Environmental issues are a number of factors that mean the degradation of the natural environment. Most often they are caused by human activities: with the development of industry and technology, problems began to arise related to the violation of balanced conditions in the ecological environment, which are very difficult to compensate for.
One of the most destructive factors in human activity is pollution. It manifests itself in an increased level of smog, the appearance of dead lakes, industrial water, saturated with harmful elements and unsuitable for consumption, and is also associated with the extinction of some animal species.
Thus, man, on the one hand, creates the conditions for comfort, and on the other hand, destroys nature and harms, ultimately, himself. Therefore, in recent years, special attention among scientists has been paid to the main environmental problems and is aimed at finding alternatives.
Key environmental issues
Initially, environmental problems are divided according to scale conditions: they can be regional, local and global.
An example of a local environmental problem is a plant that does not purify industrial effluents before dumping them into a river. This leads to the death of fish and harms a person.
As an example of a regional problem, we can take Chernobyl, or rather, the soils that adjoin it: they are radioactive and pose a threat to any biological organisms located in this territory.
Next, we will focus on global environmental issues.
Global environmental problems of mankind: characteristic
This series of environmental problems is enormous and directly affects all ecological systems, in contrast to local and regional ones.
Environmental concerns: climate warming and ozone holes
Warming is felt by the inhabitants of the Earth during the mild winters, which used to be a rarity. Since the first international year of geophysics, the temperature of the squat air layer has increased by 0.7 ° C. At the North Pole, the lower layers of ice began to thaw due to the fact that the water became warmer by 1 ° C.
Some scientists are of the opinion that the cause of this phenomenon is the so-called "greenhouse effect", which arose due to the large amount of fuel combustion and the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmospheric layers. Because of it, heat transfer is disrupted and the air cools more slowly.
Others believe that warming is associated with solar activity and the human factor does not play a significant role here.
Ozone holes are another problem of mankind associated with technological progress. It is known that life was born on Earth only after the protective ozone layer appeared, which protects organisms from strong UV radiation.
But at the end of the 20th century, scientists found that ozone was extremely low over Antarctica. This situation persists to this day, the damaged area is equal to the size of North America. Such anomalies were found in other areas, in particular, there is an ozone hole above Voronezh.
The reason for this is the active launches of rockets and satellites, as well as aircraft.
Environmental issues: desertification and forest loss
Acid rains, caused by the operation of power plants, contribute to the spread of another global problem - the destruction of forests. For example, in Czechoslovakia more than 70% of forests are destroyed by such rains, and in the UK and Greece - more than 60%. Because of this, entire ecosystems are disturbed, however, humanity is trying to fight this artificially planted trees.
Desertification is also currently a global problem. It consists in soil depletion: large areas are unsuitable for use in agriculture.
Man contributes to the emergence of such areas, demolishing not only the soil layer, but also the mother breed.
Environmental problems caused by water pollution
Stocks of fresh clean water that can be consumed have also been significantly reduced recently. This is due to the fact that people pollute it with industrial and other waste.
Today, one and a half billion people do not have access to clean drinking water, and two billion live without filters to purify polluted water.
Thus, we can say that in the present and many future environmental problems, mankind is guilty on its own and it will have to deal with some of them in the next 200-300 years.