The Earth is a living organism in which any processes constantly occur, leading to gradual or instantaneous changes in the biosphere, evolutionary rearrangements. With the advent and development of mankind, the negative impact of people on the biosphere has become global. There is no longer any place on Earth where there would be no human traces, and this leads to the fact that the structure, composition and resources of the planet are changing. There are practically no self-regulating ecosystems left that would preserve full life activity in the general balance of the biosphere. And this is not only the death of individual living organisms, but also entire ecosystems, even a violation of the biotic circulation of substances. All this leads to environmental crises and disasters.
Terminology
An environmental crisis is a negative and sustainable environmental change that poses a potential threat to human health.
An environmental disaster is not always the result of a direct human impact on nature. But the catastrophe is characterized not only by economic problems, but also by the mass death of people and animals.
What are the differences between an environmental disaster and an environmental crisis? Crisis is a reversible process. If humanity takes action in time, then the environment can return to its original state. A catastrophe is an irreversible process in which people can only be passive “spectators” or an injured party.
There is a classification of environmental crises and disasters. A crisis may be territorial, federal, local, regional, global or cross-border. Disasters are global and local. When talking about the global type of disaster, we are talking about a hypothetical incident in which the entire biosphere will suffer.
Ecological crisis and causes
The main cause of ecosystem crises is the lack of limits on material desires of a person with limited opportunities to meet these needs. Some 20-30 years ago, no one had heard the word “ecology”, only so-called philosophers spoke about environmental problems, but their “cry” was not taken seriously.
A little later it became clear that huge landfills with garbage, dirty water and air have already become a global problem. It turned out that all spheres of the planet were in danger.
The main causes of the crisis:
- Overpopulation. It is an amazing fact that at the beginning of the 19th century there were only 1 billion people on the planet, by 1987 the population had grown to 5 billion, and the last 6 billion appeared on Earth in just 12 years.
- The economic component. Almost every country is trying to save on wastewater treatment plants, nature, ruthlessly cutting down trees and removing mineral resources from the ground.
- Scientific and technical progress. It would seem that new technologies should stand on the protection of natural resources. In fact, not a single production, even the most modern, is 100% selective. That is, in the production process there is a huge amount of waste, the disposal of which requires serious investment.
- Low morality and culture of the population. Environmental crises and disasters go hand in hand, and each individual is responsible for their occurrence. Very often you can see how in the clear clear water of a stream or a river a driver washes a car, and old tires are burned near auto repair shops. Until every inhabitant of the planet becomes responsible for their actions, the ecological situation on the planet will not improve.
First crisis
We examined the differences between the environmental crisis and disaster. It is believed that the first such phenomenon occurred at the end of the early Paleolithic, when a person learned to make fire. In addition, human beings spread all over the planet too quickly. In history, there are no more such examples of such a rapid and massive spread of a biological species throughout the planet, especially a species that consumes natural resources.
In support of this theory, one can cite the stories of a seafarer from Holland - Tasman A. Ya. When he arrived on the shores of Tasmania, he was amazed how many bonfires were in the area with which the local natives rebuilt the landscape. Because of this, in a short period of time, the soil structure, vegetation and even climate have changed on the island. In other regions, the cause of landscape changes was primitive agriculture.
Second crisis
Second in the list of examples of environmental crises and environmental disasters is the so-called consumer crisis. During this period, large vertebrate representatives of the fauna began to disappear. It was people who began to barbarously destroy animals. And the theory can be confirmed by multiple excavations, on which giant clusters of bones were found.
In the same period, in some regions, deforestation and the formation of arable land led to the death of the vegetation that the animals fed on.
Third and fourth
The third crisis was associated with salinization of the soil (about 3-4 thousand years ago).
The fourth was marked by mass destruction of forests. This was facilitated by geographical discoveries. If forests began to be destroyed in Asia, then over time this tendency appeared in Europe, the Mediterranean and in other parts of the world. At the same time, new arable land was not highly productive, so they were abandoned and developed new territories. Although this became a kind of impetus for humanity to move from the appropriating to the producing economy.
It is rather difficult to distinguish between the concepts of ecological crisis and catastrophe in the last two examples. For example, the same Losev K. S. claims that deforestation was local in nature, other scientists refute his version.
Effects
How the environmental crisis differs from the environmental disaster is already clear, but what can the next crisis lead to, and are we not standing on its threshold?
Most chemical compounds, alloys and metals are unknown in nature in their pure form, and their complete utilization is almost impossible, therefore they accumulate in the atmosphere. The invention was aggravated by the invention of synthetic fibers and plastics, which decompose for centuries, causing irreparable damage to the environment.
It has now become clear that the human body was defenseless against scientific and technological progress. People living in large cities suffer from chronic diseases of the upper respiratory tract. In children, genetic mutations are manifested, for example, babies are already born, who are called "yellow children" - this is congenital jaundice.
The terrifying consequences can be talked about forever, this is an increased noise load in big cities, an increase in radiation levels, exhaustion of minerals and so on. Although most of the consequences of urbanization and scientific and technical progress are difficult to fully assess.
