Dependence of man on the environment

The environment mainly consists of the earth and its surroundings which include the atmosphere. The life of man here on earth completely depends on the natural environment for its existence. It is from the environment that man ultimately obtains food or cash. Actually seventy percent of the earth’s surface is covered by water but due to man’s activities; both domestic and industrial, most of this water is polluted. Actually it is true that out of all this waters covering the earth’s surface only 0.02% of this water is fresh. So as to control the impacts of water pollution which are hazardous to both human and marine life; several world environmental bodies have come up with lawfully regulated water quality laws based on its desired use. Changing the water sources designated purpose affects the allowed pollution levels in various ways. First one has to reason about the divergence between water for human consumption and water meant for agricultural usage such as irrigation or industrial utilization. This various water uses will require variable water quality standards. Water quality is observed by the water characteristics which may be biological, physical or even biological. Most frequently there are set reference of standards to assess the compliance of the water. The most used standards to determine water quality relate to water used for domestic purposes such as drinking and cooking, wellbeing of humans who get in touch with it and the safety of the marine life. A person contributes to water pollution when you flush a toilet, pour dirty water down the sink you are using water which has to be purified in a water treatment plant. Many countries do not have water treatment plants and merely pump the raw waste into the rivers or sea. Also agricultural runoff water which contains high amounts of washed off pesticides and fertilizer enter the rivers and streams resulting to pollution and distressing the local plant and marine wildlife.

There are numerous benefits of the wind energy. First wind energy is clean and wind turbines generate electricity that does not release pollutants as compared to other energy sources. This means less environmental pollution thus combating with occurrence of environmental hazards such as acid rain and smog amongst others. Power plants contribute to air pollution by emitting a large amount of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides and sulphur dioxide resulting to global warming- this can be avoided by utilizing wind energy. In addition wind energy is renewable and has the less competitive cost as compared to the other sources such as natural gas. Also wind is readily available and it is in abundance thus it will not result to exhaustion of natural resources in the world. Moreover wind energy plants have a short construction period, involve minimal maintenance and require low operating costs as compared to the traditional power sources. Lastly wind power plants are very reliable as they generate electricity all the time and are not affected by international conflicts making it defiant to supply troubles or price fluctuations (Global Wind report, 2008).

In spite of this many pros about wind energy; it also has got some cons. The main disadvantage of the wind energy is the winds unpredictability factor. This is caused by the occurrence of too low wind strengths which cannot support the wind turbines. Also wind turbines generally produce less electricity thus requiring the construction of numerous turbines so as to generate an impact which leads to more initial capital cost. The wind turbines can be a source of noise pollution if they happen to be established close to residential areas. Thus there you got for yourself the pros and cons of wind energy and the extensive steadfastness of wind turbines (Clean energy ideas, 2008)

REFERENCES

Clean energy ideas, 2008; ‘Energy articles- Solar, Wind and Geothermal,’ Retrieved May 25, 2010

From http://www.clean-energy-ideas.com/articles/

Global Wind Report, 2008; ‘Adapted from information provided by the American Wind Energy Association’, Retrieved May 25, 2010

From http://www.nrgsystems.com/AboutWind/BenefitsofWindEnergy.aspx