milliepalmer Žena, 31 let

People always aspire to a better life, and almost in all types of society, its symbol is wealth. The main line of development of the human society is an aspiration to wealth at the expense of the increase in production of goods. Therefore, growth of the people population was accompanied with a faster increase in the consumption of energy, increase in scales of processing of natural raw materials, and expansion of the agricultural areas. Respectively, the human impact on the environment amplified. Thus, it is necessary to study effects of the economic growth on the environment in more detail in order to define control methods over this impact.

General Information

The basis of optimum economic growth is made by the development of productive forces. Productive forces are the set of forces of the society capable to create different material and non-material values. In the common sense, the industrial complex represents a set of the enterprises, establishments, and organizations united on territorial, technological and other characteristics.

The main factors of the development of an industrial complex are a manpower, means of production, and natural resources. The main source of manpower is the population. Thereof, the growth of the industry is one of the reasons of the urbanization process, i.e. a population overflow from rural areas to the cities. Obviously, it is caused by a number of the objective economic reasons, the most powerful of which is the natural aspiration of economic entities to the rational placement of productive forces.

However, the process of the urbanization has the limiting conditions. The excessive level of concentration of the industrial enterprises, dense population, and the use of cars, as a rule, strongly aggravate a problem of pollution of the urban environment. Therefore, the city loses its appeal to new inhabitants and firms. Partially, this problem can be solved by means of replacement of the industrial enterprises from the central part of the city to suburbs and special economic zones.

Resources Consumption and Its Impact on Environment

One of the most important reasons of exhaustion and pollution of natural sources is the excessive resources consumption. Therefore, the prevention and decrease in the level of environmental pollution and exhaustion of natural resources requires a widespread implementation of resource-saving technologies. The identification of optimum options of the technological processes introduced in production requires an application of the technique of the industrial complex assessment from the environmental point of view.

Recently, the ecological factor has begun to limit the economic development increasingly more. The present-day type of ecological-economic development may be defined as a technogenic type of economic development, which is also known as the nature capacious, i.e. nature-destroying. This type is based on the application of artificial production means, created without ecological restrictions. A characteristic sign of the technogenic type of development is the exhausting and fast use of non-renewable natural resources (such as minerals) and the excessive use of renewable resources (forests, soil, etc.) at a rate exceeding the opportunities of their restoration and reproduction.

In recent decades, pollution of air, water and soil showed that the environment cannot be used unlimitedly as it was supposed over the centuries. Never before, the damage caused to the environment took such a large scale, and never before regional deviations were so small. The character of the modern production, which considers a direct progress only and constantly does not pay attention to the subsequent consequences, has ignored a resource depletion problem for a long time. The nature is still used as a free resource. Thus, used natural resources should be divided into exhaustible (for example, iron ore, oil) and renewable (for example, forests, fauna). The limited environmental resources also show that the use of nature as a "garbage can" at its limited ability to accept the waste, harmful substances, etc., is limited.

As a result, the economic activity leads to gradual exhaustion of environment, i.e. the loss of those natural resources, which are used by people as a source of their economic activity, for example, deforestation. The loss of forests is not only the loss of oxygen, but also the major economic resources needed by people for their further activity. At present rates of consumption, explored stocks of coal, oil, natural gas, and other minerals are consumed at a higher rate than it was earlier, and the number of these stocks has dramatically decreased. However, society has a prospect of use of other, new types of energy, in particular, nuclear and hydrogen energy, stocks of which are inexhaustible. Unfortunately, the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes in a large-scale volume is slowed down by the suspense of a problem of the nuclear waste disposal. The development of hydrogen as a power source is theoretically admissible and possible, but practically, i.e. technologically, this task is not yet solved at the level of the industrial production.

Impact of Production Potential

The production potential greatly affects the environment since, as a result of the economic growth, the gross product increases leading to a strong environmental pollution by waste and, therefore, to the direct environmental degradation. The main impact on the environment is made by enterprises extracting mineral resources, as well as chemical, petrochemical, and pulp-and-paper production, and also motor transport. Besides, it is necessary to notice that the increase in the gross product leads not only to the pollution of natural resources, but also to their exhaustion. This happens because many enterprises use natural resources irrevocably. For example, at such technological processes as the production of cement, chemical preparations, etc., no water is returned into water objects, and it is completely consumed in the production process.

As it was mentioned above, human activities aimed at the economic growth make a harmful influence on the environment. In the cities, for example, the greatest specific weight from the pollution is provided by transport. The share of transport in the environmental pollution makes 70—80 percent. Among the industrial enterprises, the metallurgical enterprises are considered as the dirtiest. They pollute the environment for 34 percent. After the metallurgical enterprises, the energy industries take place, first of all, thermal power plants, which pollute the environment for 27 percent. The remaining percentage fall on the chemical (9 percent), oil (12 percent) and gas (7 percent) industries.

