the essentials of...THE ENVIRONMENT

• Main Authors: Kerski, Joseph (Author), Ross, Simon (Author)
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: London Hodder Arnold 2005
• Subjects: Environmental sciences; Nature > Effect of human beings on; Environmental policy; Environmental protection
• Online Access: Click Here to View Status and Holdings.

 When the the first astronauts ventured into space during the 1960s, they looked down upon the Earth and remarked how fragile and isolated the planet looked. The blue planet, as it became known, with its swirling white clouds looked vulnerable to these early space pioneers. For the first time we, the people of planet Earth, became aware of how much we needed to care for our collective home and prevent it from being damaged. Our future depended upon it.Concern for the environment grew during the last few decades of the twentieth century for three reasons. First, information and technological revolutions allowed us to monitor the Earth as never before. Second, as people learned more about how the Earth's environment worked and how it was changing, environmental awareness, sensitivity and activism increased to where the environment was discussed and debated more than nearly every other issue. We began to realise that humans are responsible for much of the environmental change occurring, and many fought for awareness, programmes and laws that sought to reverse the harm that was becoming more and more evident. Third, the population explosion and results of two centuries of indus trialisation made it evident that areas of environmental concern around the world were not iso lated pockets, but enormous areas, some of them global in scale. Rainforests were found to be disappearing at a staggering rate, wiping out hundreds of species plants and animals. Alarmingly, some species were becoming extinct before scientists even had the chance to dis cover them in the first place. Acid rain, resulting from a chemical cocktail of industrial pollu tants, was found to be harming lake and forest ecosystems in pristine environments ranging from Scandinavia to North America, Rivers and underground aquifers across the world were becoming increasingly polluted as a result of industrial and agricultural waste. Diseases result ing from dirty water, such as cholera, were endemic in some regions. We were over-exploiting and wasting our natural resources with little thought to the legacy that we would leave behind for our children and grandchildren. The future looked bleak indeed.