No topic has attracted as much interest and global commitment as it has been and is, that related to environmental problems, due to the inescapable reality that the environment belongs to everyone, affects everyone and, therefore, concerns them. everyone. The environment, if you try to conceptualize it, is nothing more than the set of interrelated abiotic elements (solar energy, soil, water and air) and biotic (living organisms, including Man), which make up the thin layer of the Earth. called Biosphere, sustenance and home of the alive beings.
A timely change in mentality has led, on an international but not yet global scale, to the adoption of regulations, provisions, decrees and laws, as well as the application of science, technique and technology, in favor of an increase in quality of life, which is linked to the use and enjoyment of the environment, this being a long, gradual, systematic process and not without difficulties and misunderstandings.
The environmental problem arises when the dissatisfactions of reducing thematic approaches of scientific-technical and social achievements come to light, which, when solving a problem, generated others, not foreseen by the narrowness of the conceptual framework and of spatial and thematic reference, even, sometimes the remedy was worse than the disease. (Ayes, 2003).
And this is said then, “… Although science and technology provide us with numerous positive benefits, they also bring negative impacts, some of which are unpredictable, but all of them reflect the values, perspectives and visions of those who are able to to make decisions regarding scientific and technological knowledge… ”. (Cutcliffe, 1990).
In recent decades there has been an increase in interest in technology and historical, sociological and philosophical reflections on it have proliferated, taking into account its strong interactions with science and society.
On the one hand, today's society has a tendency to stimulate the participation of all the members of the productive system towards the transition to technologies imposed for individual and national economic growth, in conjunction with the development of human potential; acquiring great importance the knowledge of advanced technologies, that is, of the "Set of theories and techniques that allow the practical use of scientific knowledge". This without taking into account that the environmental problem (pollution and degradation of the environment, crisis of natural resources, energy and food), emerged, in the last decades of the 20th century, as a crisis of civilization, which questions economic rationality and dominant technology.
On the other hand, technology has a close relationship with science even in its conceptual framework, taking into account that science is the “Set of knowledge obtained through observation and reasoning, systematically structured and from which general principles and laws are deduced. "; since scientific work is predominant, intellectual, creative, but it cannot be carried out within the framework of pure thought, it requires certain capacities, techniques, research means, tools, that is, it requires technology, which serves to carry out practice this knowledge obtained in a scientific-theoretical way, validate the results and generalize them later through innovation. This causes socio-economic and environmental impacts, however, these will not always be positive or beneficial to society,rather, they can be and, in fact, are, negative or detrimental to it, in the short, medium or long term; the subject that concerns us this occasion is an example of these negative impacts precisely due to the search for high economic profits and extreme technological development without measuring consequences.
There is an ethical-political perception of scientific work, which includes the clear conception that it is carried out, above all, to satisfy the needs of society. This perception is shared by the actors involved in scientific-technological and innovation processes, and has its roots in the social transformations that the world has experienced and the ideology that has led it.
The result of scientific work to be recognized and accepted must satisfy the conventional norms and criteria of the scientific community. Thus, this work is closely related to society, that is, despite scientists making discoveries, the subject of knowledge is actually society itself.
What is a real shame is that when accepting them, an environmental impact assessment is not always carried out.that could cause, since, although it has already been carried out by many countries, strategies and profound actions to reverse the process of degradation and misery that the world is experiencing today, it continues and the millennium goals remain without a decisive response for third world countries, likewise, the unlimited exploitation of natural resources, especially fossil fuels, which so many military conflicts bring with them, the lack of forceful measures for the conservation of biological diversity, etc.; But there is still a lot, not so much to say but to do, especially with highly industrialized countries that only see and work for their own financial benefits, and unfortunately, for this they have all the natural heritage,social and cultural development of the richest countries in these and the slowest growth in their deformed economies.
Generally, the conservation of the environment and the protection of natural resources are carried out on a scientific basis, as long as the political will, economic resources and optimal conditions in infrastructure and human resources exist to safeguard nature for the benefit of current and future generations; although environmental and social problems also exist due to the advancement of science and technology in today's industrialized world. This could be seen as a contradiction, but it is not so much so, because with a little economic rationality there would be another bit of environmental balance and the technologies would be in function of recovering the Planet, not destroying it.
