Debate for Environment: Opposition

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and respected adjudicator.

The motion today was that the environment should be made the top priority. Our team strongly disagrees with this for a few reasons as follows.

The reason I am here today is that I am going to talk about how there are many many higher priorities than the environment, and how the environment shouldn’t be focussed on compared to some of these problems. Problems like poverty and economy in some poorer countries should be looked at to find a way to fix it.

Me and my team put a lot of research into this and have found a lot of problems that have nothing to do with the environment. Such as, running out of natural recourses,  not enough facilities to support the population growth, war, nuclear weapons, racism, sexism, terrorism, the economic crises,  political problems, poverty, world hunger, anti-semitism, the list can go on and on and on. But i am not here to say the problems we should be looking at, i am here to explain and provide solutions to these problems.

I don’t have enough time to explain each problem we found, so i will be talking about the biggest and worse problems that we could find, and i will talk about real life examples that are happening in hk.

The biggest and worse problem that still exists that we could find, is war. War is a very big problem and is normally started for the need of more recourses like oil, or to gain more land. War can last for years, and millions of people can be killed. That is why war is such a big problem.

Another very big problem with an example in HK is homicide, and suicide. This can be triggered for many reasons, such as depression and not getting a big enough income. Tin Shui Wei,  the problematic area in HK is the place were most homicides and suicides and other crimes are committed. Mostly from not being able to support their financial needs. There have been some cases of  the parent killing their child and husband/ wife then commiting suicide because they wern’t getting enough money to support their family. The government were suggesting building some infrastructure in tin shui wei, but environmentalists said no. It wouldn’t be good for the environment. But who cares? There are people killing other people because there isn’t enough infrastructure or enough jobs, which come with infrastructure.

The last problem that I will be explaining today is the problem of poverty. Poverty is found all over the world, no matter where you go. This problem also contributes to world hunger. So if you fix the problem of poverty, you could also fix world hunger. Poverty is when someone is extremely poor and has to live on the streets, finding food from rubbish bins, and making money by begging on the streets. You can see why poverty is such a big problem in the world. You come across it nearly every day in hk. Most of the time in causeway bay. Even though it is totally illegal, you still see people begging on the streets to make money so they can have just one full meal. Countless people are contributing to try and help, but not enough.

If we looked at the environment, and tried to work on fixing it, we wouldn’t be doin ourselves any favors, because all the environmental problems will pop up agin. Meanwhile, if we think about these problems, it could also solve the problem of pollution in the environment, so it would be a win win situation. So we should be thinking more toward solving some problems not to do with the environment to fix the environment, and if we only try to fix it, it will just happen again.

Thank you.