(GBN) Technological Advances and Limitations and It's Impact on the Environment Lesson

Technological Advances and Limitations and It's Impact on the Environment Lesson

As science and technology continue to make advances after 1900, new modes of communication in radio, cellular and the internet as well as transportation including air and shipping, will help to reduce the problem of geographic distance. Advances in energy technologies, including the use of petroleum and nuclear power, will help to raise productivity and increase production of material goods for the global market. Advances in medicine will also benefit with more effective forms of birth control giving women more control over fertility, transformed reproductivity practices and contributed to declining rates of fertility in much of the world. Medical innovations such as vaccines and antibiotics will help to increase the ability of humans to survive and live longer. In agriculture, the Green Revolution and commercial agriculture will increase productivity and sustain the earth's growing population as it spread chemically and genetically modified forms of agriculture. However, with all of these advances and innovation there will be limitations.  

Diseases, as well as medical and scientific developments, had substantial effects on the world population. Diseases associated with poverty, such as malaria, tuberculosis, and cholera, will persist while new epidemics and threats to the human population, such as the 1918 Influenza pandemic, Ebola and HIV/AIDS, in some instances leading to social disruption. These outbreaks, though, will spur technological and medical advances seeking to find cures and ways to prevent these illnesses. Some diseases will occur at higher incidences merely because of the increased longevity of the human race, as will heart disease and Alzheimer's disease.

As the world population grew and human activity increased, deforestation and desertification occurred as well as a decline in air quality, and the increased consumption of the world's fresh water, humans competed over these and other resources more intensely than ever before. Also impacting the environment was the release of greenhouse gases and pollutants into the atmosphere contributing to debates about the nature and causes of climate change.

 

[CC BY 4.0] UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED | IMAGES: LICENSED AND USED ACCORDING TO TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION