Our Environment Contents

2. Impacts

There are numerous differing views, concerns and anxieties about what is sometimes seen as relentless and unending environmental destruction by the human race.

The ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer coined the term 'anthropocene' (made famous by Paul Crutzen) to describe the idea that we are in a new chronological era defined by the impacts of human activity on the Earth.

anthropocene

Large scale environmental impacts result from the use of synthetic pesticides, plastics, antibiotics, radioisotopes, detergents and other substances. We now have the inadvertent capacity to spread such substances world wide. DDT has been recovered from the fat of Antarctic seals and penguins, from fish in every ocean, and from the ice of the Alaskan glaciers (Cole, 1970). Potentially catastrophic issues are seen in the drainage of wetlands, the destruction of coral reefs, the extinction of species, the erosion, desertification and salinisation of agricultural land, the contamination of groundwater and surface waters, and the destabilisation of the atmosphere and climate.

Do you agree that today's environmental problems are qualitatively different from those of previous generations?