Earth is a planet full of resources that organisms have shared over millions of years. The problem is that human activity is increasing pollution and carbon footprint, largely on the last years. How is this affecting us and other organisms? To find the answer to this question there has to be a clear definition about carbon footprint and pollution. Carbon footprint is the amount of gases that are released during human activities, gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and carbon monoxide (“Carbon Footprint”). Pollution, on the other hand, is a much wider word that means the contamination of the resources (land, water and air) of the planet. This contamination is done by the creation and use of manufactured products, such as plastics and pesticides (“Pollution”). These products affect the environment by altering its normal conditions and therefore affecting all the organisms on earth.
The carbon footprint is creating global warming that changes the climate, and with this, altering the ecosystems and killing species. Pollution, in a not so far future, will affect drinkable water and food; making them scarce and toxic. To prevent this from happening and reverse the damages that we have already caused, there has to be a change into sustainable cities. These are cities that are designed to minimize carbon footprint, pollution and waste that are produce dally by the population living in that city. These can be accomplished by achieving a balance between economic, environmental, and social aspects in a community.
Air is polluted by different chemicals released into the air, by the act of burning fossil fuels. Green house gases are very dangerous because when they are released they go into the atmosphere and accumulate. Every year the US ...
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When we think of air pollution we think of the refineries in our cities and the exhaust coming from our cars mostly. In reality there are many more pollutants that we don't think about every day. The six most common air pollutants are; “Carbon monoxide, Nitrogen oxides, Sulphur oxides, Particulate matter, Volatile organic compounds, and Ground-level ozone (nitrogen oxide and Volatile organic compounds reaction)”(David Suzuki Foundation). The fact is people are dying from air pollution and we are doing nothing to make it better, in fact air pollution is getting worse.
Many people don’t know how much they contribute to the emissions of green house gasses. The truth is we as people support the burning of fossil fuels almost unknowingly. We use them for everything from daily household supplies to the gases we use to heat our homes and run our cars. The steady rise in the use of these fossil fuels is having an alarming affect on our climate. Global warming will change the Earth in unimaginable ways. With the ever increasing amount of Greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere, glaciers are now melting rapidly causing sea level to rise. The coastal changes will be sure to change our living environment over the next few hundred years.
There is no hesitation when it comes to whether humans impact the global environment. However, it is questioned in whether human’s ecological footprint is either negatively or positively impacting. In clear perspective, humans share from both sides and their ecological footprint is noted towards whether it will benefit or harm the environment around them. Topics such as overpopulation, pollution, biomagnification, and deforestation are all human impacted and can harm the environment, but some include benefits into helping the world around us with solutions to their problems.
Evo Morales stated, “Sooner or later, we will have to recognize that the Earth has rights too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans” (Pollution Quotes, 2013). Hence, attention must be provided to this devastating issue. Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that causes adverse changes (Wieman, 2013). There are numerous types of pollution, such as light, air, land, water, noise, thermal and radioactive pollution. In an article, the author highlighted that according to Richard Buckminster Fuller, “Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting, we allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value” (Farrell, 1971, p. 52). Pollution is created mostly by human actions, but can also be a result of natural disasters. Pollution can harm the environment of the world and its inhabitants in many ways. Pollution has a detrimental effect on any living organism in an environment, making it virtually impossible to sustain life (Enclyopedia - Pollution, 2008).
Humans and animals breathe out Carbon Dioxide, often referred to as the greenhouse gas, as a waste product. Plants take in this CO2 and use it to make food. This is called photosynthesis. During this process oxygen is released which is then breathed in by humans and animals. This procedure is repeated over and over and a natural balance is obtained. However this natural balance is disrupted by human activity. People of the world are putting more than 5.5 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. 75% of this is caused from the burning of fossil fuels. These fuels are burnt all the time to run factories, power plants and vehicles. The main sources of CO2 emissions are electric utilities, residential buildings, industry and transportation. The other 25% is induced by the destruction of the world's forests. The reason for this is that there are less trees and plants to take in the CO2 but there is just as many, if not more, humans and animals to breathe it out.
