Debates About the ENVIRONMENT After 1900 [AP World History Review, Unit 9 Topic 3] 1900-Present

What was one major effect of the increasing population of the world?

(That naturally means that there's an increased competition for scarce non-renewable resources) Examples: OIL: this is a non-renewable resource but since the Industrial Revolution got people addicted to oil, about half the world's oil has been used up. FRESHWATER: Only 3 percent of the water on Earth is usable by human beings and there has been a rising demand for that 3 percent. Because there are more mouth holes to feed, the majority of fresh water consumption goes towards crops and as the population grows, more water will be needed to feed them. Additionally, many developing nations have the added problem of finding access to clean water for their population.

What is the fifth environmental problem the world was dealing with after 1900?

AN INCREASE IN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE:

What is another big effect of environmental changes after 1900?

CLIMATE CHANGE: with the rise of industrialization factories automobiles airplanes all of these things have been releasing pollutants into the air. The big culprit here is carbon dioxide emissions now co2 and other greenhouse gases are released and then they combine with the atmosphere to prevent the earth's heat from escaping. And this can have potentially disastrous consequences from melting ice caps, rising sea levels further desertification of farmland and on and on, so in order to address this problem much of the world has come together in order to solve it.

What is a third environmental problem the world was dealing with after 1900?

DECLINE IN AIR QUALITY: because of the massive amounts of industrial byproducts being released into the air, there were devastating events like the great smog in London in 1952, in which industrial coal emissions combined with fog to create a poisonous smog that covered the city for five days killing somewhere between ten thousand and twelve thousand people and making about a hundred thousand very ill.

What is one environmental problem the world was dealing with after 1900?

DEFORSTATION: because of the increased need for food in the world that meant that more and more land needed to be devoted to agriculture and if you need more land to plant stuff then you've got to cut all the trees down.

What is a second environmental problem the world was dealing with after 1900?

DESERTIFICATION: this is a process by which fertile land becomes desert-like because of the aforementioned deforestation and other problems like drought and harmful agricultural techniques. And when the land becomes desertified it's not much good for planting crops to feed the world's mouth holes.

What is the learning objective?

Explain the causes and effects of environmental changes in the period 1900 to the present.

What is one cause of these environmental problems?

GLOBALIZATION AND INDUSTRIALIZATION: as industries spread especially among developing nations, more energy resources were in demand and as industrialization spread to these places, the standard of living rose for some especially the newly formed middle class. And with the rise of the middle class and developing nations comes the increased demand for industrial goods which puts further strain on the environment.

What is the fourth environmental problem the world was dealing with after 1900?

INCREASED PRESSURE ON THE WORLD'S FRESH WATER SUPPLY:

What is an example of a solution to climate change?

In 1997, the Kyoto protocol was established which was an international agreement to reduce carbon emissions. And this regulatory burden was placed squarely on developed nations who could afford to spend extra to curb their emissions. Developing nations on the other hand were saddled with far less of a regulatory requirement and conspicuously absent from the signers of the protocol is the united

What is the Paris agreement?

In 2015, along these same lines many nations agreed to the Paris agreement. Its aim was to legally bind member countries to no more than a two percent increase in global temperature compared to previous industrial levels. This time the United States did sign but in 2017 Trump withdrew the united states from the agreement. But the new president Joe Biden is working to rejoin the agreement.

What is the second cause of these environmental problems?

POPULATION GROWTH AND URBANIZATION: in 1900 the world's population was about 1.5 billion. By 2000 was just over 6 billion. And if you got more people that means you got more mouth holes to feed and as mentioned before that scenario puts a strain on our environmental resource. Additionally, by this period the majority of the world's population lived in cities and that has some serious environmental consequences of its own. City dwellers tend to produce a lot more waste than their rural counterparts. Additionally, when people live in cities they are physically separated from the act of food production. Urbanized, just walk into a grocery store and buy all the food that they need and they have no sense of what it takes or the resources required to produce all that food. And that gap in knowledge has a way of increasing demand without respect to the cost of supply.

Who was conspicuously absent from the singers of the protocol?

The United States

The point is this:

The world after 1900 has faced some serious environmental problems and with the global population growing these problems will only continue and so in a globalized world globalized solutions are necessary.