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This paper researches aspects of the environment which include history of environmentalism (green movement), environmental economics and pollution as an environmental vice.
The history of the Green movement is erroneously related to the book by Rachel Carson called Silent Hill and political fervor of the 70s but it is actually rooted in the intellectual thought of 1830-1840 and the impact of transcendentalism and American pragmatism in the latter years of the 19th century.
According to Puritan pastoral ethic, it was uncivilized to leave the land bare and in its natural form therefore called for tilling and utilizing land was inherently moral but this was called into question by people like Henry David Thoreau and George Perkins Marsh who championed nature preservation in the later 19th Century. Today there is still negative associations between pagan values and preserving wild lands seen (today) in the extreme in form of “environmental wackos” or “tree huggers”
Pragmatism is viewed widely as America’s input into the school of philosophical thought. Steps by the American government in the 1860s to conserve parks for public use e.g. Yosemite in 1872 and the signing of the Forest Reserve Act were the major key points in this era of pragmatic approaches to environmentalism.
The Sierra Club chaired by John Muir and the public efforts of Pres. Teddy Roosevelt popularized conservation but in the years that followed that saw the World Wars and the Great Depression put conservation efforts in the back burner. Only disasters and threats revived this thought. The 1948 Donora disaster (death fog), which cast light on the need to conserve nature not only for land but for food security as well, prompted a focus on a full on effort to provide sustainability. The prevention of the damming of Grand Canyon and subsequent enacting of the Wilderness Act in ’64 and the development of the environmental protection agency were the highlights. The modern Green Movement was born in late 1960s and 70s with various acts like Clean air Act and Endangered Species Act et cetera.
Tree huggers revolutionized the efforts such that conservation became politicized and Groups such as PETA, ELF and Earth First gained notoriety. Issues like climate change were seen to be spun buy the likes of these. But notable effects like Katrina and scientific consensus changed this especially with the popularity of Al Gore’s film The Inconvenient Truth which brought this into public conscious.
Environmental Economics is a subfield of economics that deals with the correlation between the environment and the economy; how resources are utilized, impact of economic activities on the environment and policies to solve problems based on economic incentives for businesses. It focuses on these concepts:
Market failure refers to” all the situations where private decisions result in outcomes that fail to maximize the value that society could get from its resources.” (Tietenberg n.pag.) It involves externalities which is when the consequences of private decisions fall on a third party and not on the decision maker leading to bias from socially desirable outcomes.
The absence of property rights or the counterproductive structure of these rights such that there is open access to resources with the resultant effect of overuse and depletion is another aspect.
Environmental policies to counter degradation and protect environment include environmental taxation on such things as emissions and congestion charges, tradable permits like tradable energy certificates which work on the principle of trading “quotad” resources, deposit refund scheme for bottles or clunkers, liability law which eliminates externality by imposing liability costs, disclosure strategies which serve to reduce effects by making people aware of the risks, and finally certification of green products.
Pollution is “the addition of any substance or form of energy (e.g., heat, sound, and radioactivity) to the environment at a rate faster than the environment can accommodate it by dispersion, breakdown, recycling, or storage in some harmless form” (Tropical Rainforest Animals Pages par. 5).
There are mainly three types: air, water and soil.
The most common air pollutants are sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide , ozone, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and airborne particles, with radioactive pollutants(nuclear clouds) being the most detrimental. They are emitted from cars, industries and aerosols. Their effects include respiratory problems, neurobehavioral disorders, disruption of endocrine, immune & reproductive system and depletion of the atmosphere among others. This is also seen as a resultant effect of global warming.
Water pollutants include insecticides and herbicides, remains from industrial food processors, wastes from livestock activities, VOCs, heavy metals and results from chemical activities. Effects include rashes, cancer, ascariasis, neural damage, oxygen depletion in water and, death of biodiversity and threat of extinction.
Lastly, soil pollutants are hydrocarbons, solvents and heavy metals. Such cause liver toxicity, cancer, slowed metabolism of microorganisms and reduced crop yields.
The remedies are promoting sustainability, environmental awareness, conservation and protection of the environment by not only the industries involved but by humanity as a whole.
In conclusion, environment is the most important part of life and we bear the brunt of mistakes made in our daily activities. It is therefore important for all to join the green revolution.
Works Cited
Sara.” A Brief History of the Modern Green Movement.” History and Trivia 2008: Webcoist: n.pag. Web.
Tietenberg, Tom. “Environmental Economics.” Encyclopedia of Earth 2008: EOE. Web.
Tropical Rainforest Animals Page. Environmental Pollution at Tropical Rainforest.com, 2008. Web.
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