Essay on The Conflict between Modern Life and The Environment

Engineers create artifacts and process that sustain civilized life, yet technology is often perceived as destroying the natural environment. Discuss the conflict between the aspirations of civilized life and the maintenance of natural environment.

Modern processes associated with an increase in the strength of human impact on the environment, increase in the great variety of its transformation make the study of required harmonious relations within the system “society – nature” and preservation of the natural world as the most urgent problems. Unreasonable, excessive optimism, with which practical and theoretical people use to the form the human environment without paying attention to all its complication, leads to serious changes in nature which were not known before. It also influences in a bad way its value in general and aesthetic values in particular. The modern society faces the real conflict between the aspirations of civilized life and the maintenance of natural environment.

The progress of civilization is impossible without the continuous development of volumes and expansion of economic activities of society. However, this positive development is mainly a process associated with irrational use of natural resources. It can lead to permanent unwanted changes in the natural environment. This is a base component of the worsening conflict between the need for the high research and technical development of people and the need to keep the ecological balance in nature. In particular, today it is possible to speak on the direct and indirect influence of industrial activity. It includes the composition and properties of the atmosphere, the thermal regime of the planet and the radioactivity’s background, pollution of the oceans, water, land, a reduction of fresh water and non-renewable raw materials and energy resources, an allocation to the biosphere of non-converted biochemical and toxic waste, the environmental impact of landscape made by man, especially in urban, the impact of environmental factors on physical and mental health and human populations in the gene pool, etc.

During the technological revolution and progress, volume and quality of human influence on nature is rapidly growing. The changing forms of human interaction with nature become more and more intense because societies develop and methods of production are improved.

Such phenomena have occurred throughout the history of human society. However, at the early stages when people started using the natural resources and influencing it was at the small volume and did not noticeably disturbed the natural environment. At the industrial age, this process has seriously increased and become threatening.

The growth of human activity and the rapid development of scientific and technological revolution have increased the negative impact on nature. They also have led to ecological imbalance in the world. The rapid economic development and human activities have led to pollution of the Earth (the ocean, air and water), the “greenhouse effect”, cutting of forests, disappearance of many species of plants and animals. These are just some of the basic forms of human impact on the environment (Green Life Staff, 2012)

Fresh water became the most defenseless part of nature. Waste water, pesticides, fertilizers, mercury, arsenic, lead, and much more elements in large amount fall into rivers and lakes. The Danube, Volga, Rhine, Mississippi, the Great American Lakes are heavily polluted. Fresh water supply in the world is great, but the need of industry, agriculture and housing and communal services are growing with great speed.

It is known that a person can live five weeks without food, five days without water, and five minutes without air. Meanwhile, air pollution has long exceeded the possible limits. Dust, carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere of many large cities has increased in many times comparing to the early 20th century.



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