Is Modern Human Civilization?

During the past several hundred years, civilization has made rapid progress in industries like air travel, automobiles, and energy production. These developments were made without consideration of the long-term effects that their emissions may have on the planet. Changing weather patterns are now wreaking havoc around the world, and scientists attribute this to human-caused climate change. During President Obama’s State of the Union address in 2015, he stated that, “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” (“Remarks by the President”). Warming temperatures caused by anthropogenic climate change have disastrous consequences that pose a threat to humanity and the environment.

Niall Ferguson’s thesis in his book “Civilization: The West and the Rest,” is to explain and prove why western civilization has exceeded the accomplishments of other nations throughout history up until present day. He attributes this world dominance to six “killer applications” the west had adopted and advanced beyond the means of any other civilizations. These applications were: competition, science, private property, medicine, consumption, and work.

Did you know that there are 13 species of animals who we may have to say goodbye to in 2015, or an estimated 2.2 billion tons of waste is yearly dumped into oceans? There is no need to research the litany of environmental changes; news such as global warming, air pollution, or resource scarcity that choke environmental problems to appear daily on TV screens and in newspapers. Even with these particularly cautions, many of us are still facing environmental catastrophes with overly optimistic attitudes, ignoring how serious the matter is. This form of the unrealistic expectation is similar to the blind development in our technological society that engenders a series of environmental and economic problems. Paul Ehrlich, [1] a Stanford University

Climate change is worsening for as time goes on. As the author, Stephen M. Gardiner, of Chapter 64 argues, climate change is an ethical issue because it is immoral for humans to create pollution and harm the environment, creating more problems for the planet. Climate change does not only affect current living beings, but affects all living things and human beings to come. The more harm we cause, the worse it will be to fix in years to come. “Climate change is not caused by a single agent but, by a vast number of individuals and institutions) including economic, political and social institutions.)”

In “Curbing Overconsumption: Challenge for Ethically Responsible Engineering,” professor E.J. Woodhouse discusses the causes of the modern environmental crisis, particularly how engineers should be responsible for aiding the environment. At one point, he asks, ’if it is technically feasible to arrange consumption far more efficiently, as Paul Hawken, William McDonough, and an increasing variety of others claim, does that imply that the engineers who help arrange the wasteful approaches are violating certain ethical standards?’ (Woodhouse 24) Woodhouse claims that it is the ethical role of engineers to use their positions and resources to decrease the waste production of American overconsumption. Meanwhile, in “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?” environmental professor Michael Maniates discusses the modern environmentalist movement, and in particular discusses its individualized aspects. Maniates’ argument revolves around evaluating the various failures of what he refers to as individualization of responsibility, which ‘embraces the notion that knotty issues of consumption, consumerism, power and responsibility can be resolved neatly and cleanly through enlightened, uncoordinated consumer choice.’ (Maniates 33). In the specific context of environmentalism, individualization of responsibility manifests as buying eco-friendly products instead of practicing some other form of environmentalism. Instead, Maniates believes that environmental issues stem

Improvement of technology and its use has been the foundation for American economics. Although such innovation does create jobs, customs, and cultures that contribute to the American lifestyle, it can also create pollution that harms the environment and brings about environmental injustice. People focus on outcome effects of a certain project. Whether its main goal is for economic gains, to help improve the way American people live, or even if it is harming the ecosystem in any way, they will intervene. However, what people don’t pay attention to is the tool that is being used to accomplish such goals that can produce complications as it relates to the environment and injustice that comes with the utilization of technology.

