Many of us are familiar with the term "global warming." We know it is a bad thing that negatively impacts our environment, but some of us haven't really realized the extent of the impact until this winter. While working today, I heard a bunch of young adults talking about how there's yet to be any snow (at least in Maine), yet it's already Christmastime. They sounded absolutely stupefied as why that was. Well hey! Guess what? One simplified explanation could be global warming! Of course, the matter is much more complicated underneath than on the surface, but the main point that I want to bring up is that many of us fail to realize the problems the world is facing until we literally come face-to-face with them. Until we experience them first hand some of us just live stuck inside of a little bubble that never changes and will seemingly never change in the future. But we need to realize that what we do today impacts the future even if can't see it now. We need to be aware of our actions and be knowledgeable on matters that concern the future health of the world.

For those who may be ignorant on such matters, here are some simple facts and figures to help put things in perspective and hopefully educate some on the matters that everybody should be familiar with, because they will affect everybody at some point. And by everybody I literally mean every living soul on this earth. This does not cover close to all of the problems we are facing, but these are key things to be aware about when thinking of our future and how we should alter our lives.

Food production must increase by 70 percent by the year 2050 to accommodate the estimated growth in our population.

This results in increased use of chemicals/genetically modified crops, an increase in the meat industry, increased market prices and deforestation.

Wondering why these are such bad things? Well here's the mini rundown.

Increased use of chemicals:

• Pose a negative effect on the environment
  • Runoff into aquatic environments
  • Wind carries them to grazing areas and human settlements
• Create a negative effect on animals and people
  • Harmful to animals that eat crops and humans that inhale them (72 million birds are killed by pesticides in the US every year!)
  • Possible cause of loss of pollinators

Genetically modified crops

This leads to less diversity and makes crops susceptible to disasters that could wipe out an entire food source, creating a large scale famine.

Increase in Factory Farming

• Meat has more of an impact on the environment than any other food we eat
• The world needs an 85 percent increase in volume of meat produced by 2050
• Meat consumption is already too high (270.7 pounds per person/year... yuck)

Meat is costly. The meat we eat needs to be fed and raised, just like we are. If we collected all of the grain that is currently being fed to livestock in the US and directly fed it to humans, nearly 800 million people could benefit. Livestock also require more water than crops do. And just like any other industry, animals produce a larger amount of pollution into the environment than other food sources. All of these resources require money, making meat prices expensive.

Big picture: For those of us who are spoiled enough to eat meat several times a week, perhaps cutting down the meat in our diets could help feed starving people in poorer countries.

Deforestation

During the last two decades, agricultural expansion, logging, development, and other human activities caused the deforestation of more than 120,000 square kilometers/year. The main cause (about 80 percent to be exact) of this deforestation is agriculturally related.

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Now, you may be wondering why I mentioned all of these things and how they connect back to us. These are all connected to a growth in our population. If we don't make changes quickly, we are looking at an unsustainable future. Problems we might face include water scarcity, soil erosion, and land loss.

If you need me to sum it up, here it is. We will eventually run out of water, soil and land. What happens then? How do we expect our population to live when there is no way to produce food? This is just one example of a reality that many do not see because it hasn't caused any immediate effects on them. The world as we see it is a perfect way to describe some individuals' beliefs and thought processes. They consider what they see currently, but don't project and don't bother to look beneath the surface. This is only one issue that we should be considering, but there are many more out there that we just don't take the time to think about. But there is not better time to start than now.