Annually, over 20 tons of waste are counted per one inhabitant of Earth. The main objects of the pollution are the atmospheric air, reservoirs, including the World Ocean, and soils. Daily, thousands tons of carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, sulfur, and other harmful substances are released into the atmosphere. However, only 10 percent of this amount is absorbed by plants. Sulfur oxide, i.e. sulphurous gas, is emitted by thermal power plants, boilers, and metallurgical plants.

The concentration of sulfur dioxide in nitrogen oxides generates acid rains, which destroy crops, vegetation, and harmfully affect the state of fish stocks. Along with sulphurous gas, the negative impact on the state of the atmosphere is made by carbon dioxide, which is formed as a result of burning. Carbon dioxide is emitted by thermal power plants, metallurgic plants, and transport. During all previous years, the share of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased by 20 percent and continues to increase by 0,2 percent per year.

Other equally significant objects of the pollution caused by the human economic activity are reservoirs, rivers, lakes, and the World Ocean. To the World Ocean, billion tons of liquid and solid waste are merged annually. Among these wastes, oil takes the priority. Oil gets to the ocean from vessels as a result of the oil production in the marine environment and also owing to numerous crashes of tankers. Oil spill leads to the formation of the oil slick on the ocean surface, destruction of living marine resources, including plankton and algae producing oxygen.

Agriculture and Environmental Degradation

In recent years, the agriculture moved on the first place in terms of pollution. This is due to two circumstances. The first factor is an increase in the construction of large livestock complexes without any cleaning of the generated waste and its utilization. The second reason is an increase in the use of mineral fertilizers and toxic chemicals, which in combination with rain streams and underground waters get to the rivers and lakes, causing a serious damage to basins of the large rivers, their fish stocks, and vegetation.

Drastic changes of the environment of agricultural areas are caused by the substance streams change, the solid, liquid and dissolved drain. An active migration of elements on slopes, their rapid entry into waterways with a simultaneous reduction of a drain leads to the dramatic pollution of the surface water. This pollution can be toxic, since such dangerous elements as cadmium, mercury, strontium, lead, and zinc belong to most types of soils.

The main changes of soils in agriculture are connected with the mechanical impact on them and application of fertilizers. Plowing changes a soil profile, destroys a structure, leads to impoverishment of the top layers, and promotes strengthening of the water erosion. Along with the tillage, there is also a soil solidification. The value of the organic and mineral fertilizers, the world consumption of which is about 90 million tons per year, is also substantial. Fertilizers not only compensate the removal of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium from the soil, but quite often are redundant and contaminate the ground water and surface water.

Impact of Tourism

Besides, the flow of tourists around the world continues to grow, increasing the economic significance of the tourism industry. Tourism is one of the major factors stimulating the requirement for transport, and, unfortunately, especially those types, which cause the greatest damage to the environment: the private cars and air transport. A vital role in the increase of the mobility of tourists is played by cheap airlines. As it was stated above, these kinds of transport cause an intensive impact on the environment.

In this regard, it is highly significant to maintain the competitiveness of railway transport as it is the least harmful to the environment. This requires a coordination of the industrial development and modernization of the railway network. Ensuring the competitiveness of public transport is a means of fight against transport jams and problems of air quality, and it also raises safety level on roads. This implies that public transport should be the main priority. The problems associated with the traffic noise removal and fragmentation of land in the transport infrastructure, etc., are also essential, but now, their value cannot be quantitatively defined.

Finally, these and other consequences of the environmental pollution negatively affect the physical health of people, their nervous and mental state, and the health of future generations. According to some data, 20 percent of the population is constantly exposed to allergies as a result of harmful effects of the environmental pollution. Every day, around the globe, approximately 25 thousand people die because of bad water, which contains a substantial concentration of harmful substances. In addition, 35 percent of the population of industrial cities systematically has different diseases caused by the environmental pollution.

Taking into account all the abovementioned information, it should be noted that the development of life on Earth defines human activity as the main factor, and the biosphere can exist without people, but people cannot exist without the biosphere. In this regard, people use the environment in order to stimulate their economic development and, therefore, cause significant environmental degradations. Thus, the main challenge faced by the present generation is to keep harmony between people and nature. This requires changes in many previously existing notions about the comparability of human values. The development of the ecological consciousness in each person is necessary, whereas it will contribute towards defining a choice of options of technologies, constructions of the enterprises, and the use of natural resources.

Millie Palmer is a talented writer at literature review writing service. She likes to depict his thoughts on the paper.