By Anjam Khan
Technology is an essential part of the lives of all. At home, in school, and at work, we meet technology daily. To enhance our existence we are using this technology. The topic of polluting the world we live in also falls in the advancement of science and technology. People are increasingly dependent on machines to perform basic tasks, such as channel change or traveling. Science-based issues have arisen in particular from a broad array of environmental concerns. These include anthropological climate change, ozone layer depletion, surface water acidification, the degradation of rain rainforests, habitat depletion and extinguishment, and rapid biodiversity declines. Hundreds of thousands seek access to improved sanitation and drinkable water in developed countries, while air contamination and toxic fumes lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. In addition, global fishing, agriculture, and forestry are seriously damaged by deforestation and excessive consumption of renewable power, with substantial present and potential adverse environmental consequences. These issues are causing an environmental crisis for human beings. There are so many prosperous and contradictory relations between science-technology and environmental crises. Science and technology are fully connected with the environmental crisis.
Science and Technology is human-generated machinery and expertise used to create objects which generate good skills for tasks that couldn't otherwise accomplish. The objects have been conceived, crafted, produced, and consumed. An ensured quality with inputs like labor, electricity, manufactured goods, and capabilities is needed. Human beings have developed and used technology to change their ways, shape communities, and impact natural environments on a regional, domestic and international scale across history. Technology has had a direct and indirect effect on the environment. The development of fully new substances, such as DDT and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), will mostly have direct implications for new technologies. And most of these emerging compounds have new and immediate consequences for the environment. Indirect effects are caused by the human capacity to accumulate enormous wealth, and through continued technological progress, economic production is increased significantly by efficiency and effectiveness. Contagious diseases such as cholera and typhoid have disappeared, for instance, and have improved their life and, along with compressed work time and increased income, modified the time and expenditures allocations to allow human comportment to manipulate the environment. The environment is a shared asset owned by all, which concerns both entities and living creatures. The ecosystem encompasses the existing corporate and socio-cultural universe in the case of humans. The environment includes things like soil, water, sounds, other people and social factors, wildlife, plants, biodiversity, bacteria, etc.
Environmental destruction is a mounting problem, given that continued industrialization occurs mostly in developing countries. There are three main negative environmental effects of technology. Firstly, pollution caused by waste generation is a technological factor. The second consequence of increasing technology is the connection to global warming. The final one, technology results in a loss of environmental assets and today's environmental disparities.
Greenhouse gases are now recognized as one of the most significant global issues related to global climate change caused by emissions. The main consequence is fossil fuel production, agricultural and industrial pollution, and improvements in land use accompanying forest degradation, clearing, and consuming. Society and the environmental consequences are already observed for changing climate and their expected impact will lead to dramatic changes in the global mean temperature, level of the sea, flow by the sea, weather events, hardiness zones, spatial distribution or functions of the ecosystem. The technology industry has been one of the world's most environmentally damaging and least efficient industries.
The electricity industry and society increasingly rely on electricity for production, trade and usage must more or less by necessity be supplied by digital technologies, and the energy consumption is continuing to increase. The market is expanding. Most of the global electricity output is real context by carbon-fired plants, which have led authors like Lozano to say that the Internet is the world's largest coal-fired machine. By this kind of industry, we use more coal from our nature. And it is also one of the reasons for our environmental crisis. Within a very near day, we will lose all of our coal and it will have a deadly effect on our nature.
The inefficient use of several precious minerals is clearly unsustainable. Most technological advances depend on the scarcity of precious minerals. For instance, many do not know that far more than one-third of the elements of the periodic table are contained by a mobile phone. Minerals like cobalt, Gallium, Indium, Tungsten, and the seventeen rare earth elements are becoming increasingly popular, and because supply is small, prices have gone up often considerably. They can vary drastically as well. The direct use of such tools is also extremely harmful to the environment.
Another major environmental problem is the loss of stratospheric ozone due to halocarbon emissions (such as chlorofluorocarbons and CFCs). This is a key problem, as the absence of defensive ozone at elevated amounts leads to higher levels of UV-B harmful solar radiation reaching the surface of the planet, which has a number of effects on wellbeing and ecology. For example, Air Conditioner (AC) is much available nowadays. Even a lower middle-class family also can afford it. This happens because of our technology. Now they can offer AC within a low budget. AC releases a huge amount of CFC to our environment. CFC directly affects our ozone layer. For this reason, we feel too much hot weather compared to the previous years.
Other types of air pollution, especially on a regional level, are also important, as they may significantly decrease air quality; about 1 billion people worldwide live in areas where there is harmful contamination, especially in industrial cities. Many air pollutants cause air quality deterioration, but the main contaminants are particulate matter tropospheric ozone, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, plum, and numerous aromatics such as benzene. Many air contaminants may cause or exacerbate cardiovascular and respiratory diseases; some are recognized carcinogens, and others may cause environmental destruction and in turn have a number of environmental impacts. Because the development of Science and Technology is the main reason behind it. For example, cars are really available nowadays. Cars produce a huge amount of Carbon in the air. Which is harmful for the environment.
