ABSTRACT
People cannot help but change their environment. It is a characteristic we share will all other species. Change comes about because we need to acquire energy and materials to live, and these activities have an inevitable consequence for the environment. What sets us apart from all other organisms, however, is the scale and speed of the changes that we have initiated. There are few places on the Earth today that do not bear some trace of human activity. The impacts of modern lifestyles can now be seen by environmental changes going on at local, national and global scales.