It is for all the aforementioned that this work aims to make a balance of the indissoluble relationship between economic science, the scientific-technical revolution and the environmental situation, starting from its theoretical background, until reaching the debate that today arises with even more force, regarding this issue, knowingly controversial, and finally incurring the consequences that it brings for humanity and the environment in which it lives, environmental problems, fundamentally given by economic growth and technological development, and endless greed of a few against many others.
DEVELOPING
Aristotle, Greek philosopher (384-322 BC), was the first thinker who related the administration or economy of a city or a house, to the resources that nature provides; Two important aspects can be perceived in Aristaotelian thought: the first is that Aristotle's economic idea refers to the administration or management of the house and the resources provided by nature, so there should be no problem today to broaden the scope of this idea and understand the economy as the management of the planet, an expansion that is not only physical, but also conceptual, and which would also be basically correct; the second is that the Aristotelian notion of wealth is related to the resources that nature provides.
It is important to emphasize that the notion of economy shows a concern of a real nature, in the sense that the economy is concerned with the dependence that man has on nature and on his peers in order to survive (Polanyi, 1989). In other words, the emergence of economic activity (production, distribution and consumption) is fundamentally based on the interaction of man with the natural and social environment in which he develops, this interaction having a highly beneficial resulting effect for the human being when be provided with the means to satisfy their material needs.
However, this vision did not last forever. Nicolás Copernicus, Polish astronomer (1473 - 1543), in his work “De revolutionibus orbium caelestium”, exposes the Copernican system, according to which the Sun is the center of the Universe and the Earth revolves around it; imposing in turn that new vision of the World; and bringing with it that the attitude of the human being towards his environment, far from being more cooperative in terms of keeping his planetary residence better and more habitable, would translate into a deep contempt for the material environment in which his existence unfolded, causing that nature be seen as a new force to be subdued.
Economic science was born after the ideological context that reason, science, technology and work were the ideal means to use for the submission of nature; and thus this science expands, formulating a series of concepts with the sole objective of praising the productive and utilitarian achievements of industrial society.
In the seventeenth century, the idea of progress was definitively imposed, that is, the belief that the more "modern" the more it will have "advanced" in all aspects. It is because of all this series of issues that, when the harmonic interaction of man and his environment collapsed, he was stripped of his moral sense, his relationships with the natural physical environment in which his life developed, thus promoting, the process of ecological degradation; facilitating such an imposition the unquestionable improvements in the art of navigation, the great geographical discoveries and certainly, the collapse of Aristotelian cosmology.
However, it was with the Physiocratic School, in the mid-18th century, that economics really achieved the status of autonomous science; already introducing the economic field as a coherent system, with laws harmful to man in case they were broken (Naredo, 1997). Quesnay, founder of this school, published the Tableau Economique in 1758, where he laid the foundations of economic liberalism, considering that all that wealth created through physical products comes from agriculture (predominant then).
The Physiocrats detach themselves from the religious concept of the economic, but they maintain the organicist idea and concern for the physical-natural base on which it is based, as well as for vital values; they judged the human being capable of controlling and increasing the volumes of production of his own free will through work; provided that they respected the limits that, according to them, nature imposed, and that only in this way could the unlimited reproduction of economic activity be guaranteed. They assumed that wealth-generating productive activities were no more than those that increased material production, that is, those that led to a resulting net product.
This school therefore proposes a global vision, <
Years later, in 1776, Classical Economics was born after a long incubation process that has its origins in the monetary system of the thirteenth century, disrupting the traditional practice that until then had been practiced, which is why it became a revolutionary influence for his time (Dobb, 1945). It is projected on the basis of “a new environment, an authentic ecosystem created by men”, endowed with its own dynamics, which develops alongside the natural ecosystem and, sometimes with its back to it. Nature can no longer show itself as the only source of wealth. (Passet, 1996).
The classical economists maintained Nature as a passive and uncomfortable object that was supposed to end up slowing economic growth and leading the system towards the inevitable “steady state”, they also demanded to distinguish between “productive” and “unproductive” activities. (Naredo, 1999).
In this way, the institutional obstacles that were holding back a rapid economic expansion, already perfectly possible on the basis of the new post-Newtonian technology (Industrial Revolution), would be eliminated. Thus was opening an era of optimism, of confidence in the creative capacity of man, of unlimited growth, which was quite logical in a sparsely populated world with vast virgin spaces.
