What Role Should the Government Play in Protecting the Environment?

Bush campaigned for the 2000 election, he explicitly opposed Kyoto as it “would cause serious harm to the US economy” (Borger, 2001). The international issue of global warming was thusly labeled as something that could be ignored in favor of local economic profit, and emission reduction was assumed to be impossibly expensive.

The main problem this paper intends to discuss regards the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. This dead zone, which for the most part encompasses the water off the coast of Louisiana, becomes depleted in dissolved oxygen. The dead zone is an outcome of nutrient runoff into the Gulf from urban areas, wastewater treatment plants, and from atmospheric deposition, however, the majority comes from fertilizers used in agriculture around the Mississippi River Basin. The increase in nutrients has been affecting the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem by forming difficult conditions in which organisms live. Another consequence that is directly related to the ecosystem damage is the effect on the fishing economy in in the region. In the paper I will address the questions, how has the dead zone specifically caused damage to the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico and how has that damage affected the economic productivity of the fisheries? Furthermore, what policy solutions exist to solve the dead zone problem?

In order to fully survive, it is very crucial to constantly maintain the environment at a healthy rate. The main aspect that truly affects and drives our environment is the economy. The environment is always brought up within social political debates across the country as it is very difficult for Americans to come to a consensus since we have the right to speak our every thoughts. Two of the major political parties, Republicans and Democrats, are two completely different parties that constantly struggle to settle on the same position. In this essay, I will discuss the political parties’ beliefs about the environment.

Gulf “dead zone”= a region of water so depleted of oxygen that kills or drives away marine organisms

The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is one of many throughout the world. There are many factors that cause the dead zone and not all dead zones are caused from the same things. In the Gulf of Mexico the dead zone is cause by nitrogen and phosphorus (fertilizer) go into the gulf and trigger phytoplankton blooms or algae blooms. First the oxygen rich water comes into the gulf and stratifies going to the bottom. Then the majority of the the nitrogen and phosphorus from agriculture and urban run offs from the Mississippi River watershed flow in the spring and early summer. For example 70% come from where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers meet, 39% come from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, 22% come from Ohio river basin, and 11% from the Missouri river basin, and the rest come from Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee. Next the phytoplankton use all that fertilizer and die. Then the phytoplankton falls to the bottom of the sea and decomposes using all the oxygen. Then because of water stratification the oxygen levels on the bottom do not get

The environment is an extremely important aspect of our nation today. American families have the legitimate right to an excellent quality of air, that we breathe. As a nation, Americans gravitate towards the pursuit of the prodigious dollar, before our environmental issues. This is a practice that has an urgency to be stopped, immediately. The pollution that is created by personnel transportation and the trucking industry is destroying our planet. The government has the Clean Air Act of 1970, but it is not satisfactory enough. America should be obligated to push for electric transportation and an electric trucking industry.

The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is a human problem, like most other disasters. What this means is that once the place thrived and was ecologically balanced, but we tipped the balance slightly and wrecked havoc upon the environment. It has been noted to occur since the 1950’s and is ongoing. The reason that this dead zone occurs is because of a phenomenon known as eutrophication. Eutrophication is when there is an excessive amount of nutrients in a body of water and it causes an abundance of plants to grow. In this case the nearby farms had been using nitrogen in their fertilizers. The nitrogen got carried into the ocean through rain and other forms of

Hypoxic zones, more commonly known as ‘Dead Zones,’ can be found all over the world, with the second-largest located in the Gulf of Mexico. They are lacking in life because of the absence of the atomic number 8, otherwise known as oxygen. According to the Environmental Encyclopedia, hypoxia occurs when the content of oxygen is below or between 2-3 milligrams per liter while for healthy waters 8 milligrams need to be found (“Dead Zones”). Therefore, dead zones are begotten from the lack of a sustainable amount of oxygen in a body of water.

