Debate #2 Paper: "The Environment: What's Wrong, What Can Be Done To Fix It"
 
  The Earth's environment is a hotly debated topic. Some people claim that there is a problem and if we don't fix it now we're all doomed, while others suggest that everything's just peachy. Still others maintain that while there ARE problems, everything ought to work out fine the way we're going now. But, to my mind, there is really only one sensible way to look at the topic. Everything seems okay now, it's true... and yes, progress has been made in the region of environmental protection. However, if progress does not CONTINUE to be made, the Earth and its inhabitants will be in deep trouble someday in the not-so-distant-as-one-might-think future. Why? Please allow me to elaborate further.
  First off, big corporations hold MUCH too much sway in environmental matters, and, worse yet, no one seems to care. See, big corporations are more or less allowed to pollute as they see fit, without government intervention. No matter how bad their legal transgression might be, it's all good as long as it doesn't excite too much attention from the media and general public. (If the attention can be redirected, then it ends up being the same as if no one ever noticed in the first place.) Or, even if they ARE caught, someone always seems to find a way to get them a 'pardon' (for a price, one way or another). And some corporations will even resort to hiring scientists to find a particular result, simply to allay fears and make "environmentalists" lose credibility... a thing done easily enough in this or any field with "scientific" tests, since results and data may be omitted or interpreted in many ways by biased interpreters without violating the modern laws of scientific conduct. This is just another side effect of a greed-driven capitalist system; money talks.
 Secondly, pollution has a lasting effect on the world around us. Therefore, it would be best to fix the problems while we still have a chance, even if they might not seem like terribly important problems now. The fact that it will take several decades before the changes will reach full effectiveness make it all the more important to start soon.
 Next, population growth is getting out of hand. If allowed to continue at the rate it was going back in 1974, it would be less than 700 years before each human being would have only one square foot of land as their own. Within 6,000 years, the mass humanity would form a sphere expanding outward from the earth at the speed of light. (By the calculations of Ansely J. Coale, at least.) Of course, LONG before then we will face a problem of resources (in fact, we face it today), which will slow our expansion greatly before eventually halting it altogether. Then we run into a problem of death from starvation, which (if nature is allowed to take her toll) would correct the problem through mass extinction, but then again no sane, logical, good (by my definition) person wants that. However, if we do NOT allow nature to take her toll, then the problem becomes even worse until we run into some impossible difficulties of resource deficiency. Thus, we should try and fix the problem before it gets much worse, through the various methods of family planning and its ilk. By the predictions of some demographers, limiting woman to having a maximum of two children apiece would allow the population to stabilize sometime during the next century. (Though the population would, by the same estimates, rise to 8 billion people before the stabilization took place...)
 Fourthly, and through various methods, humans are bringing about the downfall of various other species around the globe. This is an immediate problem even today, as (by some estimates) as many as six or seven species are going extinct EVERY HOUR. Some people, such as environmental "specialist" Mark L. Plummer of the Discovery Institute, believe that this is not much of a problem. Plummer has been quoted as saying "Losing a species may be tragic, but the result is rarely, if ever, catastrophic." However, quite the opposite is true, and it is our limited understanding of the web of life, mixed with ample quantities of human arrogance, that keep us from seeing the situation more clearly. Regardless of all other factors, and despite what is thought by many, we NEED this biological diversity as part of life on Earth, as animals, plants, insects, and even bacteria all play important roles in the web of life. Without a sundry collection of key species, which (it is worth noting) remain unknown at present, the entire biological web of life on Earth would effectively collapse. The truth of the matter is, we really don't understand how living things relate to one another in the web of life, and so we can not truly understand how rash actions will come back to haunt us later. And, worse still, few even try to do so.
 Perhaps most importantly to most humans, our very race could very well face near extinction due to severe environmental imbalance in only a couple hundred (or maybe a thousand) years if something is not done to continually better the current situation. Today's culture is infamous for failing to look ahead at the consequences our actions will have on a larger time scale than tomorrow, notoriety well earned and represented all too well in pop-culture. Sure, perhaps a few scattered pockets of humanity could live on in the environmentally imbalanced and harsh new conditions, but not very many. And who wants this? Poor environmental protection has led to much damage being done to the naturally fragile ecosystem, and so we are in a potentially precarious position.
 But what can be done about these problems? Well, luckily for us, most of the solutions are generally pretty simple (at least on paper). To deal with big business, we simply need to start hiring honest politicians. But seriously, folks, equal and total enforcement of environmental protection laws by the central government is what's needed. By giving the problem to sub-governments, such as the states or even cities (which is an alarming current trend), that government would tend to be very careful about enforcement, as there would be the eternal threat that the business in question would move to somewhere where the watchdogs didn't bark, so to speak.
 To deal with pollution, we have to do two things, neither of which is terribly easy. First, we must stop pollution from continuing. Second of all, we must start to clean up the pollution that's already out there.
 Simply enough, family planning is the answer to overpopulation.
 The key to lowering the mad extinction rate is to stop damaging the species' habitats so much through pollution and deforestation. Reducing deforestation would be especially easy, since most of the recent deforestation has been the result of poorly planned programs, most or all of which have failed, to make rich farmland out of the tropical rainforests.
 The only way to eliminate the threat of extinction to the human race is to protect the environment and the web of life contained subtly in it by reducing pollution, deforestation, and the like. When we better come to understand the web of life, then we will have clearer choices. Hopefully, by then, we will be mature enough to make the right choices.
 Even though we cannot always see the other six billion or so people sharing this Earth with us, we know they are there. Likewise, we should not think that, simply because we cannot always see the pollution big business is generating (especially since big business essentially owns the media), that it is not there. The same, too, can be said about the terrible extinction rates that exist in our world today. We cannot see the rare species of animals, living in their far-off habitats, but we gradually feel their loss as their links on the food chain and their strand on the biological web of life disappear irreversibly. Until we come to truly understand the web of life, we must try our true best to preserve its existence as we go through life, one generation after the next. It may be a difficult task to do now, in our present high-consumption, high-pollution, don't-care mindset of our society, but even a single individual can make all the difference, starting the tide rolling in the opposite direction towards a harmonious existence between humans and nature.