Essay Topic: How Humans Affect the Environment
We are all surrounded by numerous materials and forces, which we refer to as our world. The term “environment” refers to the surroundings in which we live, and from which every organism derives its needs. It provides optimal conditions for living organisms to survive and evolve. Any organism’s survival depends on a continuous supply of materials and the removal of water products from its environment. The destruction of the world has become a significant threat to humanity’s survival.
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Humans have a significant impact on the physical world, including overpopulation, pollution, fossil fuel combustion, and deforestation. Climate change, soil degradation, polluted air, and undrinkable water have all been caused by changes like these. These negative effects may affect human actions, resulting in mass migrations or wars for clean water. The effect of humans on the environment has become a hot topic among university professors around the world. Here are some of the major effects caused by humans on the environment.
Overpopulation issue
Repopulation used to be synonymous with survival. However, as we approach the full carrying ability that our planet can support, the reverse is rapidly becoming true. For hundreds of years, human overpopulation has had an impact on the ecosystem and has been a cause of concern. As death rates have declined, medicine has advanced, and industrial farming practices have been introduced, overpopulation has become a problem. Making humans alive for a much longer time causes an increase in the overall population.
It became more familiar with us when in 1798, Thomas Malthus published his research in which he said that, without substantial and continuing technological progress, the human population will almost undoubtedly surpass the planet’s food supply. This issue was raised again in Stanford professor R. Paul Ehrlich’s book “The Population Bomb” in 1968. Humans need a lot of space, whether for agriculture or industries, all of which take up a lot of space. As the population increases, more clear-cutting happens, causing habitats to be seriously harmed. CO2 levels rise when there aren’t enough trees to absorb the air, which has the potential to harm any living thing on the planet. Another problem is our reliance on fossil fuels and oil for energy; as the population grows, so will the use of fossil fuels. The burning of fossil fuels releases large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, endangering the extinction of thousands of animals and compounding the effects of forest degradation.
Pollution
Environmental pollution is one of the world’s most pressing issues today, with levels rising year after year and causing grave and irreversible harm to the planet. Pollution can be found almost everywhere. Pollution and waste are unavoidable, as shown by the garbage tossed out on the highway and the billions of megatons of pollution poured into the atmosphere each year. Although it can be hard to determine which pollutants are linked to particular environmental or public health consequences, it is widely acknowledged that air pollution can affect human health as well as plant and animal life.
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Air pollution is said to be the most harmful form of pollution in our environment. It is caused by the injurious smoke emitted by cars, buses, factories, trains, and trucks, namely sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide. Even smoke emitted by burning leaves and cigarettes is harmful to the environment causing a lot of damage to man and the atmosphere, and various breathing problems along with severe and irreparable damage to flora and fauna. Even the most natural phenomenon of migratory birds has been hampered, with severe air pollution preventing them from reaching their seasonal metropolitan destinations of centuries. Landfills create a clear and obvious threat to human health as well as a threat to our environment from the hazardous contaminated air emissions emitted from the landfill biodegradation. Environmental protection laws have been implemented at the local, state, and federal levels to curb emissions, and also some communities have participated in ongoing discussions aimed at encouraging healthy, low-impact living.
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The atmosphere has severe built-in sell cleaning processes such as dispersion, gravitational settling, flocculation, absorption, etc. to cleanse the environment. However, control of contaminants at their source level is a desirable and effective method through preventive or control technologies. By ensuring sufficient supply of oxygen to the combustion chamber and adequate temperature so that the combustion is complete thereby eliminating much of the smoke consisting of partly burnt ashes and dust. Continuous monitoring of the environment for pollutants should be carried out to know the emission levels.