Engineers have revolutionized the world. Not one person, living or dead, has escaped the benefits of their works let alone the animals, or microorganisms, or basically everything that constitutes the physical world. They have made life easier and provided other professionals the tools necessary to discover and better understand existence. They found ways of breaking into another dimension of any known discipline and have continually advanced the society to a more global and prolific understanding. Then again, like any other areas in this world, there is a whole different side to this story. Engineers may have brought the wonders people enjoy today but at the expense of other life forms, like the environment, as well as of the general view on what is ethical. As stated in the code of ethics for engineering practice, it is of paramount importance to consider the environment, as well as public safety, health, and welfare when performing professional duties [1]. Since the pioneering advancement in technology entailed environmental crisis and affected public health, it cannot therefore be entirely considered ethical and is in need of a more profound understanding and creativity to address such issues.

We are all guilty of contributing to the ever increasing climate change. There should be no denying that. We rely too much on manufacturing and travel by car. Both of which let’s out harmful gasses into our air,and much much more. So this essay will discuss: What is climate change? What harm does it do to our

The idea for this project stemmed from the conscious I have developed due to how humans treat the earth. Consequently, as humans have made giant leaps in technology in the past 200 years, we have made immense impacts which the earth will never be able to repair. In our busy lives, we

The earth is a beautiful and extraordinary planet, but are we treating it right? For the past 20 decades, temperatures have been rising along with hundreds of factors contributing to it. Climate change concerns the public as they wonder if its occurring, how much has occurred in the modern era, what has caused it, what the effects will be if we don’t do anything about it and much more. Many people and scientist agree that mankind is the number one cause of climate change. Humans have influenced this by greenhouse gases, methane nitrous oxide.

“More often today, we hear that our environment is in trouble. Some people say that all environmental problems arise from science and technology. Other says the problems can only be solved through science and technology.” (Thee, 1997). Science brings about global warming which causes drastic change in climate; which brings about draught and other natural disasters. Soil erosion is made by moving cars which are a product of science; air pollution from car exhaust is an environmental problem to. People can get sick because of the polluted air because of science; and science provides the solution by providing

Carbon Dioxide emissions contribute to the overall change in the Earth’s climate resulting in killer droughts, rising sea levels, and the disintegration of ice sheets – all which have devastating effects on the habitability of the planet. One such option to counter the effects of climate change is described in Eli Kintisch’s book Hack the Planet: Science’s Best Hope – or Worst Nightmare – for Averting Climate Catastrophe, which analyzes the controversial technique of geoengineering, or the act of deliberately manipulating an environmental process to reduce the causes or effects of greenhouse gases. Specifically, Kintisch interviews scientists and entrepreneurs from various fields to better understand the proposed geoengineering techniques

Global Warming is the number one concern threatening the very existence of humans and everything within the environment today. The human race is to blame for the destruction of the natural world. The environmental issues that are threatening all human and non-human life today, started in the industrial revolution and the discovery of oil The need to improve the quality of life resulted in the construction of factories to mass produce products for consumers. These factories were powered by fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. The combustion of these fossil fuels emitted great quantities of pollutants that remain in the Earths atmosphere to this day and is the number one cause of global warming. However, in ethics one cannot evaluate just one thing. In ethics, as in nature, everything is connected to everything else (Partridge, 1998).

We as a society have reached one of the most crucial time periods in the history of our world. Due to the way we have used the resources on this earth we have created a situation in which our climate is drastically changing. The burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil has caused gases like carbon dioxide to become trapped in the atmosphere causing a natural greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect has caused the earth’s average temperature to rise and has resulted in arctic glaciers melting. These glaciers had gases trapped inside them that are now being released into the atmosphere further raising the earth's temperature. Due to the way we are polluting our air we have caused global warming. This global warming has caused stronger natural disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires putting our society in more danger than ever before.

The Earth is a dynamic, constantly changing environment in which the hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere all interact. When one changes slightly the change is then felt through out the spheres. Humans need to understand that the change they cause can have a potential for a disastrous affect on the environment. From injecting the atmosphere with greenhouse gas, or deforestation, all the unnatural things done to the environment will have an unnatural affect that will have to be dealt with. We as humans have a moral responsibility to reduce global warming gasses by changing our modes of transportation, to stop deforestation, and increase government funding into research to inhibit global warming for