To those who think us puny humans can’t really affect the weather, the climate, the environment, the planet — see this sad, shocking video.

“NUKUS, Uzbekistan — The drying up of the Aral Sea is one of the planet’s most shocking disasters, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday, as he urged Central Asian leaders to step up efforts to solve the problem.

Once the world’s fourth-largest lake, the sea has shrunk by 90 percent since the rivers that feed it were largely diverted in a Soviet project to boost cotton production in the arid region.

The shrunken sea has ruined the once-robust fishing economy and left fishing trawlers stranded in sandy wastelands, leaning over as if they dropped from the air. The sea’s evaporation has left layers of highly salted sand, which winds can carry as far away as Scandinavia and Japan, and which plague local people with health troubles.”

Read more at Huffpo.

The problem with each environmental disaster that humans create is that it creates a domino effect and affects so much more than the initial reaction.  Lack of water where once local fishermen depended on the food and the work also leads to heart and health troubles far away.  Coal plants the burn coal in the midwest pollute air on the east coast and cause asthma and heart problems in the east, where they don’t even burn the coal that comes from there.  What will happen to the Great Barrier Reef now that yet another ship has run aground on the shoal on the southern tip of the reef,  with a hole in its hull?  The Shen Neng 1, was carrying about 65,000 tons of coal and about 950 tons of oil were on board.  Now it’s leaking into the ocean.  It’s a small amount, but any oil leaking into marine reserves is completely unacceptable.

Unfortunately greedy people, grasping on to their addictions to fossil fuels and with complete disregard for the environment, are causing these immense environmental disasters, and there is a big price to pay now and in the future.