Connor Baker
Kristall
UCSF 137
3 December 2017
Writing Assignment #4
It is often said that humans have become divorced from nature. Explain why you agree or
disagree with this statement.
Humans, just like nature, have evolved from the last thousands of years. Observing
through this semester course and other previous knowledge, the common trends of hunter-
gatherer to agricultural lifestyles persist in history as well as the alterations of nature to our own
anthropogenic needs. The soil that we stand on today is the not the same soil that an immigrant
stood on a century ago or especially a native American from half a decade ago. While there is to
be said that humans use the natural resources around them to an advantage, the arrogance and
selfishness that it correlates with reveals the true agenda of the human race. Humans have
divorced nature in a selfish way that does not take in account the integrity or design of natural
resources but for rather their own industrial, anthropogenic needs.
One of the most popular problems within modern environmental problems has to be the
dwindling of the Earth’s rainforests. Deforestation is a vibrant problem that stems from
industrialization and urbanization expansions, all induced by humans. According to a National
Geographic article, the deforestation problem is a “modern–day plague”. The article also states,
“The world’s rain forests could complete vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of
deforestation.” The main reasoning for deforestation comes from agriculture technology.
Farmers need more land to graze lifestock and plant crops and the only way it will be obtained is
by destroying habitats for their industry which is known to be called “slash-and-burn
agriculture”. Due to this industry, millions of species can be destroyed because eighty-percent of
flora and fauna species are found within forest regions (National Geographic). Not only are flora
and fauna being affected, so is the quality of soil in these regions as well as rainfall. “By 2050,
deforestation could reduce rainfall across the Amazon Basin by 21 percent during dry seasons
and 12 percent during wet seasons,” (Cutting Down Rainforests). Southern parts of brazil, as
well as other South American countries, will exponentially lose rainfall in their agricultural
regions due to deforestation in approximate rainforests. While humans are cutting down forest–
like regions for their agricultural industry, nature, ultimately, is fighting back by reducing rainfall
for agriculture areas. The inconsistencies and loss in coexistence between human
industrialization and nature have caused both parties to be negatively affected.
