What are your thoughts regarding the contents of Chapter 1 of Laudatu Si?

While reading Chapter One of Laudato Si, it becomes more apparent that people, the
stewards entrusted to manage and conserve the environment, are the biggest sources of the
collapse of Mother Earth. We are major investors to the foundations which greatly cause pain to
the environment.
To start, we have the issue of pollution and climate change. Let us take an example from
our everyday life where we see the bustling streets swarming with vehicles. These vehicles give
off dangerous gases that pollute the air we breathe. Not only do we harm the environment, but
we also harm ourselves by breathing in a huge amount of the smoke. Although the technology
that we have developed has made our lives speedier and more convenient, it has also sped up
the time of our lives. By slowly destroying the environment, we are gradually putting to sleep the
one home that we have. Instead of creating solutions to this concern, it has only added to the
quantity of unresolved issues. Due to the mass production all around the world, it has generated
heaps of waste that are highly lethal and radioactive. These wastes come from business
factories which also originate from the plans of businessmen. The link between the cause of
harm on the environment and us, the people, has become even clearer than day. Aside from the
waste produced from factories, there are those that come directly from us. After we use the
products created from those factories, we follow what we call a “throwaway culture”. Instead of
reusing these products, we simply put them away and mark them as unusable. We make light of
the campaign “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” and in its place, our industry continues to function with
activities incapable of following this campaign. As our population increases, so does our
consumption and the higher consumption makes a higher demand which in turn forces the
supply market to give in. The more we produce, the more we hurt the environment. If we keep
following the cycle of non-reusing and non-recycling, the face of the earth will be nothing but a
mountain of garbage.
As we all know, the climate concerns everyone. It affects us as it is essential for the
sustenance of our lives. But what has become of the climate? There has been an immense
warming of our climatic system and this has greatly affected the natural system of our
environment. Due to the extreme heat, the sea levels have been continuously rising and the
weather has also suffered extremely bizarre conditions. Weather forecasts start to become
laughable foreshadowing as what is supposed to be a “sunny day” turns into a downpour with
gusts of wind from no known source. The changes the environment has been forced to adapt
comes from the kind of lifestyle we pursue, how much consumption we take and the way we
handle our productions. Even though there are factors natural to the changes in the
environment, several scientific studies point toward human activities as the main source of the
warming of our climate. This warming is caused by the concentration of greenhouse gases
which gather as a result of our daily activities and lead to worsen the situation even more as it
depletes our essential resources, such as energy, drinking water, agricultural production and
even go so far as wipe out a portion of our biodiversity. Despite the implications of global
warming on the environment and amidst efforts in minimizing these activities, there continues to
be a huge wanting in understanding on the part of the people. Our actions hurt our own people
as they are forced to leave their means of livelihood – fishing, forestry and agriculture, because
the natural resources they so largely depend on have started to fade away as a result of global
warming.
 The environment is our home and it is our responsibility to take care of it. A home
shelters us from the harm that lurks outside its walls and if we do not take care of it, what will
shield us? We develop our countries first but lose sight of our first responsibility – to be
stewards of creation. We advance by creating projects which make human life easier but
regress in truly sustaining human life. As I have said, we sped up the time we have been given
because the more we harm the life of the environment, the less time we have left to live our
lives. We are mindful about how far we can make it to the future with the progress in our
discoveries that we are no longer aware of the kind of future we are shaping. I hope we take into
consideration that the environment is something we serve and not the other way around, and
that the suffering of the environment is the suffering of every being on the planet. If not for the
environment, no human, no being, would have made it this far.