets impacts the earth. First and foremost are all the compassionate and considerate people that are aware of the near extinction of many animals, just one example; the tiger. Because of political agendas, I doubt there will be a reversal in the extinction of the wild tiger. Thankfully, there are many live tigers in the hands of exotic pet owners to preserve the very species of this animal.

This is true of many endangered and near extinct animals. The species will survive the money grubbing, power hungry politicians that have brought about their near demise. It isn’t just one country, it is many. There would not be poaching if these officials didn’t sanction poaching or turn a blind eye to poaching for their own gain. Do your part, find exotic pets for sale from exotic pet breeders, which are home-grown or captive bred. Of the three top black market trades, exotic pets are number three, drugs and weapons are one and two.

Wong Keng Liang of Malaysia, family, and cohorts are perhaps the most notorious animal smugglers that ever existed. To this day his home country sanctions his illegal activities, I am sure the country (politicians) are benefiting greatly. There are many more smugglers and countries, but if you want to find out how easy it is for criminals such as Liang to get away with what he has done, do some research. Then realize how many other people and governments sanction the black market exotic pet trade.

Another reason for the extinction or near extinction of many animals is another biggie, habitat loss. We know what that is; we drained millions of acres of wetlands to build houses and shopping centers. Many countries, most countries are just as destructive. All countries strip trees, wetlands, grasslands, and more for more money. Money brings power, power brings more corruption.

When I think of all the plants and animals that are extinct or near extinct it makes me think of the movie Medicine Man (1992). I wonder of all the life that is lost forever if we have lost the opportunity to find a cure for cancer or even the common cold and many other illnesses that afflict us.

Now back to the first paragraph. Why would people deny climate change exists, how could it possibly benefit them? They want to keep using and selling oil and oil byproducts until there is no more. Be darned the consequences.

Do you have any idea how close we are to our own destruction? We may survive, at least the people willing to work extremely hard, don’t mind extreme discomfort, because we won’t be surviving with oil, or the automobile, tractors, and the zillion of other things that come from oil and petroleum products. Not just creature comforts would be gone, but we would be back to living with extreme hardships. The seven billion people on earth won’t all survive, in fact only a very small percentage.

Go to your kitchen and open just one cupboard. I will do the same. I opened the cupboard that has rice, wheat, cereals, and other like products. Let’s think about the simple product wheat, how much oil did it take to get that wheat into our cupboard? Also, what is the product in cardboard or plastic? Cardboard is made from trees and uses oil, plastic is made from oil.

First of all, the farmer gets up in the morning, puts on his or her clothing (takes oil to make and transport clothing), he or she eats breakfast (takes oil to produce and transport his breakfast). He then heads to his pickup truck, which is filled with petroleum. Each tire is made from oil; a car tire takes seven gallons, more for a pickup truck. Then you add the fossil fuel it takes to transport the tires, transport all the other materials that go into a tire. Each tire ends up using a barrel of oil; how many gallons of oil in a barrel - 42 gallons. Look at plastic parts, all plastic parts are made from fossil fuels. He stops at the barn to get his tractor. Look at those huge tires! How much petroleum product could be in those massive tires? Again, many other components on the tractor made from oil. He stops and fills up the tank with fuel, obviously from oil. Now he heads to the field to plow. It takes a long time to plow a field for wheat. A lot of petroleum spent. Now he has to fertilize the field, usually before and after seeding. Now he plants the field so that the wheat will grow. He irrigates the field of wheat, more oil/energy (all energy produced uses massive amounts of oil in some way – even wind power). The wheat grows, more oil is used to cut the wheat then harvest the wheat. Trucks use oil to transport the wheat to companies that produce wheat products such as the cereal in your cupboard. It takes more oil to transport it to the store, yet more oil for you to go to the store and buy the wheat. For one product that is a lot of oil.

What happens to humans when the oil is gone? Don’t kid yourself it is sooner than you think. In the year 2005 eighty-four million barrels were used in a day worldwide a lot more now. Oil is not a renewable resource unless they really get good at extending life, it takes about 10-million years for a dinosaur to turn into oil, and darn we're out of dinosaurs. We are definitely on the downswing of the climax of oil. Yes, there is new technology, we find new reserves but is bringing the planet to its knees.

Now, what does this have to do with exotic pets, to animals, to vegetation, to our children? Oil is a huge dependency, the use of oil and oil byproducts have caused a tremendous amount of pollution. There have been oil disasters, some of which have made the news, many have not. Pipelines are going in today, with political influence; the one coming from Canada going through South Dakota was approved using substandard materials.

Earth Day is just one day of the year, people jump on the bandwagon, at least some people, and then they forget about the trouble we are in - for the rest of the year. Does this mess we have made of our earth affect our children, our pets, our exotic pets, you bet it does? Every day needs to be earth day.

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