ROOT CAUSES OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS.
The United States is the fastest growing industrialized country in the world, now increasing by approximately three million people per year. At this rate, the population will double too more than a half a billion within the next 60 years.
Population growth reduces self sufficiency in food, availability of vital natural resources, and standard of living. Consider that 36 million Americans now live in poverty and do not have sufficient food. As population grows all resources become in shorter supply.
The United States with only 5% of the worlds people, uses 35% of the worlds raw materials and the same amount of the worlds energy.
Worldwide agricultural land is lost at a rate of 15 to 17 million acres per year. Half of all tropical mature forests have been cleared to make way for other accommodations. Tropical rain forests house about half of all species on earth and help regulate the global climate. Their destruction could have dire consequences.
A pollutant is a substance or form of energy that adversely alters the physical, chemical, or biological quality of natural systems or that accumulates in the cells or tissues of living organisms in amounts that threaten their health or survival. Pollution can be in the air, the water or the soil. .
THE FIVE D'S OF ECOSYSTEM DEGRADATION.
1. Ecosystem Damage is an adverse alteration of a natural system's integrity, diversity, or productivity.
2. Ecosystem Disruption is a rapid change in the species composition of a community that can be traced directly to human activity.
3. Ecosystem Destruction is the conversion of a natural system, such a s a wetland, into a less complex human system, such a s a farm.
4. Ecosystem Desertification is land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid regions resulting mainly from adverse human impact.
5. Deforestation is the cutting down and clearing away of forests. .
ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES ( advantages and disadvantages).