Human Impact On Nature And Environment: Positive And Negative Effects

It is first important to define environmental change and environmental problems:

• Environmental change: it's a change in our habits that affects directly the consumer, something that he can see and observe. The change on his everyday life and the environment around him. An environmental change is induced by and affects humans.
• Environmental problems: Environmental problems occur when human uses the resources of the environment (like gas, oil) and affect the environment.

In some cases, it is better to talk about environmental change rather than environmental problems. In fact, environmental change represents an evolutive change that is not always negatively due to human activities. Since the effects aren’t necessarily bad for the environment or human health, the term “environmental change” is more appropriate than “environmental problem”. Many parts of our daily lives bring positive and negative impacts on the environment, humans or nature: The use of pesticides allows a better harvesting on our fields and increases the quantity of food produced. So, it helps plantations to grow up. But these pesticides have a huge impact on the environment. It destroys wildlife and contaminate waters around the fields. Also, they create a lot of greenhouse gases that is responsible for global warming. Since a hundred years now, humans use cars. The first aspect we can see here is a fast way of displacement. Like this we can talk about of different means of transport: planes, boats, motorcycles. This means allow a better sharing of culture, open-minded people aware of what's going on in every part of the world and a large access of the food, culture, languages of all around the world. This is a main act in the globalization.

However, it has a tremendous influence on the environment. It leads to the global warming because of the emission of gas and the destruction of the ozone layer. Moreover, it creates a lot of noise pollution and provokes cancers in cities where the density of gases is too big. Solar panels are more and more used by individuals on their own houses. The direct effect for them is the production of their own electricity, independently of the grid and without emitting pollution. This is also a way to save money after the investment in the panels. It is a “free” energy. But this does not consider the fabrication of these panels. In fact, a solar panel needs a production that costs a lot to the environment: extraction of rare metals using non-green energies, transportation among others. As the extraction of these materials is not made in front of most of the people, it is difficult to make them realize. The same thing happens with technology in general. As we do not see the impacts of these processes, people won't change their way of consumption. To limit this overconsumption, the impacts must happen right in front of us.