The interaction of society and nature - the key problem of the political and socio-economic development of society. Expanding and enhancing anthropogenic and anthropogenic pressure on nature, society is faced with repeated boomerang effect: the destruction of nature turns economic damage and social damage. The processes of environmental degradation acquire the character of a deep environmental crisis. The question of the conservation of nature is transformed into a question of survival of humanity.
Many environmental problems of mutual relations in the system "society-nature" is now crossed the boundaries of national economies and have acquired a global dimension. Soon, in the foreground in the world will not ideological but environmental problems, will not dominate the relations among nations and among nations and nature.
Already there are threats of irreversible environmental changes in the properties of geological medium, the threat of violation of the integrity of the emerging world community and the threat of self-destruction of civilization. Now the man is standing in front of the decision of the two most important issues: the prevention of nuclear war and environmental disaster. The comparison is not accidental: human pressure on the natural environment threatens the same as the use of nuclear weapons - the destruction of life on Earth.
However, we should take into account that environmental threat is not new, it was occurred even in ancient times and middle Ages, and the difference is the scale of disaster. It could be relatively small than nowadays, but the result is dramatic. We can presume that many empires and civilizations collapsed because of ecological damage in some cases. Jared Diamond in his article pointed out some interesting examples of civilizations and empires fell down caused by ecological collapse. His argue that “Rome depended significantly on Morocco for timber and on Tunisia for grain, but those countries are now heavily degraded and no longer wood or grain exporters” . For sure, the first reason of Rome’s collapse is military and political issue, but the ecological problem should be counted as well. As we see, it could heavily affect economic development.
Another bright example of ecological damage is boreal forests, which covered 15% of land surface and contain 30% of carbon, which could be deadly dangerous for both human and nature. Nevertheless, boreal forests are unique and, due to its huge territory and inaccessibility, the only type, which could keep its ecosystem.
Exposure of insect outbreaks in the boreal forests is significant. For example, in Eastern Ontario from 1941 to 1996 spruce budworm damaged by more than 20 times more forest land than fire. In that case, government decided to take measures to solve the problem. It was decided to use DDT aerial spraying to kill damaging insects. “Aerial spraying of DDT did indeed suppress budworm populations, but only temporarily. By killing off 95 percent to 98 percent of the spruce budworm in an area, DDT spraying kept the budworms from killing off all the local spruce and fir. However, for the 2 to 5 percent of budworms that had managed to escape each DDT spraying, those surviving trees offered a super-abundant food source that stimulated insect reproduction” .
Summing up, I can make a short conclusion that every ecological damage and collapse has close ties to humans’ activity, the last affects negatively. Nowadays every government’s priority goal is to keep nature balance and develop ecological stability. History and experience of some countries shows that the neglect of ecology could lead to disaster. Mankind should create new ideas how to save the world.
Works cited
Diamond, Jared. "Ecological Collapse of Past Civilizations." American Philosophical Society (1994): 363-370.
Langston, Nancy. "Forest History Society and the American Society for Environmental History." Oxford Journals (2009): 641-650.