David Ricardo (1772 - 1823), one of the renowned classics, argues in his analysis that the land resource has a limited character, in the physical sense of the word; therefore, there would be no long-term economic growth, precisely due to the scarcity of natural resources (Pearce and Turner, 1995). Returns would be detrimental; As the quality of the land varies, then each time there would be less quality land for production, and this would precisely cause the decline in economic growth.
He was pessimistic about the prospects for long-term economic growth and expressed his ideas about "environmental limits" in terms of limits to the supply of good-quality agricultural land and thus to diminishing returns to production. agricultural. In the long term, in Ricardo's more complex model, economic growth disappears, caused by the scarcity of natural resources. (Pearce and Turner, 1995). Diminishing returns are not so focused on absolute scarcity, but on the fact that the available land varies in quality and society is forced to move to less and less productive land.
After classical economics appeared the neoclassical authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With this, a complete theory of the market mechanism is elaborated, since, after an analysis of the subject, they reached the consensus that a good was not only worth the amount of work invested in it, but both its scarcity and the amount required by of consumers, offered a new and real value to that good. This was the key element of the neoclassical revolution, they showed that demand depends on marginal utility and thus completed the missing link to develop a complete theory of the market mechanism. It passes to the production of utility and microeconomics takes hold in a model that tries to become independent of nature.
In this way, a model completely alien to nature is developing in the neoclassical system, arguing that natural resources were not part of the idea of economic science. Thinking that both land and labor were substitutable for capital, brought with it that economic reasoning only focused on the universe of value, putting itself completely outside the physical world, that is, it abandoned everything related to the environment to its fate; and cataloging capital as the only feasible element for the production of wealth. Thus completing the epistemological rupture that meant moving the idea of the economic system, with its carousel of production and growth, to the mere field of value, where it would continue to rotate freely,until recent ecological or environmental concerns demanded new connections between the economic and the physical. (Naredo, 1999).
Being in this way until it became evident, in the 60s of the 20th century, the irrefutable need to place ourselves above the existing antagonism between the different schools of economic thought; Then the urgency of harmonizing economic growth with ecological balance begins to be seen, and a critical and radical conscience is developing in industrialized countries aimed at achieving a new alternative development style that, in the face of failed conventional models, is also capable of to integrate the environmental dimension in its entirety when it comes to economic and technological development and growth. The environmental crisis then breaks into contemporary history, marking the limits of economic rationality and thus reopening the intellectual concern for environmental problems.
As has been proposed, the state of the environment cannot be isolated from the state of the world economy. It is a closed circle. Economic problems cause or exacerbate environmental plunder, which in turn makes economic and structural reforms difficult. And it is precisely this that, unfortunately, brings with it that, if in recent times the care and supreme attention to how to solve the existing ecological crisis has gained in extension and intensity, it is because the impact of these environmental changes on the ecological order and social and social problems of the world greatly threaten the economy and because global environmental imbalances make the world economic system unviable. That is why a shift in its center of gravity has also been observed,from a conservationism originally supported by ethical and aesthetic considerations, towards more pragmatic positions linked to economic management.
The general productivist-consumerist industrialized development model that has proliferated in recent decades has proven to be profoundly unbalanced in social and environmental relations; Likewise, the entire globalizing process of the economy and its excessive growth, and the scientific-technical advances that support the entire booming production process, have brought dire consequences in favor of the degradation of the environment.
The time from which Man's ability to break that constant relationship he had and continues to have with nature began, through scientific-technological development for economic growth, has significantly modified the panorama, to the extent that this job.
Before that time, Man's interventions in nature, as he himself saw them, were essentially superficial and incapable of damaging his permanent balance. But things changed, fundamentally after the so-called Industrial Revolution.
The current ecological situation reveals three aspects
- The planet's natural resources are limited. The forms of human activity have caused a serious deterioration of the environment. A change is imposed in the forms of action of Man.
The current environmental crisis has been explained from various ideological perspectives, it is perceived as a result of the pressure exerted by the growth of the population and the limited resources of the planet. Second, it is interpreted as an effect of capital accumulation and the maximization of luxury and consumption, leading to technological patterns of use and exploitation of nature, which depletes natural resources and degrades the regeneration conditions of ecosystems.
