Lifestyle Sustainability and the Environment Essay examples

“Many current discussions about sustainability focus on the ways in which human activity...can be maintained in the future without exhausting all of our current resources… there has been a close correlation between the growth of human society and environmental degradation - as communities grow, the environment often declines” (603).

As a nation we all participate in daily consumption of food, clothing, shelter and some sort of transportation. to survive. We are destroying our environment with waist. On average Americans disposed over 200,000 tons of edible food daily. Pollute our air and water, destroy our forest, just so we can drive the newest car or have the latest crafted oak furniture We use top soil to build malls, so people can consume even more. In "The shadows of Consumption, Peter Dauvergne explain the coast of consumption by globalized corporations, trade, and finance." (Dauvergne, Peter. The Shadows of Consumption: Consequences for the Global Environment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. ).

Developing countries tend to have “the most fragile environments” (Baker 197) which is due to the flow of resources dictated by the core. The core, taking advantage of the developmental level developing countries are on, exploit their lack of laws restraining harm to the environment, setting up factories causing even more environmental damage. Thus when comparing the environmental status of a developed country to a developing country there are major differences. These differences are the interaction of the people with the environment, in terms of needs, and the number of factories profiteering from the use and exploitation of natural resources. When this difference is identified then it is easier to assess not only the source but also to create laws prohibiting this exploitation and constructing programs to reverse environmental damages to specific circumstances, helping developing countries to move forward on the developmental scale instead of backwards. If this is taken into account then why is the source causing environmental damage, the core, not stopped? This is due to the dominant ideology stating that with infinite economic growth, eventually the sustainability of the environment will be achieved. The developing countries reinforces this by inviting and encouraging organizations to base their factories in their country which has immediate results, creating a smoke screen

Every day when looking out a window, people see a beautiful earth. The earth is intriguing, but hinges on a delicate balance. Many natural resources keep the grass green and the sky blue. Man has made quite an impression on our world, and has transformed the earth's resources into tools to make life easy. However, mans' manipulation on earth has become detrimental to the health of our planet and the safety of mankind. Through the use and production of resources such as oil and energy, man is gradually poisoning the earth. Pollution has become such a dilemma in society; there is no real control or a feasible solution to society's recklessness. Without complete change, our system will collapse. The earth will eventually retaliate with disaster, or corporate control of our economy will cause hysteria and depression. Evaluation of the consequences and repercussion of worldwide pollution, may give people a better idea of what the future holds.

Environmental challenges such as climate change, cross-boundary water and air pollution and over-fishing of the ocean, require trans-national/global solutions. Since factories in developing countries increased global output and experienced less environmental regulation, globalism substantially increased pollution and impact on water resources.

Environmental Impact of Personal Lifestyle: Behavior # 1 A major lifestyle behavior of mine that effects the environment is the over usage of water. Water waste is a problem for many people in their households. We can start conserving in our homes which most of our water is wasted daily and we do not pay attention to it. Water is used for daily activities such as taking a shower, brushing teeth, washing the dishes, etc. My personal problem is over usage in the shower, I like to take at least a 30 minute shower. Another major problem is when I let the water run when I am brushing my teeth.

Robbins Elementary, an urban school located in a large city in Texas, has defied the odds by attaining and sustaining high academic success rates for an approximate twenty-year time period. As Okilwa and Barnett (2017) noted, Robbins Elementary had grown to become homogeneous in race (majority Hispanic) and economic status (increased economically disadvantaged status). According to the article (Okilwa & Barnett, 2017), 2013 census data revealed that 50% of families in Robbins Elementary attendance zone earned less than $35,000 annually, with a median income of $35,282. Assumptions regarding high-need schools would, undoubtedly, portray Robbins Elementary as a school that would struggle academically with high teacher and principal

The United Nations environment panel recently warned that the consumption of resources will triple in 2050 if our population increases at the expected rate. It would require the resource equivalent of three planets to sustain current lifestyles by then. Scientists are working hard to provide this information; however, most of the public is unaware of the imminent danger that is looming ahead. About one-third of the food produced globally is wasted, resulting in a loss of about $250 billion every year. The resulting carbon footprint is also as devastating when it comes to influencing climate change. Americans alone waste one trillion gallons of water each year. Food waste takes its share of that, as water is a main constituent of food. This crisis is unperceived by the public today, which is often driven by the desire to have surpluses of food, water, clothing, technology, and so on. In addition, companies often do little to mitigate this problem as they have their eyes primarily set on profit. For instance, why are millions of new phones are made each year, draining natural resources like tungsten, copper, and even gold, while people get to keep five older versions of the same phone at their home rather than recycling them? The same problem occurs in the clothing industry, leading to bulging closets. I’m concerned that our future generations will inherit a world that is no longer fruitful unless we start practicing strict conservatory methods. The media needs to work harder to help researchers convey their findings and possible solutions. Our future generations will thank us for each small step we take

It is a fact that people in different parts of the world have already experienced and realized the detrimental effects of their activities where they live. As much as people do not like to live in a dirty city, they are concerned to cut down all the forests and to poison the entire potable water. The governments of different countries together with businesses are ready to implement and fund programs to restore and preserve the environment, but the difficulty lies in the fact that different countries, like people, have different levels of understanding and implementation of these actions. Mahatma Gandhi said: “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.” It is not difficult to understand, that the main geneses

