Environment

The environment is defined as the complete planetary legacy and the entirety of all assets including all the biotic and abiotic factors that impact one another.

Functions of the Environment:

The environment performs four vital functions:

• Supplying resources:  Both renewable (can be used without the possibility of being depleted) and nonrenewable resources (get exhausted with use)
• Assimilates waste
• Sustains life by providing genetic diversity and biodiversity

• Offers tasteful types of assistance like landscape and so forth 
• These capacities must be performed appropriately as long as the interest in these capacities is inside its conveying limit

• After implying that extraction of resources is not more than the rate of regeneration of the resource and the wastes generated are within the assimilating capacity of the environment

Stress on these functions:

Rising population and affluent consumption have however today placed huge stress on these functions. Because of this stress, many resources have become extinct and the wastes generated are beyond the absorptive capacity of the environment:

• Which led to the ability of the environment to absorb degradation

• High resource use rate has made water scarce and demands additional investment in exploring new resource bases 
• In addition, the health quality is suffering from increased respiratory and water-borne diseases due to poor air and water quality
• Global issues such as Global Warming, Ozone Depletion are leading to additional stress and enhanced financial commitments
• In earlier centuries extraction rate of resources and pollution generation rate were within the ability of the environment to sustain 
• But, due to the population explosion and changing consumption patterns with the Industrial Revolution, today the demand for resources has increased at a very fast pace, but the supply of them is limited.

Global Warming:

Its gradual increase in the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere leads to the lower atmosphere.

Causes:

• Increase in greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution (human-induced)
• Increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases through the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation

Visible Impact: 

•  The gradual increase in the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and CH4 have increased by 31% and 149% respectively above pre-industrial levels since 1750
• The atmospheric temperature has risen by 1.1°F (0.6°C) and the sea level has risen several inches

Long term Impact:

•  The increasing rate of melting polar ice, which is resulting in a rise in sea level and coastal flooding
• Drinking water supplies dependent on snow melts which are getting disrupted
• Extinction of species as ecological niches disappear
• More continuous typhoons
• Expanded rate of tropical sicknesses

The UN Conference on Climate Change, held in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, brought about a peace accord to battle a worldwide temperature alteration which called for decreases in emanations of ozone harming substances by industrialized countries.

Ozone Depletion: 

The course of decreases in the measure of ozone in the stratosphere in our environment.

Causes:

• The increasing levels of chlorine and bromine compounds in the stratosphere
• These compounds are originating from chlorofluorocarbons (CFC), used as cooling substances in air conditioners and refrigerators, or as aerosol propellants, and bromofluorocarbons (halons), used in fire extinguishers

Impact:

•  A reduction in the ozone layer was detected from 1979 to 1990 it was approximately 5 %
• The increasing amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation comes to Earth and is responsible for the cause and damage to living organisms
• Skin disease in people is one of the causes; it likewise brings down the creation of phytoplankton and in this way puts its impact on other aquatic organisms.

Montreal Protocol banned the use of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) compounds, as well as other ozone-depleting chemicals such as carbon tetrachloride, trichloroethane (also known as methyl chloroform), and bromine compounds are known as halons.