What Exactly Is THE ENVIRONMENT The environment is everything around us from our homes to our streets neighborhoods cities and countries It’s beaches and forests deserts and oceans It’s the continents we live on it’s our planet Earth When we talk about the environment we are usually talking about how healthy or unhealthy our planet is Our environment includes five essential elements Water Air Soil Energy Climate
Our environment is constantly being changed by the organisms that live here We humans for example have always tried to improve the conditions we live in And every change has had an impact on our environment For a long time these changes took place slowly and nobody worried much about the environment But then came the industrial revolution People began to build factories to make all the things they wanted And while industrialization led to rapid changes in science and technology these factories needed energy to run Industries and factories have grown and new communication technologies have emerged There are also more people in the world and more of us are living in cities We need more food and bigger farms to produce it Today the entire planet is facing the consequences of these changes The pollution we’ve generated is contaminating the environment and contributing to climate change That results in rising temperatures and more extreme weather events around the world more storms more droughts more floods Protecting our environment keeping our planet healthy is an urgent matter But first we must know the environment and understand how our way of life has changed it for good and bad This will help us take the actions needed for the future health of our planet
1 WATER All living things are made mostly of water Humans are about 60 percent water Plants are 80 to 85 percent water And the Earth’s surface is 70 percent water That’s why the Earth is called the blue planet Where Is the Earth’s Water About 97 percent of the Earth’s water is salt water which is found mainly in the seas and oceans It’s too salty to drink or use to irrigate crops Only 3 percent of the water on Earth is fresh water so it is a rare and precious thing We use fresh water to irrigate our farmland and gardens and we also treat it to make it safe to drink or potable
There are almost two hundred countries in the world but nine of them consume more than half of the planet’s available fresh water In the United States and Canada people use a lot of water in their homes About 65 percent of that is in the bathroom for showering in parts of Africa and Asia brushing teeth and flushing the toilet The remaining 35 percent is used for things like cooking drinking and washing clothes Canadians and Americans use much more water than people
