Changes In The Earths Environment Essay -- essays research papers

Changes in the Earth's Environment The 20th century, especially in the second half, has been one of rapid change in the Earth's environment. The impact of humans on the physical form and functioning of the Earth have reached levels that are global in character, and have done so at an increasingly mounting speed. 20 years ago the environment was seen as posing a threat to the future of humanity as death rates from natural hazards had increased dramatically since the turn of the century. The Earth though has always been plagued by natural disasters. Now, with the world population growing at a rapid rate more people are living in hazard prone areas. Events which may have gone unnoticed previously, only become hazards when there is intervention with humans and their lifestyle. With the discovery of the ozone hole in the 1980's attention was now more focused on the threat humans were posing to the environment. With scientific evidence to back up pessimistic predictions of our future, most people, through media coverage, political pressures and general concern now see the environment as being truly threatened by human progress and in desperate need of help. Natural hazards have been defined as â€Å"...extreme geophysical events greatly exceeding normal human expectations in terms of their magnitude or frequency and causing significant damage to man and his works with possible loss of life.† (Heathcote,1979,p.3.). A natural hazard occurs when there is an interaction between a system of human resource management and extreme or rare natural phenomena (Chapman,1994). As McCall, Laming and Scott (1991) argue, strictly speaking there is no hazard unless humans are affected in some way. Yet the line between natural and human-made hazards is a finely drawn one and usually overlapping. Doornkamp ( cited in McCall et al, 1992) argues that many hazards are human induced or at least made worse by the intervention of humans. In the 1970's, natural hazards were an important subject of topical study, as the nature of their impact on human populations and what they valued was increasing in frequency at quite a rapid rate (Burton, Kates, White, 1978). During the 75 years after 1900 the population of the earth increased by a staggering 2.25 billion people. People who needed land on which to live and work. As the population rose people were dispersed in more places and in larger numb... ...cote and B.G. Thom (eds): Natural Hazards in Australia. 3-12, Australian Academy of Science, Canberra. Kevies, D.J. (1992). Some Like it Hot. New York Review of Books. 39:31-39. McCall, G.J.H. (1992). Natural and Man Made Hazards: Their Increasing Importance in the End 20th Century World in G.J.H.McCall, D.J.C.Laming and S.C.Scott (eds): Geohazards: Natural and Man Made. 1-4, Chapman and Hall, London. McKibben,B. (1990). The End of Nature. Penguin, Middlesex. Meyer, W.R. and Turner, B.L. (1995). The Earth Transformed: Trends, Trajectories and Patterns in R.J. Johnson, P.J. Taylor and M.J.Watts (eds): Geographies of Global Change. 302-317, Blackwell, Oxford. Pearce, D. (1995). Blueprint 4: Capturing Environmental Value. Oxford Uni. Press, New York. Perry,A.H. (1981). Environmental Hazards in the British Isles. Allen and Unwin. London. Schnieder, S.H. (1989). Global Warming: Are We Entering The Greenhouse Century ?. Sierra Club Books, New York. Stow, D.A.V. (1992). Preface in G.J.H.McCall, D.J.C.Laming and S.C.Scott (eds): Geohazards: Natural and Man Made. i-ii, Chapman and Hall, London. Suzuki,D. and Gordon, A. (1990). It's a Matter of Survival. Harvard Uni Press, Harvard.