Problems of Population

Pollution is today, probably, the great fuss that faces humankind. There is a ordaining in English that it is an ill bird that fouls its own nest. And compassionate bes be, collectively speaking, fouling their nest at the increasing rate. It is an alarming picture. We ar polluting the air, which we need to breathe, the earth from which we derive exclusively our diet, and the waters from which w, of course, derive the water we need to live, to drink, and for different purposes.So e very(prenominal) last(predicate) the elements that surround us at that place argon three elements earth, air and water are being increasingly polluted by the activities of man, by industrial activities, for the most part. And contaminant, of course, hold ups no frontiers. One country that pollutes pull up stakes export its pollution to separates. The radio activity, for example, that was generated by the disaster at Chernobyl four eld ago, four or five geezerhood ago, was railcarried in c brazens across Europe, and approximately of these radioactive clouds, near intimacy which shit been polluted in this way, actu every last(predicate)y produced rains which fell on part of England and Wales.And we had a hassle with the cattle which, of course, are fed on the grass, which had been rained on, by this polluted water, so we had problems in a wasted way, even in England as a reply of the Chernobyl disaster. notwithstanding Chernobyl is only integrity instant among many. Its a dramatic and alarming symptom of what is going on in every societies, all advanced industrial societies, not just in one. Its common to all, its a common problem for all of us and in fact, in a sense, it takes us beyond all our ideologies. We must, in fact, look at this in a jibely neutral, totally objective way, not for the blaming of one, one economic system or another.Its nighthing which is, as I pronounce, frowning both ends. Its really a function of advanced economic systems, of advanced, technologically advanced countries. Its fundamentally the matter of the industrialization which began in England, of course, in the 18th century and in above all, its a result of the increasing habituate of and countence upon fossil fuels primarily, of course, coal and cover for both industry and transport. Modern industry, ripe civilizations are back enddidacy almost entirely on rock crude oil, mainly upon oil, to a less(prenominal) extent also, of course, on coke coal.But oil, it is which quite literally oils the wheels of industry through erupt(a) the world. And the desire for oil, the need for oil, the craving for oil, the guzzling of oil is one of the great phenomena of the 20th century. We know, of course, that oil is decreasing, the stocks of it are decreasing inevitably and that someday, since they are finite, they will run out alto formher, further that day hasnt, of course, arrived yet and new reserves are found from time to time, to change us to go on in the same old ways.But the problems are increasing. Some day we shall wee to find means of transportation by means of inventing some new kind of transport which isnt interdependent on oil, perchance, upon electricity or something, like that, be perplex electricity itself is oil-dependent to some extent. We shall learn to become less and less oil dependent, whereas, in fact, in the last hundred years or so, weve become to a greater extent and more oil-dependent.First, dependence on oil is something, this rapidly dwindling resource is one of our major problems, and we look forward to all of us, I think, that the scientists will be able to find alternative sources of energy, solar energy, water, water power from the seas, so to say, and it is derived from sea power and the building of dams. This will take the place, we hope, on the oil-fired and coal-fired power stations which we depend on so much today and, of course, nearly all our transport is fuelled by oil or by its de rivative petrol. We shall cook to do something close to that.Therell be required a technological revolution. We hope well acquire one, at any rate, which will bring about a new way of action which is less pollutant, less polluting, less dangerous to our environment. Let us look a junior-grade pussy at the picture today. We are all aware of this in order to satisfy our almost unmeasured need for oil today we send huge tankers to transport it from one country, where it is to be found, where it is drawn up from the ground, to many countries, of course, that retain no oil of their own at all, they strike to import it.And then, of course, the issued tankers sometimes overstep and sometimes deem collisions, and vast spillages continue, causing oil slicks which are sometimes miles and miles long. As a result of these oil slicks, which gradually come towards the coast, we have a poisoning of fish career and sea birds, and this makes the beaches disincline for either the local residents or for holiday-makers to use. And its a dirty sight, a tragic sight.The sea birds, for example, are cover in thick black oil, and they have no chance of survival unless large number can determine to them early and clean their bodies, clean their wings of this oil. So the great cost to natural spiritedness weve been endangering the other creatures of Earth in our greed for more and more oil. And the cost, the economic cost of cleaning up these oil slicks is enormous and, of course, fines that are imposed upon owners of tankers from which oil is spilt, notwithstanding the fines themselves are derisory, they are not nearly heavier-than-air enough.Many tanker captains deliberately flush out the holes of their vessels in foreign ports leaving the foul mess for other people to clean up, and the fines they pay, if they are caught, which is not always the campaign, are literally peanuts. And then there are carbon emissions from our factories and from the traffic. The emissi ons from the exhausts of cars and other vehicles on the roads are largely responsible for the atmospheric pollution from which we are suffering these days.These emissions cause acid rain which, when it falls upon the ground, is harmful to plant life, and to some extent, to animal life too. We are told by those who are supposed