Environmental problems
As an indirect effect of our economic system, and the linked consumer behaviour of it, the enviroment is now in a endangered state. The following articles define one of these effects and an important cause, respectively.
Deforestation
Not many years ago, people started cutting trees down in high speed. If this continues, therainforest will have disappeared within 100 years or even less. People use the trees forpaperand firewood. The area which (dis)appears is mostly used for cattle ranching. The eventual effect of deforestation will be that the CO2 will not be used up and converted to oxygen, so the oxygen levels will decrease incredibly. It will also mean that the firewood will vanish and we’ll have to survive the winter without.
To prevent his from happening, peopleshould plant new trees where they cut one down. This process is called reforestation. Doing this, the trees will grow and eventually do the same as the trees which are being cut down now, do.
The human footprint
We watched a documentary which illustrated the amounts of waste we produce in our live, how much we eat throughout the course of our life ect. A short summary of the main argument of the film follows:
There are different ways of consummation in your live:
As a baby: you consume mainly milk and dippers you aren’t really aware of what is happening around you and want to try everything.
A young adult: As a young adult you mainly spent your money on clothing and going out. In this stage of your live you start to consume much more then when you were a baby.
An adult: Adults are the biggest consumer when you are grown up you start to buy big things like cars and houses. Electric apparatus and furniture.
In your whole life you will eat and digest enormous amounts of food, drink huge amount of beer and take lots of bats. It is to much to write down everything u use in your whole life. But when you look at what you use in just one day you can imagine that it is much bigger when you do this everyday in your life.
So what is the major problem of our consumer behaviour?
The major problem of our consumer behaviour is the use of fossil fuels and clean water which is needed to make all these products we need. And the 40 tons of waist we all make during our life time. This has to be dumped somewhere or used to make new products. All the energy which is needed releases C02 emissions and other toxic gases which cause lots of environmental problems such as global warming and pollution. All of this isn’t the effect of the consumption of one single person but everybody In the western world uses this much products. When all the people in developing countries would start living as we do at the moment the consequences would be dramatically. We are now at a point in which something has to be done about this problem before it is to late.
Which aspects of globalisation have a direct relation with the information given in this documentary ?
The aspects of globalisation which have a direct relation with the information given in the documentary are the global shift: people in countries like china are consuming even more the we are. Which is even worse because the Chinese are a huge part of the worlds population.
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Fact