There are many kinds of air pollution. The ones I want to talk about are the ozone, acid rain, carbon monoxide and toxic air contaminants. Ozone is formed when hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxide react in sunlight. Therefore, ozone is at its peak during hot summer days. Exposure to high levels of ozone can have serious consequences on your health. It can cause respiratory disease, loss of pulmonary elasticity, and premature aging of our lungs. Next, is acid rain, which occurs in the atmosphere in the form of sulfur and nitrogen oxide. These pollutants can have serious damaging affects on aquatic, forest and wildlife ecosystems, as well as deterioration of buildings. Carbon monoxide is another form of pollution. It reduces the blood?s ability to carry oxygen. If a human is exposed to higher levels, it can cause chest pains, angina attacks or even death.
As previously implied, cities are currently the antithesis of even the barest sense of sustainability. To succinctly define the term “sustainability” would be to say that it represents living within one’s needs. When it comes to the city, with almost zero local sources of food or goods, one’s means is pushed and twisted to include resources originating far beyond the boundaries of the urban landscape. Those within cities paradoxically have both minimal and vast options when it comes to continuing their existence, yet this blurred reality is entirely reliant on the resources that a city can pull in with its constantly active economy.
Moore said that we can understand sustainability as “a storyline, a narrative thread that people use to understand how the past, present, and future can be connected in different ways” (Moore 2007). Since the understanding of sustainability has been changing, we can neither predict what will happen in the future nor establish a set of rules for the future generation to follow. As Norton argued, sustainable activities can be conducted in the present “without negatively impacting the range of important choices that should be left open to the next generation” (Norton 2005:432). Therefore, it’s crucial to apprehend the nature of sustainable cities in order to set up the framework while never kill
With the development of urbanization, an increasing number of social problems have emerged. These problems will decelerate the urban development, however, there are many ways in which sustainable development can reduce the impact of these urbanization problems. “Sustainable development seeks to improve the quality of human life without undermining the quality of our natural environment” (Adams, W.M. 1999). Actually, sustainable development can partly solve the urbanization problems, for it can reduce the impact of the problems such as traffic jam, housing shortage and severe pollution, but it is difficult to completely solve these problems in a short time.
Every day the world around us is changing ever so slightly in many different ways. Humans can affect the environment through our day to day lifestyle without even noticing the change. An ecological footprint is a measurement of how much a person uses the environment around them to live their life. This given measurement can help one to see their impact on the earth. It is an important tool to understand what actually a human does to change the habitat near them. My ecological footprint results gave me a perspective of how my daily life can impact the world I live in, as well as, how I as an individual can change my actions to make less waste on earth. It is also useful for each person to know their own ecological footprint since no one live
...rbon dioxide, hazardous chemicals, and other pollutants, which can put a hole in the ozone. Also, the usage of some mineral resources can also pollute the air; burning any kind of fuel fossils releases dangerous elements into the air, such as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. All of these kinds of pollution which are caused by the increase of technology, can lead to global environmental problems.
Pollutants are the key elements of pollution, which are generally waste materials of dissimilar forms. Pollution disturbs our ecosystem and the balance of the environment. With innovation and development in our lives pollution has reached its peaks giving rise to global warming and human illness. When raw materials, water, energy and other resources are utilized more efficiently, when fewer harmful substances are substituted for hazardous ones, and when lethal substances are eliminated from the production process. Water pollution is also a major problem in the world because almost 60% of it is fish.
There are many different ways that we as the earths population are destroying the environment. For example, the tall cooling towers used by industries. They do not remove pollutants but simply push them higher into the atmosphere, in this way they reduce their concentration at that particular area. The pollutants may then travel over large distances and produce negative effects in areas far away from the original site.
Efforts to improve the standard of living for humans--through the control of nature and the development of new products--have also resulted in the pollution, or contamination, of the environment. Much of the world's air, water, and land is now partially poisoned by chemical wastes. Some places have become uninhabitable. This pollution exposes people all around the globe to new risks from disease. Many species of plants and animals have become endangered or are now extinct. As a result of these developments, governments have passed laws to limit or reverse the threat of environmental pollution.
Pollution is a massive problem that the earth faces. Pollution is the action or process of making land, water, air, etc…, dirty and not safe or suitable to use. Pollution of air, water, and soil are the most complex issues. Various types of gases and toxins that are released by industries