Innovation in our life activities should be tailored towards sustainability of our environment. This can only be achieved by taking into consideration, all other living organisms around us. Sustaining the global population now depend so much on production and consumption habits and activities of humans. Having our activities and plans supported by the consideration of other plants and animals around will create an enabling environment that is harmless to both humans and other living species. Several human activities and habits have been found to be destructive as regards to the maintenance of the ecosystem. Those habits contributed greatly to the extinction of beautiful plants and animals that have once being a treasure to the environment. Those animals play different roles in contributing to the sustenance of the environment. However, many are no more now. This is a major environmental issue that needs to be addressed. This will be done by considering some of the major ways or habits related to consumptions and production of important environmental materials.
Deforestation is a major human consumption habit. This has contributed greatly to the destruction of the plant community. It is as a result of the human need for wood for shelter or expansion of a community as a result of plan for a mega city or construction of different industries. These activities have several impacts on the tropical forests environment. Those impacts are both on the plants community and the animals that lives within the forest. The implication of that is that; there will be destruction of the plant by destroying their shelter and also destruction of the plants that could serves as their food. There are other several effects on the earth caused by deforestation.
Preventing deforestation is a way of sustaining the destruction of the forests and the associated organism. This directly and indirectly affects our lives. Several policies and legislation have been provided by the American government and European Unions to preserve their associated forests. Some of these policies are being planned to help control emissions from the forest degradation while some are in place to help protect the tropical forests. Climate legislations such as American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) are a major legislation with different component serving to protect the environment (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2011). Forest reserves also help prevent those degrading human acts and researches have shown this to be effective way of maintaining our tropical forests (Adeney, Christensen, & Pimm, 2009).
Urban sprawl is a production habits related to material resources. This is because it involves building of new houses and construction of different urban development components. This is all about city or community expansion into areas that are rural especially to those areas of land surrounding the expanding city. This city sprawl will be associated with several forms of destruction and production of pollutants to the water bodies around, land and air. Pollutants are from the process of conversion of the land into the concrete regions.
Increased gas consumption could be related to another human consumption habit because of the effects the habits tend to have on our environment. More gas is being consumed by the industries, vehicles, homes, and turbines or generating machines. Those produce different substance that contributes to greenhouse effects. This has led to extinction of various species and so many are still about going extinct. An important mode of solving these issues is to improve upon the use of Renewables. This form of energy reduces the need for increased gas consumption. It also reduces the rate at which all those greenhouse gases will be produced hence an added global advantage.
Plastic and waste products are some of the human production habits related to materials. These products contribute to degradation of the environment in different ways. Those materials when destroy by burning results in pollution and when left untouched contribute to large amount of waste product that can also contribute to polluting our environment. The important modes of solving this issue is via the manufacturing of recyclables which helps reduce the need for waste product disposal. Producing recyclables also affects our economy positively hence improve the sustainability of the global population.
References
Adeney JM, Christensen NL Jr, Pimm SL (2009). Reserves Protect against Deforestation Fires in the Amazon. PLoS ONE 4(4): e5014. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005014.
Retrieved 29 November, 2011 from http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005014
Union of Concerned Scientists, (2011). U.S. Policy and Preventing tropical deforestation. Forest Solutions.
Retrieved 29 November, 2011 from http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/forest_solutions/us-policy-and-preventing.html