The overexploitation of ecosystems, which quietly supported the production processes, with their dirty equipment and technologies, has unleashed a destructive force, which in its synergistic and cumulative effects, generates global changes that threaten the stability and sustainability of the planet: destruction of biodiversity, the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer, global warming. Environmental pressures and stresses become omnipresent phenomena that appear in all economic systems, regardless of political ideology, from the poorest to the richest.
These processes are intimately linked to the society-nature relationship, they are associated with new values and conceptual strategies that guide the construction of a productive rationality on the basis of ecological sustainability and social equity. Likewise, the environmental crisis causes problems with the established paradigms and demands, therefore, new ways of guiding the productive and technological processes, in a way that allows an optimal functioning of economic activity, rationalizing the necessary resources and using cleaner or more ecological technologies. as it is also called, according to the claims that are being made today in this regard.
The impact of environmental deterioration is reflected in society and in the economy of peoples in different ways and at different times, hence it is estimated: if the environmental quality deteriorates, the quality of life is affected. If you want to maintain adequate conditions of health, quality of life and sustainable development, it is necessary to worry about the maintenance and improvement of environmental integrity so as not to add costs that can be very large to development projects. (Ayes, 2003).
If savings are made in the environmental area, if the impact that a given investment can cause to the environment is not taken into account, if an evaluation of it is not made to know if the investment can or cannot be made, or how to carry it carried out without causing additional damage, by not increasing the initial investment, ends up spending larger sums in longer terms or ends up losing the investment, "cheap is expensive." This is called the cost of inaction, which is higher than proactive action.
The implementation of a new economic or other activity, the modification of an existing one or the execution of a certain project, causes an environmental impact on the environment; thus, determining the magnitude of the action on the environment is important for its maintenance and preservation.
The environmental impact is variable over time, and erosive processes may grow, remain, as in the case of constructions, or decrease, as in reforestation or restitution of the landscape. The environmental impact indicates three facets that are:
- Modification of environmental characteristics Modification of environmental values Modification of the field of human health and well-being.
These facets act and interact in different ways on the environment: air, soil, water, vegetation, fauna, landscape, climate, socio-cultural heritage factors, noise and others.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, human activity has transformed the chemical composition of water and air on Earth, modified the face of the planet itself, and altered life itself. Why has this period of time, more than any other, generated such widespread changes in the environment? The reasons are multiple and complex. But without a doubt, one of the most notable factors is the use of fossil fuels, which has supplied much more energy to a much larger population than at any time before.
By 1990, humanity was using 80 times more energy than it did in 1800, most of it coming from fossil fuels. The availability and capacity of use of this new source of energy has allowed humanity to increase the volumes of production and consumption. Indirectly, this source of energy has caused rapid population growth as humans have developed much more efficient agricultural systems, such as mechanized agriculture, based on the use of these fossil fuels. Improved farming techniques led to an increase in the food supply which, in turn, favored population growth. By the late 1990s, the human population was about six times that of 1800.
The widespread changes that have taken place in the environment are also due to other factors, such as the dizzying pace of urbanization or the equally dizzying speed of technological evolution. An important factor is the increasing importance that modern governments attach to economic growth. All these trends are related to each other, each one collaborating in the development of the others and shaping the evolution of human society in the contemporary age.
For hundreds of thousands of years, humans and their predecessors in the evolutionary chain have been modifying, both deliberately and accidentally, their living environment. But only in recent times, with the use of fossil fuels, humanity has managed to cause profound changes in the atmosphere, water, soil, vegetation and animals. Powered by fossil fuels, humans have altered the natural environment in ways they never did in pre-industrial times, causing, for example, the devastation of natural habitats and fauna and flora through oil spills. Man has been able to bring about environmental changes much faster by accelerating ancient activities such as deforestation.
Fossil fuels include coal, natural gas, and petroleum (also called crude), which are the petrified and liquefied residues from the accumulation over millions of years of decomposing plant organisms. When fossil fuel is burned, its chemical energy is converted into heat, which is transformed into mechanical or electrical energy by machines such as engines or turbines.
The first use of coal as a domestic fuel began during the 16th century in the English city of London. Throughout the Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18th century, coal became a fundamental fuel for industry, acting as a means of propulsion for most steam engines.
