Essay #199 "Air we Breathe" 08.04.18 The last decades were marked with the high-paced development of manufacturing industries which has led to the drastic drop in quality of air. Many people consider this issue as a major problem of our era, which can make a drastic effect not only on people, but on all the life on earth. However, the question of who is responsible for resolving this problem still has no answer. Some people think that governments should make steps to resolve this issue, while others believe that we all should participate in this. One of the points is that as people have managed to reach this level of air contamination by their mutual “efforts” it is possible to solve this environmental problem, also, by applying these mutual efforts. In many cases such problems can benefit even from small things, such as restricting use of cars for example. These little things cannot be controlled by governments and should be made by people themselves, thus they just have to use their common sense and ecological consciousness. The next point is closely related to the first one. As governments cannot force people to be environmental-friendly and therefore laws and policies will have a very little effect on people’s behaviour, governments should promote environmentalist’s ideas through education. People should be taught about the repercussions of their activities and the dangers of ecological contamination. Despite the fact that this way cannot improve the situation in a short time, it will have a great beneficial effect in a distance. Lastly, the shifting of responsibility on governments is a very convenient but also faulty idea, one which creates a highly negative effect on social development and overall situation in a community. Thus, people should face the fact that not only are they responsible for the worsening of air quality, but also they have to put all their effort into the resolving this problem. Only by understanding all this can the positive result can be reached. To conclude, the recent drop in the quality of our environment has been caused by people’s thoughtless activities. Thus, we are fully responsible for the situation we are facing right now, and we should not shift the responsibility on governments or various ecological organizations. Only by putting mutual efforts into resolving of this problem we will be able to stop this process, and revive the ecology of the planet to its initial state of purity.