to know about these things that the atmospheric temperature throughout the world, the average temperature is move up very slightly, and the result of this is so-called global heat, which is only by 1 or 2 degrees, perhaps not even as much as 2 degrees will be the so-called nursery effect.This can be described in the pursuance way the ice at the Pole caps, the uniting Pole and the South Pole, will begin to melt as a result of this global warming and causing the level of the oceans to rise, and this, in turn, will flood low-lying coastal areas in respective(a) parts of the world, thereby, of course, not only causing disaster to people who live there, but al so depriving man of some of the soil the earth which he needs to grow his food on.And as further results will be, this happens, that the clime in many parts of the globe will change, maybe, of course, some parts will become hot and may be better from that point of view, but others undoubtedly will suffer. We cant know in total whether this will be a good or a bad thing, but we shouldnt just borrow blindly that all will be well. We must try and plan and look on the unrelenting side in a sense. We must assume the beat out we must take the worst case analysis, as its called in England.Its really quite a moot point today whether mankind will perish by flood or by frying, whether itll be flooded out of foundation or fried out of existence. For many decades after the Second World War, once the atom flush it had been invented, people were afraid above all of a nuclear war. Nuclear war was what it was feared, would wipe out mankind because, if there were wr and nuclear weapons were used, and rockets with the nuclear warheads nukes as the Americans call them were used, then theres little hope for mankind, therell be no victor in such a war.Everybody would be vanquished and, of course, the pollution would occur as a result, as well as the devastation would probably, or could easily wipe out mankind, or if not wipe out mankind, then make lives, all life that was left unbearable, as to be almost not worth thinking about, not worth contemplating. There is, of course, an ever dreadful doomsday scenario, from which its to be really gloomy about this sort of thing. This is the possibility of the Sun baking us all, frying us all.I havent spoken about the possibility of flood from melting of the ice caps at the devil Poles, but theres this other possibility which is opening up now as a result of mans activity in space and on earth, of course. Some of the hydrocarbons that we release into the atmosphere, especially those from the aerosol cans unitedly, it is believ ed, with the rockets that we launch into space cause holes to appear, large holes to appear in the ozone layer above the Poles, above the Pole caps.And it is this layer, and this alone, incidentally, this ozone layer which prevents us all and which protects us, in fact, from the harmful effects of the ultraviolet rays given off by the sun. Were there no ozone layer, f course, life would not be life as we know it. It would not be sustainable, and for our type of life it would be too hopeless, the rays, ultraviolet rays would harm us. We know this is so, when we go sunbathing we give caution not to wear our bodies too much to the effect of the sunrays. As if all this were not enough, we pollute our water in various other ways.We pollute it not only, that is to say, with oil slicks, spillages of one source or another. In many places, and certainly this is true in England, and probably true in other countries, Im sure, its true in many Continental countries on the Mediterranean coast, for example, in many places untreated sewage is discharged directly into the sea, instead of being treated and used on the land, as would seem to be possible, of course. Side by side with this, we use huge quantities of chemical fertilizers in our agriculture.Some of these fertilizers seep down into the underground water shelves and aquifers and finds its way into the river system together with chemicals discharged by factories, which are often sited near rivers and lakes, of course, straight into the river or the sea. We are polluting our waters with chemicals, with oil and with untreated sewage. And, of course, the oceans are huge, of course, they cover more of the earth surface than land, as we all know, but they cant interminably prove a kind of flushing system, purification system for modern civilizations.The harmful chemicals which are deposited in one way or another into our rivers, our seas, our lakes and our oceans, get into particularly harmful metals, such as lead and ca dmium get into the food chain and the water supply. And, of course, we are absolutely dependent on food, on safe food and water which is fit to drink. However, we mustnt be too gloomy about this, the mankind is capable not only of dirtying, of messing up the planet, it is also capable of cleaning it up, if he applies himself rationally to this problem.Many rivers have in recent years been cleaned up, that is to say, made a crew cleaner and the matter is clean as long as they would attentiveness and they certainly have been improved immensely, the Thames in London is an example of this. Fish which have not been seen in the river Thames for decades are now reappearing there now. Of course, many of them are put in deliberately as the river is restocked. But the fish which would not have stood a chance of surviving in the Thames a few years ago are now able to survive in that environment, which is very encouraging, of course.There is another form of pollution Id like to speak of brief ly. It is not quite so harmful to the human race as a whole, but it is certainly deleterious, has a deleterious effect on the environment. It is one another environmental problem we have to deal with. This is the, what I call, go pollution. This can come from various sources, for example, aircraft with the loud engines. These engines can be made quieter, and there is much effort going into making them less loud all the time, but they are still enormously disruptive in their effects.Anybody who lives near an airport knows what a terrible noise these planes can make after they take off or when they are landing. Some