Coal was the primary fossil fuel until the mid-20th century, when oil replaced it as the fuel of choice in industry, transportation, and other sectors. Why did oil overshadow coal as the fuel of choice? Oil has certain advantages over coal, since it produces a higher yield than coal, providing more energy per unit weight than coal, and also causes less pollution and works better in small machines. However, oil deposits are smaller than those of coal, so when the world has depleted oil reserves there will continue to be abundant availability of coal.
Examples of Pollution due to the desire for economic growth and scientific-technological development:
Pollution of the atmosphere
The layer furthest from Earth's living environment is the atmosphere, a mixture of gases that surrounds the planet. The atmosphere contains a very thin layer of ozone that protects life on Earth against harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. For most of human history, man has had very little impact on the atmosphere. For thousands of years, man has routinely burned elements of vegetation, intermittently causing air pollution. However, with the scientific-technical revolution, and the consequent use of fossil fuels, a threat to humanity began due to a much more serious air pollution.
Before the generalization of the use of fossil fuels, air pollution affected cities to a greater degree, due to the concentration of combustion sources in urban centers. Inhabitants of cold-climate urban areas provided heat for themselves by burning wood, but local supplies of wood were rapidly dying out. Due to the shortage of supply, wood became more expensive, then coal began to be consumed as fuel, for heating buildings. During the 19th century there were half a million chimneys spewing coal smoke, soot, ash, and sulfur dioxide into the air.
The development of steam engines during the 18th century introduced coal to industry. The growth derived from the Industrial Revolution resulted in a greater number of steam engines, factory smokestacks and, consequently, greater air pollution. The sky began to darken in the industrial hubs of Great Britain, Belgium, Germany and the United States. Cities that were home to energy-consuming industries, such as the steel industry, and buildings that were heated by coal, were always shrouded in smoke and bathed in sulfur dioxide.
The inhabitants of cities and industrial regions had to suffer the consequences of an atmosphere loaded with pollution, they witnessed the loss of numerous pine forests and natural species due to the high levels of existing sulfur dioxide and, in addition, suffered rates of pneumonia and bronchitis much higher than those of their ancestors, their relatives living in other regions or their descendants. In London there was the so-called killer fog, a critical pollution situation in December 1952, which caused more than 4,000 deaths.
As automobiles became popular, tailpipe emissions added to air pollution from smokestacks and vents. Car exhaust gases contain different types of pollutants, such as carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and lead. Therefore, automobiles came, along with new industries such as petrochemicals, to complicate and aggravate the already existing problems of air pollution in the world. Photochemical smog, caused by the impact of sunlight on elements contained in automobile exhaust gases, has become a serious health threat in cities with abundant sunshine and frequent temperature changes. The worst smogs in the world occur in sunny, car-crowded cities,such as: Athens (Greece), Bangkok (Thailand), Mexico City (Mexico) and Los Angeles (United States).
In addition to these local and regional pollution problems, towards the end of the 20th century human activity began to directly impact the atmosphere. Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere after 1850, primarily a consequence of the incineration of fossil fuels, increased the air's ability to retain solar heat. This increased thermal retention caused the threat of global warming, a general increase in the temperature of the Earth. A second threat to the atmosphere came from chemical compounds known as chlorofluorocarbons, which were invented in 1930 and used widely in industry and as refrigerants after 1950. When chlorofluorocarbons rise to the stratosphere (the highest layer of the atmosphere),They cause a decrease in the thickness of the ozone layer, weakening its ability to stop harmful ultraviolet radiation.
Water contamination
Water has always been a vital resource for Man, at first only as a drink, later for washing and also for irrigation. With the power provided by fossil fuels and modern technology, humanity has diverted riverbeds, extracted groundwater, and polluted Earth's water sources in ways never before.
Irrigation, while already a very ancient practice, only affected limited regions of the world until recent times. During the 19th century, irrigation techniques spread rapidly, driven by developments in engineering and the increasing demand for food from the world's growing population. Huge networks of dams and canals were built, and even larger dams were built in the 20th century. After the 1930s, dams built for irrigation were also used for the production of hydroelectric power.