In the awakening of the Industrial Revolution around the 1800s, technology, and science rapidly advanced, leaving the human race unable to resist the manufacturing age that aggressively expanded in the 21st century. With all these changes, the launch of the industrial era witnessed a revolutionary transition from the small-scale and fewer pollutant factories to the full-scale industries that became mass producers and manufacture units through the centuries. However, the lack of policies to control pollution, the unplanned industrial growth, and the industries’ inefficiency to dispose of the waste are a couple of examples that have lead– particularly the U.S., to face major environmental disasters due to the excessive and continuous industrial pollution that arose as a result of industrialization. In response to these changes, it is necessary that our nation as a world power invest in better technology for the disposal of waste and recycling since at this point technological regression is somewhat unreal. In addition, similarly to what Rachel Carson and Jared Diamond implicitly advocated in their essays, we must aim to push policies into place to prevent the misuse of land, promote organic methods for production, and encourage the school system to invest in environmental activities to encourage the millennial generation in every corner of the world to adopt a green mindset.

The environment has been put in a dangerous position of not having sufficient amount of resources for current residents and the future generations that are to come. Many things such as personal needs put the environment in this position, but most of time we use these products because they are needed. Earth has become reliant on the resources, therefore we use up our resources way too fast. Our current obstacle to obtaining sustainability is we don't manage our resources, and they are used too often when there is not enough to begin with. Individually we are responsible for ourselves and the actions that are used to take care of the environment. To reach sustainability, there needs to be a limit of how much is used.

50 years of innovation and urbanization, we were blinded by the city lights and smokes that we do not seem to see the importance of taking good care of our environment, especially the nonrenewable sources. The consumers’ needs quickly became wants, and for the producers, wants simply mean profit, and profit is money. Money is everything to people nowadays. We would resort to everything that could provide us even the littlest amount of money, no matter what the repercussions would be, thus, the destroying of the resources. We are slowly killing the planet but we cannot see it because we are too busy trying to get things we believe we need. It is said that the earth’s weight is still the same as it was first created. Come to think of it, we do give and take with the nature, we take its resources, invent something useful that we consume, but we give it back as waste and

The global decline of the environment is readily observable. Today, the quality of air, water and land resources is increasingly compromised because of the pollutants that contaminate the environment. For the sake of industrialization and economic development, some countries are willing to risk their natural resources. Environmental degradation can be seen anywhere. According to some observers, environmental degradation is more rampant in countries with poor economic conditions as compared to more affluent countries (Ambler, n.d.). China and India, for instance, are developing countries yet it is among the biggest contributor to air pollution in terms of carbon dioxide emission ( PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, 2014). Most often, leaders of developing economies are willing to

Pollution has become a prevalent issue worldwide and has begun to affect the air used to breathe, the soil used to grow food, and the water used to drink. All of these effects result in commonly occurring destruction of health and wildlife that one may have seen on the news or heard from peers. In order to live, one needs food, water, clothing, and shelter. If the water and food that society consumes gets contaminated, a major component of life has been eradicated, which can only have negative consequences. If more people are educated as to what effects the environment, the world has a chance to counteract the effects of pollution. The main causes of pollution are the burning of fossil fuels such as with car exhausts, littering as a result of societal norms and laziness, and factory waste as a result of lax waste regulation, and can result in mass destruction of the environment and catastrophic effects on the everyday lives of contemporary people.

The most significant issues with the land pollution are deforestation, soil contamination, and the improper disposal of garbage. “Land pollution is the degradation or destruction of earth’s surface and soil, directly or indirectly because of human activities; it refers to any activity that lessens the quality and/or productivity of the land as an ideal place for agriculture, forestation, and construction” (CEF, Land Pollution, para. 2). Some people understand land pollution as damaging the earth’s surfaces. There are many places that are suffering due to land pollution. In the Philippines, there were 5,000 people living in tents due to typhoon “Yolanda” in the year 2013; one of the effects that caused the typhoon is deforestation, which also dropped down the forest cover from 70 to 20 percent. (Canadian Reference Center, 2013, para. 28). These damaging effects on the environment do not only impact the forest alone but also cause properties to be destroyed and lives to be taken away. Using hazardous substances in the soil is also an example of land pollution because this can lead to soil contamination. Soil contamination occurs in a lot of developing countries such as Ukraine, which has 8% of its land contaminated due to fertilizers in the year 2014 (The Economist, 2017, para. 4). This soil contamination creates destruction to the land that can be used for agriculture, where people get their source of food. One of the possible effects of soil contamination is the loss of soil fertility. Some farmers use chemical fertilizers to increase the plant growth, however, these only release toxins into the soil and reduce soil fertility (Baker, 2017, para. 3). This action does not just affect the fertility of the soil, but it also has consequences to the growth of population, number of deaths of humans and animals, which results from the ingestion of foods from contaminated soil. Another thing that is also a concern in the society referring to deterioration of the earth’s land is the waste that is collected and sent to different landfills. Garbage can be seen everywhere, whether in schools, restaurants, or home. Waste is very common in many places and is also known as a cause of pollution. The biggest source of waste is