people can adapt to this, but not everybody can. It is not true that if you live near a noisy place, youll adapt to it. I know from personal experience that a noisy traffic can have a continuously bad effect on ones health, because it disturbs ones sleep, keeps one awake and keeps one in a nervous state. Some people adapt to it, but many people, quite a large nonage of p eople never adapt to noisy conditions.And the traffic noise and the bubble aircraft noise are the worst offenders in this respect. Its not only, of course, aircraft or road vehicles which cause a noise, but other things, such as the well-known ghetto blasters, as they call these, they are very loud hi-fi systems, or loudspeaker systems that they have in pubs and other places of entertainment. These are played at full blast, hence the name blasters, and they are very harmful to peoples health. In the long run they can affect viewing.There is no doubt about it, scientists have shown that four-year-old people who are habitually exposed to very loud noises, to this deafening loud music, will in a course of years suffer an impairment in their hearing and can, in some cases, become deaf, which is a heavy price to pay for listening to loud rock music or something else of the kind. They can enjoy just as well at a lower volume surely, but the fashion today is to play these things as loud as possible, without regard for those around who, perhaps, dont want to hear these things.Its not uncommon for people in our country to play their transistors in their cars and then to open the car window and the with child(p) comes out, and everybody hears whether they want to or not. I usually dont want to hear it. This is an offensive thing to do to ones fellow creatures to impose a sudden noise on them if, so to say, they dont want to hear. Its antisocial, to say the very least of it. It annoys me intensely.And some shops where they sell hi-fi equipment will have that equipment, will have some music playing usually, usually junk music, I call it, playing very loud and such you can hear from the street. Why should I be, why should I be punished, as if my ears be afflicted with the sounds of music I dont wish to hear, which I dont regard in any way artistic or aesthetic, just because some other people are thoughtless, too thoughtless to turn the sound down. So we have created a problem, perhaps, of a nuisance. The same thing happens, of course, to transistors.Young people sometimes take a transistor with them, say, to a beach in the country and even in the town, and play it loud. And so all people are forced to listen to, are forced to hear it. This shouldnt be possible in fact, on our railways, Im not sure about the buses, and other forms of public transport, certainly on our railways, its hot, its technically illegal to play a transistor. Its perfectly acceptable to play one of these players, one of these personalized hi-fis which you wear, you just have earphones, walkmans, but not to play a transistor.Weve created smokeless zones in our cities to rid ourselves of some of the pollution. Now, of course, we are not allowed to burn coal on our fires in most areas in England. In the country you still can have this kind of smoke, but in the towns one is not allowed to have an open fire which burn coal. One has to have a special smokeless fuel, and this, of course, has reduced the pollution and the fog and the smoke in the towns enormously. And even in my life-time Ive noticed a huge difference in this respect.When I was a young man, it was common in November, particularly at the end of the year, to experience terrible fogs pea-soupers we used to call them. And that was a mixture, of course, of industrial smoke, of smoke from all the chimneys in the houses and fog, and it really did look green, and the description of pea-soupers is very appropriate. It did look greenish, a tremendous colour. It choked you, of course, and you got black deposits in your nose and so on. It was foul. People used to walk around with handkerchiefs and scarves cover around their noses and their eyes.They got into your eyes, as well, and its really quite dreadful. Weve managed to overcome that problem by the introduction of smokeless zones, I think some time in the late 1950s or early 60s. We could and should do something about the noise that were creating, that is creating a nuisance for us. In a similar way, we could, in fact, impose restrictions on people. We have started in a small way but we need to go a lot further in this respect. So all these problems, these problems of pollution are man-made problems.It is we, the human race who have caused these problems by failure to appreciate the extent of the damage were doing to our environment by mismanagement, even when we do know the effects, we dont always take measures to secure a clean and safe environment. But we know now more and more of the matter, how very delicately balanced the ecology of our world is and that if we go on as we are doing, we might, well, disrupt it and alter it irreversibly, and to the detriment of all, all the human race. Weve got to be extremely careful how were moving in this respect.There is, as we say, only one spaceship earth we have only one planet, we are all in the same spaceship, all in the same boat, as we say. And we could perish unless we alter our attitudes, alter our industrial methods and ruthlessly punish those who are responsible for polluting parts of our Earth. And if we dont, I can quite truthfully say that the sands of time are running out for mankind. *Sort some of the underlined vocabulary under the following headings (to have at least 5 items for each) a. delivery and phrases that show the attitude of people to environmental issues b. the hottest environmental problems we are facing c. the dramatic consequences of mans activities d. reasons for / causes of /sources of pollution and other ecological problems e. ways of dealing with these problems words and phrases that show the attitude of people to environmental issues the hottest environmental problems we are facing the dramatic consequences of mans activities reasons for / causes of /sources of pollution and other ecological problems ways of dealing with these problems