The dams, by supplying electrical energy in addition to irrigation water, came to facilitate the lives of millions of people, however this convenience had a price, since the dams modified the aquatic ecosystems that had existed throughout the centuries. In the Columbia River in western North America, for example, salmon populations were affected as dams blocked the annual migrations of salmonids. In Egypt, where a large dam dammed the Nile, in Aswan in 1971, many humans and animals had to pay the consequences. The Mediterranean sardines died and the fishermen of these species were left without income. Farmers had to resort to chemical fertilizers, as the Aswan Dam prevented the spring floods of the Nile and with it,the deposit of the annual fertile silt layer on the riverside lands of the river. In addition, many Egyptians who drank water from the Nile, which carried an increasing amount of fertilizer spills, began to have negative effects on their health. The Aral Sea, in Central Asia, has also suffered the consequences, since since 1960 its level has decreased, due to the fact that the waters that flowed into it had been diverted to irrigate the cotton fields.because the waters that flowed into it had been diverted to irrigate the cotton fields.because the waters that flowed into it had been diverted to irrigate the cotton fields.
River waters alone have not been sufficient to meet the needs of agriculture, industries and cities. Groundwater has become, in many parts of the world, an essential source of this element and at a very cheap price, since fossil fuels greatly facilitated pumping. For example, in the Great Plains, from Texas to the states of North and South Dakota, an economy based on the cultivation of cereals and cattle ranching emerged from 1930 onwards.
This economy drew water from the Ogallala Aquifer, a vast underground reservoir. In order to meet the demand for drinking, hygienic and industrial water of an increasing population, some cities such as Barcelona (Spain), Beijing (China) and Mexico City (Mexico) began to pump groundwater, and these two The latter have been slowly undergoing a sinking process, as much of their groundwater was pumped out. As the groundwater supply ran out, these two cities were forced to bring in water from far away. In 1999, humanity used 20 times more tap water than in 1800.
Not only has the use of water increased, but an increasing percentage of it was contaminated by human use. Although aquatic pollution had existed for some time in river waters that cross cities, as in the case of the Seine as it passes through the French city of Paris, the era of fossil fuel has changed the scope and idiosyncrasy of pollution aquatic. Water use has now increased, and there is a much wider variety of pollutants that cloud the world's sources of water supply. For most of human history, aquatic pollution has been primarily biological, caused primarily by human and animal waste. However,industrialization introduced an uncountable number of chemical substances into the planet's waters, thus aggravating the problems of contamination by liquid and solid discharges from industries, factories, etc.
Until the 20th century, the biological contamination of the world's lakes and rivers was a puzzling problem, although experiments in filtering and chemically treating the waters have yielded positive results. Around 1880 thousands of people died annually in the American city of Chicago from aquatic diseases such as typhoid fever, however, by 1920, Chicago's water was no longer a carrier of any fatal disease. However, there are many communities around the world, especially in poor countries like India and Nigeria, that cannot financially invest in wastewater treatment and filtration facilities.
As with air pollution, industrialization and technological advances in the 20th century led to an increasing number of forms of water pollution. Scientists invented new chemicals that do not exist in nature, some of which turned out to be most useful in the manufacturing industry and in agriculture. Unfortunately, others proved to be harmful pollutants. Starting in 1960, chemical substances called polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) made their appearance in the waters of North America in dangerous quantities, devastating and deteriorating aquatic life and the living beings that feed on said flora and fauna. From 1970,North American and European legislation managed to significantly reduce air or water pollution caused by isolated agents. But non-point pollution, such as pesticide-laden spills from farmland, was much more difficult to control. The most serious water pollution occurred in the poorest countries where biological pollution remained untouched, while chemical pollution from industry and agriculture only aggravated biological pollution. At the end of the 20th century, China was probably the country hardest hit by a huge variety of water pollution problems.it was much more difficult to control. The most serious water pollution occurred in the poorest countries where biological pollution remained untouched, while chemical pollution from industry and agriculture only aggravated biological pollution. At the end of the 20th century, China was probably the country hardest hit by a huge variety of water pollution problems.it was much more difficult to control. The most serious water pollution occurred in the poorest countries where biological pollution remained untouched, while chemical pollution from industry and agriculture only aggravated biological pollution. At the end of the 20th century, China was probably the country hardest hit by a huge variety of water pollution problems.
