Environment Protection. Машутина Е.А. - 15 стр.

     - I see. Then, according to you, the range of ecological situations has not
changed to a pronounced degree. Am I right?
     - Quite so! Man, also, made no changes to the biosphere as a whole.
     - I can't agree with you. Man's impact on the environment is seen from the first
sight.
     - There was man the hunter-gatherer, man the farmer, man the technologist and
...
     - I see. To satisfy his desires and needs, man he technologist affected the
environment.
     - If you are so interested in this question, you can take a book "Man's Impact on
the Environment".
     - Thank you, I'll follow your advice.

     5.8 Express your own opinion on the problem discussed in this text

     6 Text 5 A Global Imperative for Environment

      For at least the past few decades almost all the nations of the planet Earth has
been preoccupied with economic growth, science and technology, spreading rapidly
around the world, seemed to offer the key to ever expanding material well-being. At
the same time, nature seemed to offer unlimited abundance. All civilizations so far
have been built on an orderly system of relationships linking man to nature, but these
relations are being disrupted all over the world by technological forces and high
population densities. Increasingly, we destroy forests and we flood deserts to create'
more farmland, factories, houses and roads. We eliminate all forms of wildlife that
compete with us for space and for food. We tolerate animals, plants, and landscapes
only to the extent that they serve economic purposes. High -ways, factories and
dwellings occupy more and more of the land areas; the use of all natural resources,
including water, will soon have to be restricted to utilitarian ends. Disruption of the
water cycle is speeding water on its way to the sea and increasing its destructive
action on land surfaces. Pollution of the air and of water is beginning to upset the
biological balance and to damage human health. Man is rapidly destroying all the
aspects of the environment under which he evolved as a species, and that have
created his biological being.
      Until the middle of this century, world agricultural development was associated
with the expansion of cultivated land, since then it has been dependent largely on the
intensified exploitation of existing cultivated areas. But the technologies of the Green
Revolution such as extensive use of agrochemicals and increased dependence on
improved breeds, that made exploitation possible have given rise to adverse side
effects. These include soil pollution and the disruption of soil - seated biological
processes. Man may have already transformed as much as 10% of all ice-free lands
into desert and reduced global vegetation by 1/3. In many areas we may be even
closer to the outer limits of available freshwater supplies. We are only now beginning
to look seriously at some of these questions and there is still a dangerous level of
                                                                                      19