Earth Science: Environment- Environmental Consciousness
For the most part, mankind’s awareness of the world they inhabit and the resources they are using has substantially changed over the last decades.
This includes many people’s behavior concerning environmental protection as well as an awareness of the consequences resulting from interventions into Earth’s natural ecosystems.
Earth – Environmental Protection – Environmental Consciousness
If human beings lived in harmony with nature, the concept of environmental protection would likely be unknown. However, since we are both perpetrators and victims of environmental damage, humanity’s survival ultimately depends on our ability to preserve the natural world.
For millennia, human beings have formed and changed their surroundings to suit their needs-often with irreversible consequences for the natural environment.
The realization that we must protect nature from the effects of human activity is not a modern innovation; however, a definite environmental consciousness has arisen in Western industrialized nations only since the 1960s. In recent decades, coastlines contaminated by spilled oil, declining fish populations, smog alerts in cities, the destruction of the ozone layer, increasing desertification, and dying forests have all pointed to the tolerance limits of ecological systems-and of the planet itself.
The protagonists of most environmental protection efforts include individuals, civic alliances, and political associations such as environmental and nature groups, as well as governments, businesses, and the scientific community.
All of them face the challenge of preserving the natural foundation for human life, maintaining the balance of nature, and countering environmental damage that has already occurred. However, since the environment as a whole cannot be fully protected or restored to its original condition, environmental protection efforts always require compromises between economic, political, and social interests.
Not every measure made possible by technology is truly feasible, given the various costs and trade-offs involved. Many proposals that are strongly advocated in scientific circles cannot be implemented due to economic concerns or a lack of political will. Similarly, many initiatives set in motion by governments meet with only hesitant acceptance in society.
GREENPEACE
The history of this international environmentalist organization began in 1971, when a small number of American and Canadian peace activists gathered to protest U.S. nuclear weapons testing in the Aleutian Islands. The group—which adopted the name Greenpeace in 1972—quickly expanded both its geographical reach and its areas of concern.
Its high-impact initiatives, which often gain considerable media attention, have been aimed against the extermination of whale species, the slaughter of baby seals for their fur, global warming, the destruction of rain forests, and the use of genetic technology, and so on.
Today, the organization has representatives in some 40 countries and has become a widely recognized nongovernmental organization (NGO), enabling it to serve as an official observer and/or advisor at numerous international conferences on the environment.