Discuss critically religious and secular ethical arguments about environmental issues (35) In his book, 'The End of Nature', Bill McKibben highlights the fact that we are destroying the natural environment at an increasing rate, for our own short-term gain. Since the day that man created agriculture, and industrialisation to follow, the imbalance between man and nature has been growing. This has been accompanied by a massive population increase, tripling in the twentieth century alone. Human pressure on nature has never been so great. Such pressure has resulted in 'environmental issues', ranging from global warming and eutrophication, to the depletion of natural resources and an increase in the number of landfill sites.
English 102, 10:00 a.m. 5 December 2010 Midwest Meltdown Dear Mr. President, we are writing you today with great concern regarding the situation in the Midwest region of the United States. As the up 2012 presidential election quickly approaches we would recommend that your focus be directed to the Detroit, Michigan; Flint, Michigan and Youngstown, Ohio regions. Ohio and Michigan have lost anywhere from fifty –to-sixty percent of their population due to the reduction of available work, resulting in an influx of blight. Mr. President, there is much for you to gain by addressing the blight and lack of employment in the “Rust Belt” cities. Please address your attention to combating this through land banks, urban farmland, urban forest and
After I read Chapter 4, “The Nuclear Lighthouse,” in Mark Hertsgaard’s book Earth Odyssey, I was astonished to learn the information the world, and much more our country, hides from us. During this chapter, Hertsgaard goes into detail about Chelyabinsk, a highly dangerous, toxic region in Russia. Throughout my reading, I became so interested in the stupidity of the citizens and workers in Chelyabinsk that I decided to dig a little deeper and do some research. Environmentally, the situation in Chelyabinsk is not much different from what it was fifteen years ago. Nuclear waste was such a problem for Chelyabinsk because of the three nuclear disasters that took place there at the Mayak complex.
The government has spent 10 billion dollars on the Yucca Mountain project already so it would be a waste to not use it, don’t we want our tax dollars to be well spent? We should use Yucca Mountain to dispose of our nuclear waste. If we do not dispose of the waste soon then perhaps, a leak could occur in a nuclear waste container and it would do damage to our country. We would not want that. With the design of the steel barriers that would contain the repository, which is similar to a big steel box, the site would be good for thousands of years to come.
The mountain pine beetle epidemic is causing environmental and social impacts to much of British Columbia. Our forests are very important and will no longer be able to maintain their role if changes are not made. The devastation has had a sweeping impact on B.C.’s ecological, and economical well-being. Additionally, recent studies are drawing attention to the carbon-emitting properties of the dead forests, which is a global concern. A popular misconception developed that the current provincial mountain pine beetle epidemic began in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park.
No civilization has ever lasted that long. Is it ethical to be creating a form of waste that will require careful storage for a timeframe longer than any civilization has lasted? Also managing the waste is expensive. There are expensive ways to dispose of long-lived radioactive waste. Sweden , for instance, has spent $14 Billion and rising to manage its radioactive waste and is now decommissioning its reactors.
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson presented his war message to congress. For three years, the United States had managed to remain neutral in World War I, which was destroying Western Europe. The president realized that in the months to come, there would be much hardship and many casualties, but knew that entering the war would be necessary in order to maintain peace and prosperity for the USA and other countries as well. Wilson was determined to fight for our country and defend those who cannot defend themselves. Based on the interpretation of Wilson’s war message, we can see that our relationship with other nations that were attacking us and our allies was not very strong.
I have read that in the present compared to the past global warming has increased tremendously. The causes and effects of global warming has been the top of discussion in debates not just between scientist but politicians, businesses and common members of the community. Global warming is defined as a measurable increase in temperature of Earth’s
Annin writes, a growing global water shortage will put tremendous pressure on the water-rich regions of the world to open up the spigots (2007). The United Nation predicts that by 2025 two-thirds of the global population will face water shortages. You need to look only as far as what Russian farmers did as they looked to what they thought was a never ending supply of water in the Aral Sea. They began pumping from it’s tributaries to irrigate crops and “bloom the desert,” in little more than 14 years the results are catastrophic, The Aral lost 90 percent of it’s volume and 75 percent of it’s surface area, for
Throughout the years, the United States has gone through a many different generations. In the article, “The Echo Boomers”, the author states that the people who were born between the year 1982 and 1995 are already having a huge impact on the economy. They are the biggest generation in the US history and they are most studied by sociologists. The author claims that the Echo Boomers represent the changes in the society over the years. Although people may criticize this generation for being demanding workers, they fail to recognize the advances made in technology.