ABSTRACT
Humankind consumes what nature has to offer and in return we create waste and deplete the Earth’s natural reserves. All our actions have an impact on the Earth’s ecosystems that are only able to renew themselves at low levels of consumption. For many thousands of years man’s impact on the environment was negligible, however, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution all this changed. We now consume more of the Earth’s resources than the planet can regenerate, hence, the planet is
The objectives for this chapter are:
• To explain the way the activities of mankind are affecting the planet
• To describe the various forms of environmental degradation
• To analyse the reasons for the over-exploitation of water, minerals and oil
• To describe the effects of over-population
• To analyse the relationship between economics, people and the environment
• To define sustainable economics
in ‘ecological overshoot’. Our current consumption levels are simply too high and action needs to be taken soon as the planet’s non-renewable resources are quickly being depleted. This depletion is accelerated by the continuous growth of the world population and its changing consumption patterns.
