In the past decades there have been drastic and irreplaceable disappearances in earth. These include the drying out of the Aral sea, the fourth largest inland sea in the world. The reason for its disappearance is that the water that poured into it has been diverted. Another extraordinary case is the death of millions of starfish due to radioactive military waste in the white sea. In the summer of 1988 12.000 dead seals washed to the shore in Texas.
These shocking and disturbing facts are the ones that begun to create awareness to the fact that humans are not being careful about the environment. The extent of such damage started with the industrial revolution. This is because industry means burning coal and oil in great amounts. This rises the levels of Carbon Monoxide in the air which has the ability to trap heat. So, eventually as CO2 rises so does the temperature of the Earth. In fact, global warming is expected to rise temperatures quicker in the polar regions than in the rest of the world. For example, the north polar cap in the last decade has thinned 2%. This is a significant increase that if it isn't stopped might affect the whole Earth. This problem is one that affects globally.
Another increasing problem is the destruction of the rain forests. The equivalent of the size of Tennessee is burned each year, usually to create fast pasture for fast-food beef. If we consider the fact that more different species of birds live in the rain forest than in all North America, we realize that in slashing the rain forests we are ensuring that they will be left without a home and therefore be doomed to extinction. As a result, species of animals and plants are vanishing one thousand times faster than at any point during the last 65 million years.
Scuba divers have also witnessed the change in biodiversity. In some natural coral reefs there is no practically no life because it has been destroyed. In other cases they have bleached due to higher temperatures vanished the tiny organisms that live in symbiosis with the corals and give them their color.