Contamination with toxins, leading to a variety of health and ecological consequences could seriously affect water quality. The land-based runoff into shore waters occurring in many coastal regions is a major source of pollution; it can contain substantially high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus from land and human activities. Many other behaviors of human beings contribute to water contamination, namely manufacturing and smelting processes that could produce toxic wastewater. Some other sources of severe deterioration of the marine ecosystem include oil spills, plastic contamination, and bioavailability of chronic organic compounds.
Ground contamination caused by industrial or radiation pollution, particularly by lengthy contaminants entering the soil. Land pollution may produce significant ecological consequences, and has extreme development restrictions, as polluted land usually needs to be reconstructed before it is suitable for agriculture, building or relaxation. About a quarter of the world's forested areas have indeed been reported to be being removed by man. Habitat loss takes place for a number of reasons, but deforestation is now mostly caused by the clearing of tropical forests in cultivation and agricultural activity; other causes include the removal of trees for the process of combustion and the limited harvesting of forests for woodland. While only about 6% of the surface of the planet is covered by the tropical forests, it is a key component of the global environment and of the biosphere, which contributes to climate regulation. The woodlands protect soils against degradation.
Tech waste is also pointed to by the environmental crisis. In general, hardware and phones have taken our lives so fast that very few of us had the opportunity to think of what occurs to them if we no longer use them. The response is that in the Global South locations they get to be a major health and the environment issue. This dilemma isn't something we hear about because it was out of sight, out of spirit. At present, electronic waste is 5% of worldwide waste, which is expected to exponentially grow as more of us own many smartphones, laptops and power banks, none of which is likely to be restored or recycled at the end of their lives. Rather they finish up on the outskirts of Ghana's capital in locations like Agbogbloshie. This is the world's largest e-waste dump, where 10,000 informal workers wade through a vast, informal recycling network of tons to dispose of products. In order to break down a livelihood looking for the valuable metals contained in our disposed smartphones, you endanger your wellbeing. North America And Europe is at the heart of the problem: the European Union and the United States combined produce almost one-half of the gross estimated e-waste of 50 million metric tons. Even so, authorities alone can't fix the issue. Hardware growth is nearly unlimited and authorities don't have deep pockets, especially as their green policies concentrate on more prominent issues such as carbon dioxide emissions. This E-Waste or garbage is harmful for soil, water and also air. This would be a matter of environmental crisis.
In addition, technology helps to deplete capital. Technological advancement and use helps to improve manufacturing activity which involves natural raw materials such as coal, wood and wildlife. In Bangladesh, extensive farming activities are of benefit to development but the loss of natural assets like arable land, water and soil productivity with the nature of its species is likely to occur. Environmental exploitation is concerned with agricultural practices, including such forest combustion, degradation and use of pesticides to improve soil fertility. In addition, a wide-ranging mining operation in gold, diamonds and other minerals contributes alarmingly to resources degradation. The overuse of fossil energy as well as other assets is becoming a challenge to the ecosystem and no longer a positive development.
Due to technological mishandling and the absence of control mechanisms, environmental pollution is caused. More machinery, arms and cars have been manufactured in recent decades with technological development. An excessive demand of enhanced installations causes production which, in turn, affects the supply of the necessary quality of goods, which are key factors in enhanced technological industrialization. In such situations, the importance of technology is due to human fulfillment. While adverse environmental damage is caused by higher manufacturing, arms production and high automotive use in manufacturing industries. The major parts of an atmosphere constantly contaminated by technology are air pollution, water and noise pollution. The production by major industries of large amounts of gasses such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to an enormous decline in air pollution, in turn. Again, waste disposal by factories and other entities in the rivers and water bodies is a risk from contamination of water to the ecosystem. Likewise, the industry in their routine manufacturing operations and vehicles were responsible for a great deal of noise emissions due to nuclear technology and use.
In conclusion, the direct consequence of technological misuse by innovators and consumers is the higher proportion of environmental issues. Small portions of environmental concerns arise from human activities, relating to financial, social and natural changes. Technologically affected are environmental destruction, disruptions in the ecological system, loss of natural assets, and climate change due to global warming. In order to meet human needs, technology is essential in growth and increased efficiency, but unregulated technology has negative environmental effects. Now we have to understand that all of these environmental crises are happening because of the development of science and technology. So the relation between science-technology and the environmental crisis are too close. To stop this environmental crisis we need to work together. We need to work with our government, with our world leaders. We should follow the instructions which are declared by ‘The United Nations Environment Assembly’(UNEP). Otherwise we will fall in big trouble in near future.
The writer is a student of the English and Modern Language department at North South University.