The issue of environment control is a very infamous topic in the present society. Everyone is just speaking about the “ Environment control measures” whether they are really concerned or not is a fact that needs to be looked into. Let’s dig into what essentially is environment crisis control? It is basically the reduction of damage that we were making to our earth through our regular activities be it releasing noxious gases to the atmosphere or cutting up tracts of land resulting in deforestation which finally causing erosion, landslides etc and now trying to mitigate the range of those activities so that we can at least try to repair the damage to some extent if not fully.
But are we really able to do it? Well we have listed out many measures to try to control the environmental crisis happening in the society and the first and foremost method which everyone thinks of from the government to the layman is the reduction in population. Till now we have thought that this measure would really help us to solve the environment pollution and damage issue but the question is arising now whether is it really helping ?
Let’s look into the reasons
Firstly we are being told population explosion results in climate damage but the root cause is not the population it is the economy that is habituated to use the methods that add to the damage of environment. Unless the economy shifts itself to a more sustainable and renewable source of economy population reduction would not really help.
Secondly we are already controlling population because the trend which we have been seeing show that rate of growth of population is already decreasing due to increase in educated women, improved technology, birth control measures taken by government ( HUM DO HAMARE DO in India), increased awareness and also rise in the nuclear family concept. But the problem of Global warming , Food production crisis is on rise and these problems are higher even more in the Western countries where population is really very small. This points out the fact that population is not the real contributor it is actually the increase in demand of the people with advancement in technology and rise in incomes that the supply from the earth is not able to cope up with.
The increase in demand for better living and a higher standard of living has forced a shift in the human population more towards the cities due to better amenities and facilities in cities which has resulted in more negative effect in the city areas and pressure in the environment.
The uneven distribution of income of the people has resulted in harming the environment unintentionally. For example a havenot person to feed himself and his family may engage in activities like selling of wood by cutting numerous trees to feed his family or collecting plastic from garbage and making stuff out of it which is basically doing harm to the atmosphere. The situation is not only worsen by the poorer section but also by the richer class. The upper elite class having an excess surplus of money engage in consumption of more goods which result in degradation of environment like consumption of more meat, alcohol or obsessed use of technologically advanced items which is contributing to the adverse situation.
The reasons for different types of environment crisis leads us to the fact that it is not the increased population that made them pollute the environment but the mindset of the people , the policy of government and management of resources.
As we know air pollution results from increased CFCs but that does not result from increased population rather from a section of the society using too much of advanced technology items. Likewise land pollution does not result from a lot of people staying in a small area but from over utilization of chemical fertilizers due to increased demand in variety of food consumption.
So the real reason which we have been believing to contribute to environmental crisis is actually not the population explosion. It is actually how the people are taught to behave and change their mindset towards preserving, helping their future generations. It is basically how the government should take accurate measures rather than focusing on less relevant factors to find the real villainous factors and work on it so that the crisis on environment we are facing right now gets solved phase by phase to an extent that we do not have to worry about the existence of our future generations on this planet with a sceptical mind.
By: SASWATI ROY
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