The Impact of Environmental Change
During the past three decades the population of the world living in urban areas has gone from one third to just over half.
Currently in the United States, 80 percent of the population lives in a metropolitan area.
As the world population grows, more and more people are moving toward large urban areas.
These people are now closer to sources of pollution, such as factories and large numbers of vehicles and even closer to infection from one another.
It is obvious the Earth can only take so much damage.
It currently cannot replenish its resources at the rate at which people are consuming them.
The Earth's rate of replenishment will only decrease further as climate changes affect the land and the oceans.
Add to this problem a growing urbanization of the world's population and you have a major situation where land, water and wildlife are all at risk.
One excellent example of the impact of environmental change is the town of Gussing, Austria.
Gussing has cut their carbon emissions by more than 90 percent in the past 15 years! How did they do this? This town had no major industry and most of the residents commuted to Vienna to work.
Gussing's town council had trouble paying their electric bill, so they decided that all public buildings would run only on renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.
These energy sources included the sun, cooking oil and biofuels such as sawdust and corn.
The town generates even enough power to sell some of it back to the national grid.
Most industrialized countries are now focused on reducing or eliminating waste.
This can be done by educating people on how to decrease the amount of waste they are responsible for, how to reuse, how to recycle and how to turn household and garden waste into compost.
Currently in the United States, 80 percent of the population lives in a metropolitan area.
As the world population grows, more and more people are moving toward large urban areas.
These people are now closer to sources of pollution, such as factories and large numbers of vehicles and even closer to infection from one another.
It is obvious the Earth can only take so much damage.
It currently cannot replenish its resources at the rate at which people are consuming them.
The Earth's rate of replenishment will only decrease further as climate changes affect the land and the oceans.
Add to this problem a growing urbanization of the world's population and you have a major situation where land, water and wildlife are all at risk.
One excellent example of the impact of environmental change is the town of Gussing, Austria.
Gussing has cut their carbon emissions by more than 90 percent in the past 15 years! How did they do this? This town had no major industry and most of the residents commuted to Vienna to work.
Gussing's town council had trouble paying their electric bill, so they decided that all public buildings would run only on renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.
These energy sources included the sun, cooking oil and biofuels such as sawdust and corn.
The town generates even enough power to sell some of it back to the national grid.
Most industrialized countries are now focused on reducing or eliminating waste.
This can be done by educating people on how to decrease the amount of waste they are responsible for, how to reuse, how to recycle and how to turn household and garden waste into compost.
Source...