Save The Earth!

Did you know that there are over 5000 homeless people in Toronto? And over 3000 in Calgary? And more than 2000 in Edmonton? We know the names of these highly populated places, but we are never told how many people there are homeless!  20% of homeless people are young adults between the ages 16 and 24. Also, 47.5% are men between the ages of 25 and 55. Did you know that for every 100,000 youth, there are 308 homeless youth in Canada? Similarly, there are 310 homeless men for 100,000 men in Canada.  There were about 30,000 youth between 16 and 25 who experienced homelessness in 2009 and 1,500 more were unaccompanied youth less than 16 years old. 1,500 was only 1% of the overall homeless population! And did you know that almost 10,000 children lived in shelters in 2009? This is super high, especially for only children! We need to stop these numbers.  But, even though all these people need homes, homes use so many resources and take away natural habitats from animals! So how ...

Did you know that not all children get educated in some countries? In Somalia, only 10% of children go to primary school! Similar to that number are Haiti, Eritrea, Comoros, and Ethiopia. This is not alright. Those people won't get the same education as us in other countries, and they probably won't get as good jobs too! Getting a job needs education and lots of those children might not be able to pursue their dreams just because they didn't get to go to school! This makes me sad because I'm so used to being able to go to school that I've never really stopped to appreciate the money my province has and that we're able to pay for schools and education for kids. If we hadn't I wouldn't be where I am today. This blog probably wouldn't exist either!  Stop right here to appreciate your education and money. You will be able to get whatever job you want when you're older.  Now that we've got that over with, let's take a look at some interesting ...

Have you ever heard of succession? It's something you might learn in science around grade seven and I will be teaching you about it today. Let us start off with a brief explanation of what succession is.  Succession is when you let land restart its growth. For example, after a fire in a field, it has burnt all the grass and it has to regrow everything. Is that good or bad? Bad, right? Wrong. It's actually really good for Earth! It's good because, if we didn't have succession, all the ecosystems would be the same. If we do let ecological succession happen, all the ecosystems will be different and different species can live where they need to be to survive.  The first stage of succession is just bare rock and soil. After you burn or trample the ground, the grass will be all gone and the dirt will be all alone. Then some lichens may grow. If you are like me, you might not know what lichens are, but they are a small plant that forms a crusty, leaf-like growth that can appea...

Everyone knows what smoking is, and everyone’s heard that it’s bad. But have you heard of vaping? In this article you will learn many facts about why smoking and vaping are bad, and about the different types of smoking. Let’s begin with some facts about smoking. There are three types of smoking: First hand, second hand and third hand. First hand smoking is when you are the one who’s actually smoking. Second hand smoking is when you are inhaling the smoke that someone else is exhaling. Third hand smoking is when you are exposed to chemicals from a cigarette that are left on surfaces, either by touching the surface or breathing in the chemicals. The short-term effects of smoking include bad breath, smelly hair and clothes, an unhealthy mouth, and coughing. The long-term effects include both lung and mouth cancer. Smoking also causes premature aging on your skin. If you quit, it can improve your skin and set it back to normal. It also yellows your teeth and makes you prone to cancer and o...

Litter is an old problem. There are signs up everywhere telling us not to litter yet there's still litter everywhere. Everyone's seen litter in fields, on the side of the road, on nature trails, everywhere! Most litter is only 16 feet away from a trash can too! How hard is it to walk that far?  Clearly, they need to add more exclamation marks to the don't litter signs. Everyone listens to them. Keep reading this article!!! See? It worked.  Cleaning up after yourself and others is important. Keep nature natural and don't litter. If you have garbage, keep holding it until you find a garbage can. If you see litter on the ground, put on some gloves, pick it up, and find the nearest trash can.  Cigarette butts are everywhere. They're even in cracks in the sidewalk! Did you know that 50% of all litter are cigarette butts? They're small but mighty. Plus, who wants to pick up a cigarette butt? They're disgusting and third hand smoking comes from touching surfaces th...

It uses money and resources to have electricity, resources like rubber, gold, copper, and iron, but if we waste electricity, we are wasting resources. Resources on Earth are limited, and if we use too many, there could eventually be a fight for the resources and human survival. We cannot use all of them; I really hope it won't come to a fight in the end.  Some people don't even have electricity in the first place, so don't take it for granted and go wasting what some people long for. Be grateful that you at least have electricity and use it sparingly, only when you need to.  As of 2016, 13% of the world did not have access to the internet. This might not seem like what you expected, but note that this amount has shrunk considerably recently. Here, 87% of people had electricity, yet in 1990 it was only 71%.  Did you know only 5.1% of South Sudan has access to electricity? And only 6.4% of Chad? And although 90% of Burundi's population live in rural areas, only 6.5% of it...

Our world population is a colossal problem. It's such a colossal problem that we have 7.9 billion people on Earth! I don't know why or how this number has grown so rapidly since the 1900's. I found a few charts showing how much the population has grown of the years. I just used the key words 'World population chart by year' and clicked on images. The world population was only 1 billion in 1820, and by 1960 it was already at 3 billion!  Did you know that Earth is only supposed to sustain 2 billion people? Yet we are stretching it nearly to the breaking point! Scientists expect that at 10 billion people, our population will be too high and there will too much of a fight for resources that humans could possibly even die out! It could be the end of the world as we know it! We are way over the limit and it's not okay! The popularity on earth needs to lower, but this isn't a sign to go killing people!  Every second 1.8 people die and 4.3 people are born. This mean...

Everyone has heard of world hunger, but what does it mean? Why is it important that we stop world hunger in today’s society? If you consume less than 1,800 calories a day, you are undernourished. We have so many undernourished people on our planet that the problem is known as world hunger. If you get too undernourished, you can starve. That’s why it’s important to eat a certain amount of food everyday.  Hunger is mostly caused by poverty, people who earn less than $1.90 a day. Poverty means that people do not earn enough money to support themselves and in most cases, have enough food to eat. Minimum wage in Ontario is $14.25 and people here are still struggling to support themselves with that amount of money. Imagine living with almost a fourteenth of that amount. Mostly, the people who earn $1.90 a day are farmers in developing countries, but many other people are experiencing extreme poverty. There are about 1 billion people in the year that are struggling to support themselves a...

Deforestation is a big problem. Trees provide oxygen for Earth, and they come with nice smells, looks, and sometimes even fruits! But what is deforestation?  Deforestation is exactly what it sounds like. De-forest-ation. Cutting down trees. But why do we need to cut down trees? If they really are so good for the planet, why can't we just leaf them be? (Hehe. Tree joke!)  We need to cut down trees because trees provide wood and can be turned into lots of different things including shelters and paper! We use paper a lot, I'll admit, I do too. But there are many ways to reduce your paper use that can be found at the bottom of this article. Also, since we need to build so many more houses with wood, this problem is linked to the world population problem, which is coming up soon in a blog post.  This problem is quite like the post about cutting down the Amazon Rainforest, but these are different. The Amazon being cut down was not good because of all the habitat loss, but with ...