Write an opinion article for newspaper on this topic:
- environment and human interaction, past and future situation
Human pressure on the ecosystems
It is a well-known fact that human activities have a big impact on the environment, but this impact depends on several characteristics of the specific society we are talking about, such as population, values, technology, wealth, knowledge and many more. Those characteristics define the way people act and the measures governments take to preserve ecosystems. Having said that, we have to consider also the changes in our lifestyle that the environment provokes, due to earthquakes, storms, climate changes and others.
Since ancient times humans have modified the environment and landscapes. For instance, in the Ancient Greece a huge number of trees were cut down to create grazings and, as a result, the regional climate has changed and Greece has become a country in danger of desertification. In other places, human activities turned the environment into inhabitable.
More recently, industrialization and the spectacular increase of population and its needs of natural resources is provoking an enormous pressure on the ecosystems.
Will the future bring us changes in environment and human interactions? That question has not an easy answer. Current levels of consumption of natural resources, use of fossil fuels, and release of polluting substances are not sustainable in a long term. However, governments are taking into account those issues and making laws to preserve the environment.
To conclude, human activities cause damages on the ecosystems and those damages provoke at the same time problems to the society, such as negative consequences on human health, economic loss in agriculture, floods, forest fires, etc.
I think there are many things we could do to respect and preserve the environment, like recycling, reducing our consumption of energy, using and buying eco-friendly products, etc....