• Question: How bad of a problem is pollution to the nearby future

    Asked by anon-290633 on 28 Mar 2021.
    • Photo: Callum Thomas

      Callum Thomas answered on 17 Mar 2021:

      Pollution can be quite a big problem, especially since there are lots of different kinds of pollution. Air pollution from cars or factories can negatively impact people’s health if they have to breath a lot of it in. Water pollution can kill aquatic animals like fish. Plastic pollution is also a big problem if it gets into the wild and animals accidentally swallow plastic or get trapped by it. This is why it is important for governments to develop environmental laws that try and restrict how much pollution gets out into the environment, and for scientists to constantly monitor things like air quality or water quality so that we know what exactly is going on and to pick up on any problems. That said in many places pollution is not as bad today as it used to be: in the 1950s London’s air was so polluted that people couldn’t even go outside on some days as the air was so full of smoke! Now that there are laws about clean air this problem has been improved a lot. Hopefully by continuing to research pollution levels and to come up with new ways of doing things that reduce pollution, we can reduce the problems we still see today even more in the future.

    • Photo: Chris Waller

      Chris Waller answered on 17 Mar 2021:

      Pollution is a very big problem that affects the entire world. There is basically no place on earth humans haven’t affected in some way, and in some places the damage is rapidly becoming irreversible. That said, people are realising the negative effects we are having on the world and slowly but surely there is a trend towards more environmentally friendly (“green”) practices – restrictions on the production of greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, etc) and a focus on renewable energy technologies (solar, wind, geothermal, etc), electric cars, etc. We still have a long way to go but we are definitely heading in the right direction.

    • Photo: Alba Park de la Torriente

      Alba Park de la Torriente answered on 23 Mar 2021:

      Air pollution, for example, may not be too bad here in the UK and in the rest of Europe, but in lower income countries, pollution is a big problem that can affect the health of people severely. I come from Mexico City, which is one of the most crowded cities in the world, and the air pollution is really bad. But even worse, it seems to be getting worse; and there is no initiative or stimulus for people to switch to more sustainable ways of transportation, for example, like bikes, public transport or electric cars. This is only an example, but many cities in other parts of the world have similar problems.

      There is another type of pollution that affects us all: the one in the oceans. We use a lot of plastic, and much of it end up in the seas; see this link for more information: https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/how-does-plastic-end-ocean
      There are zones in the oceans where tons and tons of plastic accumulate. We should be more conscious of the plastic we use and demand that the products that we consume come in sustainable packaging.

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