Climate Change

Introduction

Human beings started altering the surface of the planet a long time ago, at least since they began to establish settled communities and developed an agriculture that required ploughing, irrigation and the clearing of forests. However, it is only in the past couple of decades that we have arrive to identify the international nature of the influence of human undertaking on the environment. Of course, it is also in this years that there has been enormous technological advancement and financial development in many components of the world. The value of life has advanced in numerous ways - for demonstration, the average life expectancy has more than doubled in the past 50 years alone. (United Nations Population Fund, 62) On the other hand, we now realise the ecological impact of this progress sufficient to understand that we should change our outlook of the world - and we should adopt new ways of conceiving so that we can anticipate a sustainable future for humankind.

Sustainable development engages financial, communal, and ecological matters - economic growth connected to protection of the environment. The dispute of sustainable development is to find ways to rendezvous the needs of the persons for better inhabits without destroying the assets upon which future progress depends.

Rich Versus Poor Countries

The 20th century at first was ignorant of, and then denied, the environmental effects of cities, relegating debates to the concerned scientists and environmental activists. Disparities between the rich and poor nations driven by consumption now affect the world balance of power and undermine world stability. Issues of environmental and social justice include the dynamics of international aid, consequences of famines, and politics of population policies. In 2007, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the UN International Panel on Climate Change received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in identifying, quantifying, and publicizing the effects and probable consequences of human impacts on the environment. That the prize was given for peace is a signal that the 21st century may recognize that the environmental effects of cities extend beyond city boundaries and beyond their global ecological footprint to the social welfare of the human species. (McNeil, 113)

At the turn of the 21st century, cities occupied only 3% of Earth's land surface; however, their impacts extended across the globe. Cities' voracious appetites for resources and their dispersal of pollutants into air, into water, and on land result in local, regional, national, and global environmental degradation. For example, in 2000, Los Angeles, California, had a population of about 4 million people and city limits covered an area of 1,290 square kilometers. The Los Angeles metropolitan area had more than 12 million people, including Los Angeles and Orange counties. The greater Los Angeles area, a megacity, covered much of five counties and included more than 17 million people. Direct effects of Los Angeles within the five counties of the megacity are smog, displacement of native habitats, contamination of surface and unconfined ground waters, and deposition of litter on city streets and beaches. The megacity's ...