However, though some of these changes may be negative, humans also have the power to correct our mistakes and change our environment for the better. Discover how you can contribute to a thriving future for our planet. How Do Humans Affect the Environment? April 06, Agriculture, Domesticated Animals and Genetic Modification The demand to feed a growing human population has facilitated notable advances in agriculture, which was the first major human innovation to enable our survival as a species.
Deforestation…and Reforestation Growing populations have to be housed, which means they seek more space to build homes and cities. Pollution Human activities affect the environment by contributing to air pollution, or the emission of harmful substances into the air.
Global Warming and Climate Change Among the most critically impactful ways that humans have affected the environment is our extraction and consumption of fossil fuels and their attendant CO2 emissions.
Human Impact on the Environment is a Double-edged Sword The expansion of human population and the requirements of our growing human family place strenuous demands on our environment. Retrieved on April 27, , from washingtonpost. Request Info. Apply Now. Why are you interested in earning a graduate degree in GISc? Advance My Career. That's about 70 bathtubs full. Not everyone has the luxury of water availability.
In fact, one in nine people worldwide do not have access to safe water. Consider donating old pairs of jeans or keep them for when the fashion cycle inevitably comes around again. Even if you're leaving the room for just a few minutes, it's best to turn the lights off. Using less electricity reduces the number of toxic fumes emitted by power plants. That's because most plants burn coal, fossil fuel, or crude oil to generate electricity.
So turning out the lights will save your electricity bill and the environment. Boiling a full kettle of water to make one cup of tea not only adds to your electric bill, it also wastes a valuable but limited resource. Consider measuring the amount of water needed before boiling and if that's too tedious there are several energy-efficient kettles on the market. And I know I can't be the only one who has boiled water only to forget and have to boil again.
Just be mindful. Admittedly, this one was not an easy pill to swallow. Like many, I am quick to flush after every use. But the Environmental Protection Agency EPA revealed that toilets made before on average use five gallons of water per flush.
Plastic pollution, deforestation, and air pollution are only some of the ways humans are damaging the environment. We as humans have become dependent on luxuries such as cars, houses, and even our cell phones. But what does our love for manufactured metallic and plastic goods do to the environment?
Things like overconsumption, overfishing, deforestation are dramatically impacting our world. Human activity can be directly attributed to the cause of hundreds of extinctions in the last two centuries, versus the millions of years that extinctions naturally occur. As we progress through the 21st century, humans have changed the world in unprecedented ways. Human impact on the environment has become one of the main topics for university staff all over the world.
While they search for the answer, the public needs to do its part. At least, you need to be aware of all the factors that contribute to this state and share the knowledge. Survival used to mean repopulating. That, however, is quickly becoming true for the opposite as we reach the maximum carrying capacity that our planet can sustain.
Overpopulation has grown into an epidemic since mortality rates have decreased, medicine has improved, and methods of industrial farming were introduced, thus keeping humans alive for much longer and increasing the total population.
The effects of overpopulation are quite severe, with one of the most severe being the degradation of the environment. Humans require space and lots of it whether it is for farmland or industries which also takes up tons of space.
An increased population results in more clear-cutting , resulting in severely damaged ecosystems. Another issue is our dependency on coal and fossil fuels for energy, the larger the population, the more fossil fuels will be used.
The use of fossil fuels such as oil and coal results in copious amounts of carbon dioxide into the air- threatening the extinction of thousands of species which adds to the effect that forest depletion already has.
Although processed materials are necessary to power the cities, the previous assessment tells us that the planet can only sustain so much damage until it will begin to damage us. Pollution is everywhere. From the trash thrown out on the freeway, to the millions of metric tons of pollution pumped into the atmosphere every year - it's obvious, pollution and waste are inescapable.
Pollution is so bad that to date, 2. Humanity is continuously polluting indispensable resources like air, water, and soil which requires millions of years to replenish. Air is arguably the most polluted with the US producing million metric tons of air pollution each year alone. In , smog was so bad in LA that the ground-level ozone atmospheric gas that is great in the atmosphere, not so much on the ground surpassed parts per billion volume ppbv - well above the National Ambient Air Quality Standard of 75 ppbv 6.
People thought they were under foreign attack as the smog burned their eyes and left an odor of bleach in the air. Factories can also be directly blamed for destroying certain areas of nature on our beautiful planet. Our hunger for natural resources such as wood, coal and oil means that we are endangering many species as we go searching for it.
Forests are torn down for wood which takes away the natural habitat or animals and other wildlife while mining also forces animals to look for somewhere else to live in the hope of survival. Oil spills, accidental leaks and the dumping of waste materials have also contributed to damage being done to wildlife. Due to all the reasons above, many species have come close to extinction and many more are likely to face a similar fate if we do not reduce the amount of damage we are doing to this planet in the future.
Global Warming As we touched on earlier, a huge portion of climate change or global warming can be attributed to our reliance on industrial activities over the years. Global Warming can lead to: Rising sea levels. Risk of species of animals becoming extinct.
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