Soil contamination
During the era of fossil fuels, the Earth's surface has also undergone a remarkable transformation. The same substances that have polluted air and water are often latent in soil, sometimes in dangerous concentrations that pose a threat to human health. Although this type of situation only used to occur in the vicinity of industries that generate toxic waste, the problem of salinization, normally associated with irrigation, was much more widespread. Although irrigation has always carried the risk of soil destruction by flooding and salinizing it, modern levels of irrigation have intensified this problem throughout the world.In the 1990s, fields devastated by salinization were being abandoned as engineers began to introduce irrigation in new areas. Salinization has peaked in dry areas where evaporation occurs the most, such as Mexico, Australia, Central Asia, and the southwestern United States.
Soil erosion caused by human activity was already a problem long before salinization. Modern soil erosion has lowered the productivity of agriculture. This problem experienced its greatest aggravation during the 19th century in the borderlands open to the colonization of the pioneers in countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina. Pasturelands that had never been plowed before began to suffer from wind erosion, which reached disastrous dimensions in times of drought, as occurred in the 1930s during tornadoes in Kansas and Oklahoma. The last major destruction of virgin pastures occurred in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) during the 1950s,when Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev decided to turn northern Kazakhstan into a wheat belt. Fossil fuels also played a crucial role at this time, as railroads and steamboats transported grain and livestock from these areas to the most remote markets.
Towards the end of the 20th century the pioneer settlements had shifted from the grassy plains to the tropical and forest regions in the mountains. Starting in 1950, farmers in Asia, Africa and Latin America were colonizing more and more land in small cultivated forests. Such forests, like those in Central America and the Philippines, were often mountainous in nature and received copious rainfall. In order to cultivate these lands, farmers had to deforest the slopes of the mountains, leaving them exposed to torrential rains and making them vulnerable to soil erosion. This type of erosion devastated the lands in the Bolivian Andes, the Nepalese Himalayas and northern India, as well as the rugged areas of Rwanda and Burundi.The barren lands only hardened the lives of farmers in these and other areas.
The impact of soil erosion does not end with soil loss. The eroded land does not simply disappear, but moves downslope and downstream, depositing itself somewhere else. Often this land has been stored in inappropriate places, flooding reservoirs or cutting off roads. Within just a few years of their completion, some dams in Algeria and China have become unusable as they have been blocked by upstream soil erosion.
Flora and fauna
Human activity has affected the flora and fauna of the planet no less than the air, water and soil. Throughout millions of years life evolved without great impact from human beings. However, probably since the first colonizers of Australia and North America, the human race has been causing mass extinctions either by hunting or by using fire. With the domestication of animals, humanity began to play a more active role in biological evolution. During the XIX and XX centuries the role played by Man in the survival of species has increased to the point that certain species only survive because Men allow it. In a similar way, some animals are protected in order to take advantage of them.
Even when Man favors, voluntarily or involuntarily, the survival of some species, he threatens others. Modern technology and fuels have greatly increased the efficiency of hunting, to the point of endangering animals such as the blue whale or the North American bison. Many other animals, mostly species of tropical forests, are victims of the destruction of their natural habitat. Quite inadvertently, and almost unwittingly, humanity has assumed a central role in determining the fate of many species and the health of our planet's waters, air, and soil. The human being therefore plays a vital role in biological evolution.
The history of the environment in the last two centuries has been one of tremendous transformation. In just 200 years, humanity has caused a more drastic change on the Earth than that occurred since the appearance of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. The air, the water and the soil, of vital importance for Man, are in danger; the whole fabric of life depends on his whims. The era of industrialization, advanced science and technology, fossil fuels, economic growth, and transnational development is altering the human condition in some hitherto unthinkable ways. But whether this impact has been understood, and whether one is in a position to accept it, is a question that remains unanswered.
CONCLUSIONS
After having made an analysis of the critical situation that the world is experiencing today socio-economically and ecologically, the following conclusions have been reached:
- The indisputable nexus between economic science, the existing scientific-technological revolution and the environment is evident, appreciating in the last decades of the 20th century a marked intellectual interest in environmental problems. Environmental problems emerged as a crisis of civilization, which questions the dominant economic and technological rationality The desire for economic growth and scientific-technical development bring with it serious problems of pollution and degradation of the environment, crises of natural resources, energy, food, etc. The need to guide the productive and technological processes towards a sustainability in their operation, taking this into account for all types of activity, both economic and scientific-technical.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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