by Jeremy Ford

Created on: December 13, 2009

            The fundamental reason humans could not survive without vegetation is that vegetation releases oxygen.  Plant life intakes carbon dioxide and releases it as oxygen through the process of photosynthesis.  This is the sole reason other complex life forms have evolved on Earth.  Without vegetation, humans and most animals could not breathe the air, much less evolved in the first place.  Therefore, vegetation is absolutely essential to the survival of humans. 

            Before plants spawned into existence, the atmosphere was carbon dioxide dominant.  Plant life then came into existence as there was a niche to be fulfilled- this niche being the intake and subsistence upon the vast amounts of carbon dioxide.  Once plants began sucking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen, it allowed for the evolution of more complex life forms, including humans.  Now humans would not evolve for millions of years, but this increase in oxygen made there evolution possible.  Organisms began breathing in oxygen and evolving with more complex structures and ways of life.  Eventually, humans came about by subsisting on the plant life and animal life that previously used vegetation to survive.

            Not only is our existence dependant on vegetation, the existence of every mammal, insect, reptile, amphibian, and every living creature on the planet are dependent on vegetation.  It is an essential element in our ecosystem.  All life fulfills a niche, and if vegetation were to become extinct, all other life would follow suit because there are too many creatures that use plant life to fulfill their niche.  Even if an animal does not directly feed and subsist off of pure vegetation, the creature it uses for subsistence most likely relies on vegetation.  And if that animal does not rely on vegetation, the next animal in the hierarchy of the food web would, and if not that one, somewhere along line of prey and predator a creature must subsist on vegetation.  It is the way complex life forms have evolved.  There has to be a primordial existence that all other life forms can evolve from.  And vegetation is one of these primordial pieces of evolution.

           Evolution is not an

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>