Health And Globalisation: Two Negative Consequences Of Globalization

Health and environmental damage are two negative consequences of globalisation which I find fascinating - in the sense that they both have the potential to wipe out the human race, and in the sense that they have interesting solutions that could be implemented. I have already discussed global health issues during the Week Seven assignments, so I will focus on the consequences of environmental damage, how it could affect humans negatively, and what could be done to improve our current situation.

I think environmental damage is truly a problem for the world, because it affects everybody who lives on the planet. The effect that one group of people have on the environment is not something that is localised - it can have adverse effects on people elsewhere as well, thousands of

As humans, I think we have a tendency to think of ourselves as being on the top of the natural world, but we are not invincible, and rely more on the benevolence of nature than we realise. We would not be able to escape the consequences of destroying the environment for the luxuries of the modern world. If we are not careful, we could be facing widespread desertification of land, caused by deforestation or improper agriculture (Wikipedia, 2016b), and pollution of the air, water, soil and oceans. These would impact our capacity to provide sufficient food resources to the (growing) population, and prolonged exposure to pollution could damage our health and wellbeing. Global warming and resultant climate change are also of concern, and have consequences such as extreme weather; melting glaciers and ice caps, which could release old, potentially harmful bacteria back into the ecosystem; and an increase in seismic activity, which would increase the prevalence of natural disasters, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and