The general public has its own opinion about whether the government plays a significant role in protecting the environment or people should be the ones responsible for taking care of the sustainability of the environment. In this essay, I will discuss both perspectives before presenting my point of view on this issue.
On one side, the government has absolute authority for creating environmental protection regulations. Those regulations must be followed by all citizens, whether they like it or not. They make significant impacts on our environment since major measures for protecting the environment are mandatory for all citizens. For instance, Singapore will fine its citizens around SGD 100 for being irresponsible and spitting in the road. On the other hand, the self-awareness of individuals to protect the environment is a must to protect natural resources for future generations. If individuals have good awareness about keeping natural resources, they automatically make decisions on behalf of the environment on a daily basis. In addition, their personal commitment to protecting the environment brings long-lasting impacts as they will make considerations from all environmental perspectives for the rest of their lives. For example, choosing non-plastic packaged food; if one individual keeps doing this for their whole life, we can imagine how many kilograms of plastic we save from our earth. As a result, it can preserve our natural resources for our offspring.
In my opinion, individual awareness plays a major role in protecting the environment. Since personal awareness leads to often choosing measures to maintain environmental protection in every daily decision. Individual awareness is also not overly promising since individuals understand the importance of maintaining our environmental sustainability for the sake of their offspring. To sum up, the government and the individual have their own capacity to protect environmental sustainability. Individuals are highly recommended to be more aware of the importance of protecting our environment since it maintains the earth’s sustainability for future generations.
