Forest Fires

What causes forest fires? These days, it’s mostly human activity. The best way to solve this problem is by educating our children about how to leave things better than they found them. For example, what to do with trash and what not to do. They need to be taught the proper ways to dispose of things, like what goes to the landfill vs recycling. I’ll never forget driving through Anacostia, DC, one time, and watching the people in the car ahead of me just toss their entire McDonald’s bag out of their car window. There was so much garbage inside it nearly hit my car. This action of littering is how some forest fires are started. How you might ask?

Planet Earth is protected by a giant ozone layer that goes around the whole planet and acts like a shield against the sun’s rays, and it’s getting thinner due to chemical and carbon emissions. When people litter, that trash will eventually release carbon that will go into the atmosphere, further breaking down the ozone layer. And when that breaks down up there, we get hotter down here. Carbon emissions of course don’t only come from trash; they mostly come from our cars and the burning of fossil fuels, which is why there is such a big push to go electric. That ozone layer protects everything from our skin to preventing glaciers from melting and causing the sea level to rise further. It also causes more intense storms each year and catastrophic natural events, like the wildfires right now in Canada. What can we do to fix the problem? To start, we can capture more carbon, plant more trees, and stop deforestation. Let’s all do our best to protect the planet by at least not littering, and pick it up when you see it (even if it’s not yours).