environmental science essay topics

environmental science essay topics

Exploring Key Environmental Science Essay Topics

1. Introduction to Environmental Science

We are surrounded by a universe of consciousness, intelligence, and purpose. According to contemporary cosmology, our planet and the life forms that grace it are the high point of an evolutionary process extending both forward and backward in time to the very beginning of the universe. The process that has produced humans has given us our minds, our ability to conceive God, and our technological prowess. It is this process that is the subject of Environmental Science. Environmental Science is the study of the Earth, its physical and biological components, and the complex, interrelated systems that affect many aspects of human life. It is the modern interdisciplinary science that offers the necessary tools to address the destruction we have wreaked on the natural world that has made us great. It is the needed insight and wisdom that will restore a sustainable balance for our world and thus guarantee a prosperous and secure future for our children and grandchildren.

2. Climate Change and Its Impacts

Measuring the momentum of climate change is more challenging than Brooks’ joke, which claimed one would have great difficulty in catching it because it precedes and follows him. Just as a good conscience, climate change sneaked up like an evil on society while the laypeople’s cries fell on addled ears. Today, world-renowned scientists who have studied paleoclimates declare resolutely that the magnitude of change is serious, primarily because its rate is unprecedented and unexplained by natural causes. The argument lies in the greenhouse gases: as concentrations rise in response to increased industrialization and population growth, temperatures measured by satellite, ground-based, and balloon-borne technologies have risen above the statistical confidence limit of natural variability. These rising temperatures manifest in an abundance of salient impacts around the world. To make sense of the jargon, more than a slight inconvenience, matters of changing climates merit scrutiny because of the magnitude of poverty involved, the insurance costs incurred, and the probability of coincidental poverty-insurance fund misuse. The impacts of climate change also demonstrate a range of doubt, from safeguarding ecosystems and irreplaceable species to safeguarding culture and workers’ health. Recognize? It is essential then to perceive both the magnitude and uncertainty of the climate problem, as well as other tradeoffs that compete for societal attention. It is impossible to resolve the thousands of questions asked about climate change with even the most advanced science. However, using help from the study of paleoclimates, one might wade safely through a maze of objective information graphics that will allow one to acknowledge the breadth of things that the climate system is responsible for. Summed up succinctly, this essay serves those who wish to breathe with a little insight and fresh air, elucidating their brief journey in the climate change universe in an intuitive, physically-based manner. In the process of reading this essay, you should profit from a physics-based discussion that will place you at a good advantage in the physics-politics realm.

From Africa to Asia, massive wildfires consumed the landscape, devastating every living thing from flora to animals. Tsunamis and flooding have destroyed entire civilizations, claiming countless lives in one fell swoop. Tropical storms that used to be the anomaly are swirling more frequently, causing record-breaking damages. Acrid smog, the stench of choking wet earth, and the sweltering heat turn the air conditioner into a necessity rather than a luxury. What was once one of the most breathtaking sceneries known to mankind are now dubbed the Dead Sea. Welcome to the land of the rising sun with receding waters, due to deforestation, irrigation diversion, and wasteful agricultural practices. Alarmed? Good, because these are the consequences of the phenomenon of climate change, and such phenomena have garnered international attention, occupying the proverbial airwaves. People everywhere, from world-renowned scientists to even small town mayors, are busy discussing issues on climate change, some leading fervently the dire warning of doom, while others respond sheepishly at best. Are they being overly apprehensive, or are the threats real? Should adaptation efforts be stepped up, or should they be abandoned altogether? These questions form the thrust of this essay because it is advantageous to know severe concerns about something as fascinating and as thought-provoking as the physical world.

