Environmental Science Education
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Environmental science education was created by people concerned that every human being is responsible to care for and protect the world. The environment has been threatened and damaged by human intervention in the process of nature by technical and industrial advances that have improved the way of life for all mankind. However, the instigators of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century never dreamed that their innovations would one day challenge mankind's very existence. It is such concerns that today's curriculum proposes to bring to everyone's attention.
School programs, community efforts and industrial regulations have been created to address these situations that threaten to eliminate fresh water sources, clean air and destroy the natural habitat of wildlife. All of these contribute to the ecosystem functioning in cooperation with each other. Therefore, what happens to these environmental factors directly affects every human on the planet. The benefit of an environmental science education provides an understanding of the world encompassing mankind, but it also establishes the necessity of cooperation between all humans of every nationality, race and gender. The benefits or the detriments will affect all, no matter what other differences they may hold against each other. Of course, if there isn't a world fit to live in due to environmental sub-standard conditions, the other petty issues of race and power have no bearing whatsoever.
Environmental science education holds the purpose to educate from an early age the importance of preserving and protecting the natural resources upon which everyone depends for food, for life. No one is exempt from the responsibility, yet too many are so dependant on what is readily available and don't take time to know from where it originated. Electricity, gasoline, drinking water, all these are part of the daily routine of humans, yet too many haven't considered how these conveniences are provided and in what limited quantities they exist. The earth cannot reproduce the natural resources taken for granted at the pace in which they are being consumed and someday will be drastically depleted. Genesis 1:26 says "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
It is up to those who are intimately aware of the pending danger to send out a wake-up call to not only the residents of the world, but also, to the governing bodies who can set regulations on consumption and protection of the earth's natural resources. A dangerous setback to such regulations is the power of those legislators who prefer to benefit within their own personal economic opportunities instead of broadening their concerns to the good of mankind. Such actions for personal gain destroy the positive proposals of those efforts to promote environmental science education and subsequently the preservation of the earth and mankind.
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