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The effects that society has on the environment are evident and, in recent years, we consume and produce more and more waste, generating environmental impacts that are depleting the planet's resources or that are harmful to living organisms.
In this Green Ecologist article, we do an analysis on how society affects the environment; pay attention and find out.
The consumption of today's society and why it harms the environment
The consumer habits in society have changed remarkably over the years and, above all, with the greater technological development of these last three decades. Currently, the need to fill a void, or simply go with the flow of society, by purchasing goods and products that sometimes we do not even need is increasingly evident. Years ago, when this "abundance" of products did not exist, the saving of the goods that were had was valued, while today, the reality is quite different.
One of the most palpable problems of changing consumer habits is that more and more waste is generated, which in most cases end up in the environment, directly affecting it or affecting the species that inhabit it, for example, the increase in plastic containers that come from many products, are a highly polluting waste and, sometimes difficult to reuse. In addition, the problem of planned obsolescence forces us to replace many old goods with new ones, such as electronic devices or household appliances.
Another very important problem is that of means of transport and fossil fuels that are used to generate energy, that produce large amounts of pollutants.
And all this occurs on a planet full of social inequalities, in which large sectors of the population suffer hardships, while others consume beyond their needs. This generally creates a global North that consumes services, but is a clear "ecological debtor" of the South, while the South generally acts as a recipient of these ecological impacts of the lifestyle in the global North.
How today's society affects the environment - the effects
From the extraction of the resources that are needed to produce these goods to their waste dumped into nature, they produce large negative impacts on the environment, the living beings that inhabit it and our own quality of life. You have to know that until you can buy products in stores, there is a long process of manipulating resources and waste is generated at each stage.
Since the industrial revolution and with the increase in the number of vehicles in circulation, the emission of gases from greenhouse effect such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, or organochlorine compounds. These gases cause the retention of heat within the atmosphere and affect the ozone layer in the upper areas of the atmosphere. As a result, in recent years the planet has been overheating, leading to global climate change and its dreaded consequences.
An example of this is that the ecological footprint on the planet has more than doubled in the last fifty years. The consequence is that we are currently exceeding the biocapacities of our planet by 50%, mainly affecting processes such as climate change (mentioned above), the nitrogen cycle and biodiversity loss.
Negative effects of today's society on biodiversity
These environmental impacts also have effects on biodiversity of our planet, affecting the survival of living beings that develop in these environments. In this sense, factors such as climate, soil fertility, temperatures or rainfall are ecological principles that influence the distribution of plant and animal populations on Earth. Society and its different activities lead to significant variations in these factors and as a consequence put certain species on the brink of extinction or lead to the extinction of species completely.
In addition to environmental pollution, daily human activities lead to other less known types of pollution, but which also constitute a threat to species, such as light, electromagnetic or noise pollution and which cause species to modify their eating habits, migrations , behaviors or reproductive patterns.
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