Introduction

3. Biodiversity Conservation and Ecosystem Services

An ecosystem services essay serves as a good tactic that analyzes the attributes of these aims, which connects people with the ecosystem of the setting along with its causes and effects. This paper presents a conceptual and practical investigation of the match-up between the individuals living in a fishing village and the diversity of organisms that are living in the surrounding area. This situational environmental science and public awareness in an educational progress of the economical sector and tourism arts. This effort is anticipated to contribute as a device to carry out the valuation of nature because its arrangement comprises beneficial demeanor and understanding levels to do so that could enhance the preparation and organization of visitors to the biodiversity of the territory, intricate with considerations consistent with the main concepts encompassing environmental necessities and the payment of ecosystem services.

An ecosystem is a practical being made up of living organisms and the relevant countryside, particularly the set of living beings as well as the non-living objects present within the zone. The ecosystem service is an unpaid benefit carried out by the ecosystem, with straightforward and focused involvement, providing economic benefits in a tangible variety. The major concept is the ecosystem, together with secret agent, intermediary, and beneficiary. The secret agent is the ecosystem itself, an intermediary is the exchange for labor firm involved in the distribution of ecosystem services, and the beneficiaries are the inclined people who benefit from the ecosystem services. The services of the ecosystem are captured with caring factors such as regulation of environments, administration of flora and fauna, ecological, and environmental aid, etc.

4. Sustainable Resource Management

Moreover, the transition from non-renewable to renewable resources involves a throughput flow of materials and installations that could once again be labeled ephemeral. Technologies reliant on a grow or die strategy can hardly be called sustainable. For as long as the mountain of debt on account of past, present, and future external costs are passed on to the future, no priority is accorded to the removal of the disabling debts. The rationale for sustainability stems from the jarring disregard to the importance, respect, and honor of Earth’s resources. Economics aided by technology and global free trade has put environmental pollution, resource depletion, and species impairment in a spectrum. Bouma points out that the dominant approach to sustainable resource management will be that which rationally distributes scarcity, but he does concede that the question must be asked whether resource management also has a psychological, spiritual, and political side.

There are certain resources that are essential to human survival, such as water, air, and more. Within the pursuits of ensuring that we all have the resources required for our survival and that of the environment at large, sustainable resource management concerns itself with promoting the rational use of these resources – water, air, soil, induction of recycling measures and waste management, abolition of harmful methods, careful use of alternative resources, and preservation of biodiversity. Eco-friendly trade practices ensure that all trade does not impoverish instead of enriching, that it is prone to be ephemeral. This could be brought about by an ecological tax, which forms part of the pricing mechanism. The market system should reflect reality. Sustainable practices require recognition of the fact that many demographic, social, and economic transitions are determined by environmental processes. Traders mobilize resources and deliver them to produce economic possibilities, and it is therefore the task of the economic system to determine which of the potential possibilities should be developed and which abandoned.

5. Emerging Technologies for Environmental Protection

To develop or to use an environmental technology, individuals, industries, and governments incur costs. These costs can be quite high, yet it may be dangerous to skip the use of some technologies because their development was considered too costly. At the same time, pressing forward with technologies before problems are identified can be very dangerous – like the Irish sleeping on their feather mattresses while their children were dying of the famine’s fever. But while environmental technologies and their implementation can be very costly, environmental protection technologies often lead to cost less in the long run. Indeed, many environmental protection technologies turn out to be cost savers and therefore pay for themselves. Those which do not carry their own water will lead to performance improvements, either immediate or distant, that will promote the overall environmental quality of the earth’s surface. In the long run, this is what environmental protection is all about.

Technology and progress are a good thing, but society should be wary of any new technology that comes down the pike. New technologies are traditionally greeted with cries of joy, greed, and suspicion. Ever since the Talmud prohibited the lending of money at interest, revolutionary and potentially harmful technologies have always coexisted with more evolutionary and less harmful ones. Yet in all of this crowing and moaning, the pros of new technologies are often understated. Society needs to realize the essential importance of how research and development have become a key part in the work of any government and their agencies interested in successfully addressing societal and environmental problems. These characteristics of new technologies need to be taken into account when government, research and development agencies, and the general public are deciding how to support and evaluate environmental technology development (ETD) efforts.