Environmental science Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Environmental science - Essay Example This paper addresses these three environmental factors, shows how these factors are being influenced by humans and tries to suggest useful strategies and methods to reduce their harmful impacts on human life. Introduction Environmental factors play a pivotal role in maintaining human well being and quality of life. However, man’s indiscriminate actions have resulted in large scale environmental pollution and subsequent adverse impacts. Man can influence environmental factors to a large extend either positively or negatively. This paper seeks to address three environmental factors-renewable resources, biodiversity loss and pollution. The growing amount of greenhouse gas emissions have prompted the international community to think in terms of renewable resources. Similarly, biodiversity has been proved to be a significant environment factor as its loss adversely affects the functioning of ecosystems. In the same way, air, water and land pollutions have contributed towards a numb er of health related concerns. It is thus evident that unless and until these environmental factors are adequately managed or prevented these will culminate in the destruction of the entire mankind. Thus the paper also seeks to suggest certain recommendations and preventive strategies through which these environmental factors could well be brought under control. Environmental Factors I. Renewable resources It has been identified that increased amount of conventional oil consumption contribute to greater CO2 emissions which will be harmful to the environment. Therefore, it is high time that major oil companies globally respond to climate changes through alternative technologies and emissions reduction. This necessitates the reduction of carbon emissions, more focus on natural gas and biofuels, carbon capture and storage and the prevention of atmospheric greenhouse gases. While oil, petroleum and coal produce air, water and solid wastes the pollutions created by natural gas are compar atively low. The increased demand for energy and the growing environmental pollutions from non-renewable sources have forced world nations to turn to renewable energy sources such as the solar power, hydropower projects, and wind energies. Humans have often failed to understand the environmental impacts of the overuse of non-renewable resources. On the other hand, the potential power of renewable energy sources to limit climate change is well documented. For Kleijn and Van der Voet (2010) a transition to a renewable based energy system is essential for tackling climate change. For them ‘a renewable based hydrogen economy’ becomes more of eco friendly and the â€Å"world receives ample energy from the sun that can be harvested by PV solar cells and, indirectly, by wind turbines† (Kleijn and Van der Voet, 2010, p. 2784). A large scale global investment in renewable energy is essential from the part of well to do countries and such a step is expected that renewable energies will bring about social, economic and environmental benefits to many developing nations. Similarly, renewable resources are proved to be more conducive to the protection of natural ecosystems as it prevents health issues by reducing exposure to pollutants. Therefore, the best way to derivate energy from renewable sources is the transmission of energy from the source and as such solar energy has proved to be the most