6.3.1 Overview
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6.3.1 Globalization and the Environment
How does globalization affect the environment?
Russia
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© Thinkstock
Human activity and the environment: Human activities, including common actions such as driving your car, turning up the heat, powering up your laptop, and flushing the toilet, all require energy and produce pollution. Industry requires
even more energy and produces even more pollution. The greater the number of human beings who live on this planet, the greater the effect on the environment.
Sustainable prosperity: We cannot simply stop all our human activity to prevent harm to the environment. We still need to live and prosper. But can economic growth and population growth continue unchecked? Or are their actions we can take to ensure that all the people of the world can prosper without harming the environment for future generations?
The environment does not recognize political borders: Canada's production of large amounts of greenhouse gases does not affect just Canadians. It affects everyone. Destruction of the Amazon rainforest limits biodiversity for all, and it reduces the amount of carbon dioxide consumed, adding to global warming. One nation dumping toxins into the ocean will poison the fish everyone eats. If a transnational corporation decides to build factories in a developing nation with low pollution controls, that pollution will be emitted into the global atmosphere.
Sustainable prosperity: We cannot simply stop all our human activity to prevent harm to the environment. We still need to live and prosper. But can economic growth and population growth continue unchecked? Or are their actions we can take to ensure that all the people of the world can prosper without harming the environment for future generations?
The environment does not recognize political borders: Canada's production of large amounts of greenhouse gases does not affect just Canadians. It affects everyone. Destruction of the Amazon rainforest limits biodiversity for all, and it reduces the amount of carbon dioxide consumed, adding to global warming. One nation dumping toxins into the ocean will poison the fish everyone eats. If a transnational corporation decides to build factories in a developing nation with low pollution controls, that pollution will be emitted into the global atmosphere.
Pollution in China.
© Thinkstock
© Thinkstock
Reflect
What does all this have to do with globalization? As the nations of the world industrialize, and as the population of the earth increases, the effect of human activity on the environment also increases. Actions in one country influence the health of others. Is there a way to develop economically and reduce our effect on the environment?