As the population of our Earth rises to over seven billion people, it’s getting harder and harder to find a spot untouched by pollution and human development. Sad to say it, but a lot of times things have to go horribly wrong before we do anything to help the environment. From nuclear waste dumping, to forest removal, anyone in these areas end up suffering along with the environment!
Here are five environmentally-unfriendly places to be, and why you don’t want to be there.
-Rondonia, Brazil-Rondonia is a part of northern Brazil, and along with Para and Mato Grosso, it has the dubious distinction of being one of the most heavily deforested regions of what was once rain forest. Thousands upon thousands of acres of rain forest have been cut and burned, just to make room for more settlements and cattle ranches.
-Yamuna River, India- The Yamuna is the Ganges River’s biggest tributary. The part that flows through the city of Delhi gets about 60% of the city’s waste dumped into it- which is a shame, because millions of India’s people get their drinking, washing and toilet water from the Ganges and its tributaries.
-Lake Karachay, Russia- In a Worldwatch Institute report on nuclear waste and the damage it does, Karachay has the dubious honor of being the most polluted place on Earth. Used by the USSR as a nuclear waste dumping site, the radiation level there is so high that it can deliver a lethal dose after being exposed for just an hour.
-The island nation of Haiti- Once mostly covered in forest, today only 2% of Haiti has forest left. Haiti has cleared almost every tree, right up to its border with the Dominican Republic. Matters are being made far worse by the recent, severe earthquake.
-Appalachia, West Virginia- Strip mining where entire mountaintops are removed is one of the most environmentally-unfriendly practices ever, and it’s a specialty of West Virginia’s coal mining operations. Removal of mountaintops increases runoff and erosion, which poisons streams, lakes and rivers far from where the mining takes place.
Pollution can do serious damage to our planet and it puts our very future at risk. Unless we radically change the way we go about mining and other activities, we won’t have much to leave the next generation.