Society today relies primarily on carbon-based fuels, whether it be coal, natural gas, oil, or gasoline. Consumption of these fuels is anticipated to grow in the future. Research is being conducted to remove or decrease carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and cars. As we saw in the video “The Story of Stuff” the toxic gases emitted from the incinerators is an enormous environmental and social problem. The video “The Story of Stuff” shows that our natural resources are being depleted. “Human Consumption of Earth’s Natural Resources has tripled in 40 years” (ecowatch.com). At this rate of consumption our resources could be irreversibly exhausted. Our forests are being cut down quicker than we can replant trees and replenish them. This is due to consumers need to purchase items in order to contribute to the golden arrow.
Corporations care more about profits than the negative effects their production has on the surrounding environment and society. These corporations continue to operate in third world countries where there is less government oversite and environmental protection regulations. The pollution that these corporations as well as consumers cause contributes to global warming and climate change. From coal burning power plants, burning
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From Katrina, Sandy, Harvey and most recently Hurricane Maria we have sustained damage and destruction never seen before. Recently on the news it showed New Delhi, a city in India, where the smog was so bad people couldn’t go outside without a breathing mask. China, as well, has been dealing with air pollution for some time. For many years China has been the world’s largest contributor of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is primarily due to burning coal for energy. China is attempting to combat this issue with incentives for electric cars and stricter pollution
Contrastively, globalization itself has great damage to the environment. Due to developed countries going into developing countries to exploit their resources, the natural resources is depleting at a rapid speed, yet we are still not doing enough to stop it. As there are strict laws regarding the environment in developed countries, these companies turn their eyes onto developing countries whose environmental laws are more relaxed in comparison. As these developing countries also want to earn revenue and income that these companies bring, they open the door to them, but destroying Mother Earth at the same time.
As the exploration of the industrial development and increased speed of the urban sprawl in Beijing, many severe environmental issues attribute mainly to the anthropocentric activities have been come out of the scene. One of them is the air pollution. Air pollution has been regarded as the most severe environment issue in China since it has already threatened to physical health, especially for the respiratory tract and lung. “In January 2013, Beijing experienced historical heavy air pollution. In this particular month, very few days were observed with blue sky.” (Lijian Han et.al., 2015) According to the analysis of the driving factors, “the population grew fast, and energy consumption and the number of vehicles increased rapidly” (Ju Zhang et.al., 2010), these factors add together can make the air quality worse than any one of them separately can. Firstly, it has been an undoubted truth that more and more people originally lived in rural has been moved to core urban of Beijing since there are more opportunities in there. Therefore, the huge explosion of urban population with more energy release and more CO2 exhalation is seen as an inevitably primary factor causing the bad air quality. What’s more, as the population
Air pollution by definition, is the presence in or introduction into the air of a substance which has harmful or poisonous effects. Beijing is a major Chinese city that endures air pollution significantly. A study on the global burden of disease found that outdoor air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China each year (Chemical & Engineering News,2017). As China is the world's second largest economy behind the United States, it is most definitely under the influence of globalization. Globalization causes industrialization, a process that will inevitably create pollution.70% of air pollution in China is from the tailpipes of automobiles (Conserve Energy Future, 2017). Thus, the introduction of advanced transportation brought by globalization has adversely affected China's atmosphere.
With the supply of fossil fuels steadily declining, gas and oil is becoming harder to harvest which means it is getting more expensive. Fossil fuels take millions of years to be naturally produced, yet each person burns gallons of gas per day (Maehlum par. 5). Though fossil fuels are produced naturally, when burned they release nitrogen oxides gases into the atmosphere, which contributes to the formation of smog and acid rain. According to the EPA, major sources of these nitrogen oxide emissions come from cars and trucks, coal-fire powered plants, large industrial operations, and ships and airplanes (EPA par 3). By reducing the number of gas powered cars on the road, we can reduce the amount of harmful chemicals we are releasing into our atmosphere.
In the article “Beijing to Raise Threshold on Red Alerts for Smog”, it’s very interesting to know that finally China is doing something about their air pollution problem. For years and years they haven’t done anything because China doesn’t have the same rules and regulation as the United States of America. China produces a lot of products for different countries so that’s a major source of pollution also and they don’t have any kind of regulations on the smoke coming from the factories, and the air quality is terrible their as well. In the United States the EPA has the authority to shut down factories and tell them they need to make changes because we take pollution seriously compared to China who just takes it lightly which isn’t a good thing.
There are several corporations causing harm to the environment through criminal activity that continually is unpunished. The environment is facing harm through food contamination, air pollution, ocean dumping, and water pollution. Companies are successfully committing these crimes by gaining the support of the government through illegal marketing.
Global economies are in a race to find resources to keep up with consumer demands. All of these demands are necessities that humans need to survive. Food, oil, and technology are all needed in the industrial era to live a normal to stable life. There’s a big cost to obtain these items through your local communities. Corporations run the world and are responsible for making food, oil, and technologies readily accessible for the public.
