Drawn Up: The Biggest Environmental Problems of 2021 The climate crisis is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, and we are not ready for it. While the crisis has many factors that play a role in its exacerbation

Drawn Up: The Biggest Environmental Problems of 2021

The climate crisis is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, and we are not ready for it. While the crisis has many factors that play a role in its exacerbation, there are some that warrant more attention than others. Here are some of the biggest environmental problems of our lifetime. 
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1. Poor Governance
In a world governed by economics, our society has failed to factor in the value of Nature. It provides us with indispensable resources, yet is inexplicably free to overdraw from. Its services range from air, water, food, and medicine to other less obvious things like climate regulation and natural flood defences provided by forests. 
In many cases, damaging or changing the environment is considered no more than a side-effect of business activities. In economics, this is known as an externality, i.e. a cost (or benefit) incurred by the producer, that is paid (or received) by a third party who did not agree to it. 
Right now, our externalities are resulting in very real financial costs for those going through amplified natural disasters (droughts, floods, hurricanes), suffering from poor health due to air pollution, being displaced by sea level rise, and many other things. 
The issue is that today’s prices don’t capture all the costs, and this in and of itself is one of our biggest environmental problems. We ignore this fact because the unseen costs have only begun to appear, mostly in places of high vulnerability
What you can do: be aware of when your next local or national elections are, and vote for candidates who are engaged on climate issues. 
2. Food Waste
In 2013, the US Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated that around ⅓ of the world’s food was wasted every year. Since then, it has become a major issue which many entities around the world are attempting to solve.
The amount of food lost is equivalent to roughly 1.3 billion tons, which is enough to feed 3 billion people. Considering there are 690 million people suffering from malnutrition, it is clear we have more than enough for everyone to eat their fill. Beyond the human tragedy, the damage from producing this food is one of the biggest environmental problems on our planet, which we will expand on in the agriculture section furhter down. 

Source: IFCO.
What you can do: to reduce food waste, we can shop more efficiently as consumers and avoid letting things sit past their expiration date. Governments are also addressing the problem; in 2015 the Obama administration pledged to cut food waste by half by 2030. The movement has also entered the entrepreneurial world, led by Too Good To Go, a company that connects you with retailers to help you pick up food that would otherwise go to waste.