Ecological catastrophy
This phenomenon is not always directly related to human actions, but can lead to mass deaths of people or other adverse consequences. A global catastrophe is considered as a hypothetical phenomenon, for example, “Nuclear winter”. However, it is already known that previously there were natural disasters.
Oxygen revolution
It is believed that the oxygen catastrophe occurred about 2.45 billion years ago, when the Proterozoic era was just beginning. As a result, there was a general change in the atmosphere; it passed from the reductive stage to the oxidizing one. This theory was put forward based on a study of the nature of sedimentation. Although to date it has not been possible to establish the initial composition of the atmosphere, it is believed that at that time it consisted of hydrogen sulfide, methane, carbon dioxide and ammonia. In short, the environmental crisis and catastrophe at that time occurred against the background of the extinction of volcanoes and as a result there was a change in the chemical composition of water in the oceans. As a result, the greenhouse effect decreased, the ozone layer appeared, and the era of the Huron glaciation began.
"Snow Earth"
This is also a hypothesis about the environmental crisis and disaster. Many scientists are of the opinion that planet Earth has been completely covered with ice more than once, and the last time glaciation occurred 635 million years ago. Other scientists question this theory, as they are sure that there was no such a powerful greenhouse effect that would melt all the ice.
The question of whether the Earth was completely covered with ice remains open, and not one of the scientists was able to completely refute or prove this theory.
Limnological disaster
In this case, the concept of ecological crisis and ecological catastrophe comes down to the fact that there is a powerful release of carbon dioxide from the bowels of the earth (reservoir), which is fatal to humans and representatives of the flora. Such a phenomenon may occur amid other disasters or crises.
A striking example of such a disaster are the events of 1984 and 1986 that occurred in Cameroon. For the first time, carbon dioxide emissions from Lake Manun claimed 37 lives, and two years later 1746 people died on Lake Nyos.
A similar phenomenon can occur not only in Cameroon reservoirs, but also in the Black Sea, on Lake Masu in Japan, Lake Paven (France), Lake Chivu (Africa) and in a number of other regions.
This type of disaster can occur against the background of:
- igneous origin;
- biogenic origin;
- technogenic, that is, a consequence of the leakage of previously injected carbon dioxide into deep geological formations for storage.
It is technogenic origin that gives the right to call such a phenomenon not only a catastrophe, but also a crisis.
Volcanic eruptions
The concept of “supervolcano” does not exist in science, however, it is assumed that the eruption of such a volcano will lead to changes in the climate on Earth, its strength will exceed 8 points on the VEI scale. Today, scientists are aware of the existence of 20 supervolcanoes on the planet. The eruption of such a volcano occurs only once every 100 thousand years. It is believed that the last such grandiose eruption occurred 27, 000 years ago. The eruption was in New Zealand, as a result of which Lake Taupo appeared. Then about 11700 cubic kilometers of ash and about 3 billion tons of sulfur dioxide were released into the atmosphere. At the end of the eruption, sulphate rain fell for 6 years, which caused the extinction of vegetation and wildlife.
At the same time, the Yellowstone Super Volcano erupted only 2 times over 1 million years. Therefore, it is rather difficult to predict when the eruption will be and what exactly it will be. But it is clear that the consequences of such a catastrophe will be terrifying. A lot depends on where the volcano is, on land or in water.
Technological disasters
Considering the issue of environmental crises and disasters, preventing their occurrence, we should never forget about the technological disasters that humanity has already faced.
The most striking example is the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (1986). This disaster is regarded as the largest since the existence of nuclear energy. Then 134 people died, about 115 thousand were evacuated. And more than 600 thousand people were thrown to eliminate the consequences. It is hard to imagine how many people actually suffered from radiation sickness. According to the most conservative estimates, at least 4 thousand people died from the rescuers in the future.
Radioactive materials were spread by wind to vast territories, then not only Ukraine but also Belarus and Russia suffered.
Another striking example of an environmental crisis and disaster is a man-made accident at the Bhopal Chemical Plant. On the day when everything happened, 3 thousand people died, in the future the consequences of the accident claimed 15 thousand more lives. According to some reports, in the following years, another 150 to 600 thousand people died.
To date, and the accident occurred in 1984, the exact cause of the disaster has not been established. One version says that safety regulations have been violated.
Another catastrophe that continues to this day is a decline in the level of the Aral Sea. It is believed that a whole combination of biological, environmental, social and climatic phenomena led to such terrifying consequences. Once it was the fourth largest lake in the world, the drying process began in the 1960s. At that time, the waters of the sea used for irrigation of land and water for settlements of three whole republics: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
In 1989, the lake was divided into two smaller reservoirs, and in 2003 the total area decreased to a quarter. By 2000, the level decreased by 22 meters from the original. And already in 2014, one of the parts (Vostochnaya) completely dried up, now the pool is periodically replenished with water, the highest level indicators are recorded in 2017.
