A lone deer in a cesspool of filth and trash, rummaging through the broken glass of the decaying buildings of abandoned New York City. She is the last of her kind. No one lives there–no humans–it is not safe anymore. She gasps for air but gets a mouthful of dust and soot. What has the world come to? The air around the earth has become black. Life struggles to breathe.

This post-apocalyptic dramatization of our future is something actually to be feared. Deforestation is a danger toward the earth as many developing countries continue to burn obscene amounts of natural fuel, such as trees, plants or any living material. It not only poisons the fresh air, but takes away the very trees that clean-up and filter out the air.

Brazil is one of the leading examples of the detrimental effects of deforestation; it can just be seen in the pictures. The large plots of land along Amazon look torn apart as the rain erodes whole mountains and transforms the range into some sort of alien planet. Deforestation not only takes away the trees but also washes away any chance of life in that area growing back.

These areas could take decades to become fertile again. All the nutrients are taken downstream and dump into the Amazon river and funnel directly into the ocean, which creates dead zones along the coast (A dead zone is a place that has too much growth in a certain area that everything dies and the dissolved oxygen levels become too low to support any life). The areas off the warm water coasts where corals are found are extremely sensitive to changes of any kind; the corals reefs have experienced a major drop in population sizes as the growth and death threatens their ability to grow and function. The dead zone kills these reefs that are teeming with exotic life. Coral bleaching is typically the cause of death, which leads to the extinction of species that depend upon the corals. A lot of our food comes from the ocean and if we continue this path, we could starve millions.

Deforestation not only threatens the plots of land that are chopped down and lumbered until they are completely cleared, but the land bleeds and causes irreparable damage to nature–miles away from the direct damage–that would take hundreds of years to repair naturally. The Amazon is melting away. Not only is the beauty of nature is in jeopardy, but eventually our lives could be. How will our future look if we continue this?