Our world is giant but fragile. Fragile enough that we are able to greatly affect it. Our final articles focus on the topic of pollution and how it degrades our society as well as the environment. Fumigufium by John Evelyn begins by describing the terrible smoke and its affects caused by the burning of coal in London. The city is transformed from one of beauty to disgust. It was claimed you could barely distinguish someone from a crowd. People had developed persistent coughs as well. It was obvious the pollution from fossil fuels had produced negative affects. Although, a fairly new energy source may now be harvested which burns cleaner than coal and oil. It is natural gas. As seen in Fracking Nation, natural gas is an untapped resource which
In early 2013, the attention of the world was turned to the smog in China. The southern parts of the country were covered by dense smog that made it impossible for road transportation. While transportation might have been the most affected by the smog, there were also concerns about the health impacts of the smog on people. Analysts indicated that since the smog was associated with the heavy industrialization taking place in Southern China, it was possible that the smog could poison the people. As such, the movement of people was very limited until the situation normalized. While smog continues to be a major environmental problem in China, the situation is not unique to China. Many countries are struggling with devastating environmental conditions. For example, the 2010 drought and famine in the horn of Africa have been attributed to global warming and so is the increasing frequency and severity of hurricanes in North America. The main cause of these problems has been identified to be the dependence of the world on fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas, and coal. According to Rambo (2013), about eighty percent of the global energy supplies originate from carbon-based fuels, which are fossil fuels. This notwithstanding, their emissions are connected to environmental pollution. They are also linked to an escalation in global temperatures and interference with climatic patterns. On the other hand, it is has been reported that being exposed to indoor pollution causes respiratory
Our modern world is one of busy streets, loud machines, and steaming factories. All three of these things, while necessary and important part of society, have some unintended effects on the world. We sometimes fail to realize the effect that we have on the world with every action that we take. The people of the world, in collaboration, are massive users of fossil fuels. The gas emissions that cars, busses, and even planes produce have a very profound effect on our atmosphere, and not many people take the initiative to reduce these harmful substances. However, there are some that are actively trying to find a solution to the problem to cleaner and renewable energy.
In some of China's largest cities globalization has had drastic effects. It has lead to an increase of population, which as a result has led to higher levels of air pollution. Because there are so many people in china there is a lot of air pollution from transportation such as cars. Globalization also calls for increased production of goods which has lead to more factories being built, which also causes a significant amount of air pollution.
All our stuff goes through a process in the materials economy: extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. It sounds so simple but there are a lot of loopholes in between each step goes through.
When looking at the corporate businesses and the undoing of the human habitat; the United Nations has sanctioned many organizations to track climate change such as the UNEP, the World Meteorological Organization and the IPCC. Since the mid-eighties, these agencies have monitored the changes, yet have failed to convey the significance. Studies done by these agencies have concluded that the last fifty years are attributable to human activities and big corporations which lead to the changing in the compositions of the atmosphere throughout the 21st century (Saltori). These activities that are mentioned are those by means of businesses that grew into national conglomerates. Concurrent with business growth, the greenhouse gas emissions have grown seventy percent from 1970 to 2004 (Lehner). Recent studies have shown that 122 corporations produce eighty percent of greenhouse gases (IPCC). The climate is going to drastically change the world forever, but at whose expense? What exactly does the political eminence of these companies have
CO2 is the most significant greenhouse gas, which mainly comes from the use of fossil fuels. Many people feel that content of CO2 in the atmosphere is the main reason for manmade global warming. The main sources of CO2 emissions involve electricity generation, industrial processes, fumes from transportation and commercial buildings and use. Emissions of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, to the atmosphere are expected to cause even more of a significant change in global climate (Davison, 2007). The main focus to try to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to reduce the amount that is released from coal-fired power plants. Greenhouse gas emissions that involve the productions of electricity come from natural gas production and coal-fired power plant operations. Natural gas production accounts for twenty-four percent and coal-fired power plant operations accounts for seventy-five percent, while the other one percent is caused by other electricity generation operations. The main reason why coal-fired power plants have a higher percentage of emissions is because the sulfur content of coal is much higher than that of other fossil fuels (Jarmaillo et al., 2007). This proves that there is a great need to find an alternative fossil fuel to use instead of coal. Although coal is easy to mine, transport and process for the electricity generation process, it is also the
However, the author does not indicate enough information about it. On the negative side of MNCs, he mentions that MNCs can influence the policies of host countries which can lead to unsatisfactory attention to environmental standards; nonetheless, he does not introduce MNCs which deal with environmental problems. Some MNCs have taken responsibilities for the concerns of the environmental consequences of their actions abroad. For example, Shell, an oil corporation based in London, has started to follow programs of CSR (Matten 2012, 295). In 2001 the corporation has invested over 50$ million in health, education, agriculture, job creation and other fields in Nigeria where it accomplished drilling operations (Goulbourne 2003,10). Likewise, corporations like Toyota and H2O Africa deal with environmental problems. For instance, in order to decline CO2 emissions Toyota produces hybrid cars and electric vehicles (Matten 2012, 292). Cooperation of PepsiCo and H2O Africa, founded by Matt Damon, solves clean water scarcity in Senegal, Mali, Niger and in other countries of Africa (Matten 2012,