Environmental Treats Essay Research Paper Contemporary IssuesEnvironmental

Environmental Treats Essay, Research Paper

Contemporary Issues

Environmental threats

Overpopulation

Every 20 minutes, the world adds another 3,500 human lives but loses one or more entire species of animal or plant life – at least 27,000 species per year. ZGP July 1999

World population growth peaked at about two percent per year in the early 1960s. Latest population figures indicate that the rate of growth has slowed to 1.33 percent annually, equivalent to 78 million people a year. UNFPA 1999

The highest world population growth rate was 2.04 percent in the late 1960’s. This year, it is about 1.31 percent. NY Times

World population growth is equivalent to around three babies every second. UNFPA ‘99

New inhabitants add the equivalent of a city the size of San Francisco to world population every three day

The world population is growing fast and the effects of this are

· food shortages

· exhaustion of farm land and soil erosion

· insufficient power supplies

· social un-rest and war

· immense pressure on welfare system and national benefits

· crime due to lack of space and jobs

The world in the future will be able to support less NOT more people this is due to carefully farmed areas losing there top-soil (the cause is over farming), but the world needs more and not less food so larger fields are required but these large fields allow soil and wind erosion to happen more quickly. Fertilisers only speed up this erosion e.g. America (Arizona) land is useless and dusty because of the chemicals poisoning the land. Also in places such as Egypt where the water supply is irrigated from underground water supplies, the water contains mineral salts, which will slowly poison the land.

We can say that overpopulation can effect the police in a dramatic way, as the ratio between a police officer and the public is increasing. This can effect the police officers productivity and effectiveness in dealing with crime. We can say that Public services in general are under-funded, this in part can be blamed on the amount of people not paying tax (asylum seeker’s, unemployed, O.A.P’s). I.e. as science grows so do length of years people live as dose the funding which is required to keep these people (pension, benefits) which could be spent on Public services.

The Police Federation’s research found:

London has 25,121 officers, one for every 290 citizens,

New York has 45,535 – one for every 161 citizens.

Berlin has 27,298 police officers – one for every 124 of the city’s population.

Sheffield, with a population of more than 500,000, has 972 officers, one per 545 citizens.

In Greater Manchester there are 6,851 officers, one for every 376 citizens.

Citizens per police officer: -

Berlin: 124

New York: 161

London: 290

Manchester: 376

Sheffield: 545

At the end of September 2000, there were 124,614 police officers in England and Wales.

Although this was a 0.4% increase on six months earlier, there were still about 2,500 fewer police officers than when Labour came to power in 1997.

In 1999, after sticking to two years of Conservative spending plans, the government pledged to fund additional 5,000 officers on top of normal recruitment.

But while the government says that it has now pledged enough cash to deal with the backlog, officers themselves have spoken of a morale crisis in the nations’ police stations. Gordon Brown released 24m specifically to boost recruiting. Coupled with the first national advertising campaign for the police – launched in August 2000 – this extra cash has seen the downturn in recruiting halted.

Millions of pounds are being wasted on ineffective training for police officers

The total annual cost of training the 200,000 police service staff by the 43 forces and seven National Police Training centres in England and Wales is up to 400m. The Chartered Institute of Public Finances & Accountancy (CIPFA) claims that the cost of training is 88 per day per police officer.

Pollution

Pollution is an environmental threat, which comes from energy making of non-renewable, sources i.e. coal, oil, and gas

Coal:

· Is used by power stations to create energy by steam turbines, only about 30% of the energy produced is used as the rest is wasted in the cooling of the engine.

· These stations produce coX and other greenhouse gases, which are adding to global warming

· The coal can be mined by a method of open-cast mining, this can ruin large areas of farmland (even after the open cast mine has been filled in) it will take 20 years for the land to recover

· When coal is burnt there is a lot of sulphur produced as waste, sulphur causes acid rain and it is a harmful pollutant

Oil:

· Oil causes ‘greenhouse gases’ sulphur dioxide is made

· Drilling for the oil damages the environment

· Transporting oil is dangerous as there has been many reported spills and oil slicks, which are extremely dangerous to wildlife

Gas:

· Contain valuable chemical and its wasteful to just burn them

· Danger of explosion ( Piper Alpha 1988 in north sea killed 167)