The article I chose relates to the dead zone found in the Gulf of Mexico every year. There is a location in the Gulf of Mexico known as a hypoxic zone, which is an area with depleted oxygen levels. This is a result of nutrient run-off from the Mississippi/Atchafalaya River Basin. The rivers receive a large amount of nutrients from many sources, including but not limited to, fertilizers from farmlands and golf courses, to urban runoff, sewer treatment plant discharge, and atmospheric nitrogen deposits.

Hypoxic zones also known as “dead zones” refers to decreased levels of oxygen in the water. Marine life die of suffocation due to the low oxygen concentration in these dead zones, which affects animal life in the ocean. These hypoxic zones occur particularly along the Gulf of Mexico, East Coast, and the Great Lakes. According to Cheryl Lyn Dybas, a journalist who specializes in marine sciences, stated that there are about 146 coastal dead zones worldwide (Dybas). In addition, since the 1960s the number of hypoxic zones has nearly doubled every passing decade (Dybas). Although dead zones can develop naturally, scientists are alarmed about how these zones have been augmented by human activity.

The industrial revolution in the 1800s enhanced the lives of the American citizens. No longer were cultivation and farming a chief concern; instead, manufacturing and machinery were the major improvements of that time. Still today, big corporations are looking for the next big thing that could aid citizens in their everyday lives. What is often ignored, however, are the environmental factors that are being affected by the decisions made by these industries. Harmful acid rain, smog, and buried nuclear wastes diseased the Northern continent where some places were deemed uninhabitable to the public because of the threatening health risks. Environmental laws and agencies were then created in the 1970s to shift the impact that corporations have on the environment. The unchecked power that big corporations have exhausted has enhanced the decline of environmental stability and initiated many territorial restrictions due to the careless actions of the company.

The climate change impacts of greenhouse gases threaten the economic development and environmental quality. These threats indicate that all nations regardless their economic growth should work collaboratively to reduce the emission to a certain level. Hare et al. (2011) argued that “climate change is a collective action problem” thus requires a global coordination from all countries. This indicates that actions from several countries would never be sufficient to address the climate change problem. If a global target to limit warming to 2°C or below is about to achieve (UNFCCC 2010, p.4) a broad range of participation is required (Hare et al., 2011). However, the increasing complexity of negotiation processes is inevitable. Each country will pursue its own interests during the

According to an article focused on environmental awareness, “the world’s average surface temperature rose by approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit, the fastest rate in any period over the last 1000 years” (Source A). Damage has already been done to the environment but it is not the time to throw our hands up, it is the time for leaders in all sectors to tackle this issue head on. We know that carbon dioxide is the culprit, so now it is imperative to implement the solution and take a hard look at who is producing the most greenhouse gases. Big changes need to take place but they can only be done in steps and not all at once to be effective. In an excerpt from a book about global warming, Mark Maslin brings up the point that many feel the Kyoto Protocol does not go far enough; scientists believe that a 60% cut of greenhouse gas emissions is necessary in order to “prevent major climate change” (Source E). A sixty percent cut of emissions should be what countries work up to achieving but first and foremost, every country needs to agree to the Kyoto Protocol guidelines. The Kyoto Protocol itself should not be viewed as the end in the discussion of greenhouse gas restrictions, but rather the first stepping stone to a much broader and effective

Dead zones in the ocean are so called because of the lack of oxygen in the seawater according to Karstensen. Oxygen is obviously needed to support all marine life in these areas. The article also mentions dissolved oxygen is

Right from the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century, there has been a fierce debate concerning how economic growth or development affects the environment or ecological setup of a country. The debate has its basis on whether it would be recommendable for a nation to concentrate on growing its economy while at the same time hurting or harming its ecological system. Naturalists like Pinchot Gifford, John Muir, Love Canal and Cuyahoga County always argued in favor of environmental preservation as opposed to concentrating all efforts towards developing the economy (Olmes 154; Miller 150-51). This paper will, therefore, discuss the struggle between economics and ecology specifically looking at particular events across the Twentieth Century. It will also attempt to explain the factors involved in the pursuit for change on the way people and the administration perceived the environmental conservation as opposed to economic growth.