Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 2.1
Pollution in movies-the Story of “Godzilla vs. Hedorah”(1971 Toho Co., Ltd.)
to be more closely linked to one type of country; but in fact whether developed or
developing countries, all are contributing to the problems and also must contribute
to their solution.
2.2.3
The Overall Challenges
Let us now turn to the central part of this course where we try and answer the ques-
tions:
• What is the basic nature of environmental problems?
• What is their cause?
• How do we correct them?
First let us have a brief look at the second half of the twentieth century-Table
2.4
sum-
marises the growth which has occurred between 1950 and 2000 in a range of indica-
tors of human activity. Since 1950, global population has tripled, energy consumption
has increased 15 times and global GNP increased about 21 times. During this period
the environmental problems mentioned above have also worsened, requiring substan-
tial expansions in environmental laws and regulations in the last 50 years in order to
deal with the more urgent problems (Meadows (
1999
), Meadows et al. (
2004
). It is an
understatement to say that the twentieth century was a century of rapidly expanding
