• Question: If there was one thing you could remove from this earth, what would it be and why?

    Asked by to Clare, Divya, Ian, Jess, Lewis on 18 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Lewis Dean

      Lewis Dean answered on 18 Mar 2014:


      Humans! If we were removed, things on Earth would be a lot easier for our planet – the destruction of ecosystems would be much lower, the pollution lessened and huge bits of land wouldn’t be concreted over.

      Don’t get me wrong, humans are amazing! We have incredible brains that allow us to come up with solutions to lots of different challenges and we work together to achieve amazing things. Unfortunately, we can also be really self-centred and not think about the long-term consequences of our actions.

    • Photo: Jess Smith

      Jess Smith answered on 18 Mar 2014:


      I agree with Lewis about humans being very bad for the planet- like a parasite!

      But with humans taken I shall propose that we remove weapons. We waste so many resources on fighting. Countries invest billions of pounds into weapons development and that money and research time could have been spent on other global issues, like fighting climate change and increasing global education. If everybody’s weapons just got taken off them, then we could focus on better goals.

    • Photo: Ian Hands-Portman

      Ian Hands-Portman answered on 18 Mar 2014:


      I was going to go for weapons, so I’ll go for human greed – we wouldn’t need weapons if we stopped hoarding stuff and realised there is enough to go round. I’m not sure it’s all humans that are the problem, mostly it seems to be the ones with the Y chromosomes so maybe that should go….

    • Photo: Clare Nevin

      Clare Nevin answered on 18 Mar 2014:


      Human impact on earth is huge, if we could take away the things we use that make the most damage, it would be much reduced. So I would suggest the use of fossil fuels, oil and coal, not usable on an industrial scale, so that we would have to find cleaner alternatives. We would reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint massively and our impact on the environment would be much more minimal.

    • Photo: Divya Venkatesh

      Divya Venkatesh answered on 18 Mar 2014:


      Um, humans have done some pretty splendid things along with some pretty horrific things. For better or worse we have probably made the most interesting of changes on earth (which is biased cause I’m human).

      If I had to remove something, it would be all the extra CO2 and other greenhouse gases so that we get a bit more time before global warming kicks in — enough time to invest and make renewable energy efficient and work just as well as oil/gas. A second chance!

Comments