Mpu 3253 – Critical Thinking and Reading Skills

MPU 3253 – Critical Thinking and Reading Skills

Written by:

Goon Weng Kitt – 0113456

Fong Xiang Rong – 0115755

Chan Hao Gen – 0117204

Tung Chun Yip – 0117203

Tan Yong Kuan – 0114113

Gan Chian Chuan – 0111248

Date of Submission: 22 July 2016

2.

Earth is the home to all human beings, flora and fauna. Earth is bestowed by God, one of the beautiful aspects of the world which is the environment. Such gift from God should not be contaminated. However, the Earth today has taken its toll as urbanization and industrialization takes place. The planet is dying due to the widespread environmental issues. Society need to come to their senses fast before ignorance consumes them completely. Human beings no longer live in a place where there is serene environment. Imagine what the future generation would be living in if the current environment is about to hit rock bottom. As if Earth has not suffered enough from constant wars, famine and deaths, now global environmental problems has even been added to the equation. It seems as though as living standard of human beings advances, the worser the environment has become. The environment has help the society by providing natural resources to aid humans grow and stay healthy but in this 21st century, human beings are not returning the favour. It is no surprise that the human beings is the culprit to the aggravation of environment. Some current global environmental problems that are encountered by the society includes pollution, overpopulation, waste disposal, climate change, deforestation and the depletion of ozone layer.

First and foremost, overpopulation is one of the major current global problems that has affected the environment and the world to a great extent. The significance result of the environmental factors to the health and well-being of human is increasingly apparent (Rosenstock 2003; World Health Organization [WHO], 2010b). The population of the world is constantly growing. The United Nation Population Fund (2013) estimated that the world population will reach 9.6 billion by the year 2050. The dramatic increase in global population has led to famine. It also leads to the scarcity of water and natural resources. The shortage of resources often occurs when developing countries such as the South Africa surpassed its population limits. This has resulted in a huge demand of resources especially food, occupation and shelter. This puts a severe constraint of resources. These shortages can also occur in the least developing countries such as Madagascar as there are inadequate manpower to run the production of resources. Therefore, society will attempt various measures to overcome scarcity of resources such as increasing agriculture activities. However, blinded by the urge to counter this problem, the environment will be affected even more. This is because to produce more food, an excessive amount of fertilizer and pesticides need to be added that will aggravate the environment to an intense degree. If the scarcity of resources were to continue, the future generation will suffer from starvation due to a selfish act of the present generation.

Another problem associated with overpopulation is waste disposal. Irresponsible society leads to improper waste management. If there is a small population, improper waste management will not be much of a problem but it must still be seen as a serious matter. No matter how small a problem is, if precaution is not taken, this problem will accumulate and then authority will be forced to opt drastic options. The relationship between the population and waste management is positively related. As the population continues to increase, there will be more cases of improper waste management. In most of the developed and developing country, approximately 75% of the solid waste is landfilled and these waste is not managed properly (Ramos et al, 2012).  The waste disposal can be classified into various categories such as household waste, industrial, construction waste and many more (Taylor and Allen, n.d). Wastes such as industrial wastes, domestic wastes and chemical wastes contribute greatly to the degradation of environment. Not only is these wastes harmful but the inappropriate methods of waste management augment to this problem manifold. Some unacceptable methods includes open burning, throwing domestic rubbish to the ocean and factories that release their chemical waste to the ocean. These methods only contribute to more problems such as air pollution and water pollution that will eventually affect society. Not only there will be pollution but also ecosystem’s life of the ocean will be threaten.

On the other hand, another global problems in our mother earth is deforestation. Deforestation can be defined as the conversion of natural forest into other land for other purpose such as development, agriculture and other business activities involving the use of land (Chakravarty et al. 2012). The first class world and developing countries like South-East Asia countries are particularly very concerned about this issue which might cause various effect like greenhouse effect which also affects the biodiversity. There is a dynamic and complex relationship between country development and deforestation. Most of the forest were destroy and converted into rubber or oil palm plantation. Take Malaysia and Indonesia as example, most of the forests were destroyed for the purpose of plantation as these activities is one of the major income for the country. The human population is also one of the many reasons for deforestation. Due to the overpopulation in the 21st century, people require more land, space and resources like food in order to survive. Thus, this has become one of the biggest challenges to maintain and sustain the natural resources. Most of the countries need to have a better system to sustain and manages the human life and control the growth of population so that sustainability can be achieved and promote a better environment (Chakravarty et al. 2012).

Furthermore, excessive deforestation has led to sudden climate change and global warming. Global warming is the increase in average temperature of Earth’s surface. Global warming is the result of human beings like the emission of greenhouse gases. As more and more forest are being destroyed, there is no more trees to shelter the ground. The ground continuously receive all the light and heat from the sun and will eventually dry up the ground. The moisture of the land will soon to be evaporated with constant exposure from the sun. In addition, global warming will cause the melting of ice in the South Pole and North Pole. Simple understanding of science will tell people that when ice melt, they turn to water. Therefore, there is sudden increase in sea level that might cause devastating flash floods. Not to mention that the greenhouse effect is the main cause for the rise in temperature of Earth’s surface. The heat are trapped in Earth’s atmosphere. The excessive amount of carbon dioxide is also the main cause for global warming and the main aspect contributing to the greenhouse effect. It is commonly known through science that all trees and plants carry out an important process called photosynthesis. It is important simply because this process allows all floras to produce oxygen that is required by human beings and faunas. However, thanks to deforestation, there are more respiration process and lesser photosynthesis process as there are now lesser floras. With the Earth suffering a ‘fever’, animals and humans have to face the music but it is genuinely unfair as the animals have to suffer as well for the humans’ mistakes. A prolonged and serious global warming will only lead to climate change which has diversify harmful effects such as change in seasons and occurrence of new disease.