Environmental Crisis: Industrialization, Resources, and Sustainability

This discussion post addresses the environmental crisis, emphasizing the negative impacts of industrialization and the consumption of fossil fuels, particularly in countries like China. It highlights the degradation of the environment and the need for sustainable practices. The post explores the role of developed nations in driving innovation and investment in clean energy, as well as the importance of enforcing environmental laws. It also examines the scarcity of non-renewable resources such as water, coal, oil, and natural gas. The post then outlines three sustainability models: the 3-legged stool model, the 3-overlapping circles model, and the 3-nested dependencies model, which are crucial for addressing environmental challenges and ensuring a balanced approach to economic, environmental, and social factors. References to relevant academic sources are also included.

Running Head: ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS AND WAYS TO SOLVE THE ISSUE
ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS AND WAYS TO SOLVE THE ISSUE
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ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS AND WAYS TO SOLVE THE ISSUE
Discussion 2:
The onset of industrialization brought about a massive change not only on the global
economic platform but also impacted the environmental conditions and to be more precise
negatively affected the surrounding bringing about unpredictable climate changes and
unacceptable environmental crisis. For instance if considering the industrial developments of
China, the second-largest economy in the world its humongous consumption of fossil fuel has
led to severe human and environmental harm, polluting the soil, water, and overall degrading the
quality of human life(Hite and Seitz, 2016).
Developed nations do have the potential to bring in significant changes. The innovations
and experimentations require expert views, high financial and infrastructural support (Lynch
and Stretesky, 2013) which is easily available in a developed nation.
Thus in case of China the country has responded to the call of preserving the environment
with its praise worthy step of cutting down the consumption of fossil fuels by leaps and
bounds. Moreover the country has taken several steps to reinforce environmental laws that
would lead to high financial investments on clean energy creating up to 10 million green jobs
(Wamsler,Brink and Rivera,2013.) in the process. Countries like Australia, Brazil and Canada
have emphasized on limiting their harmful industrial emission, keeping a tight check on
negative practices like deforestation and boosting the practice of using renewable sources on
energy.

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ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS AND WAYS TO SOLVE THE ISSUE
Discussion 3:
Non-renewable natural resources are those elements of nature which cannot be readily
replaced by nature itself, thus over consumption of these resources has led to its increased
scarcity (Hartwick, 2013). The non-renewable natural resources which are mostly at risk
includes: water, which makes up to 70% of earth but sadly only 2.5% of it is fresh water suitable
for human use. According to the data research of The Food and Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations by the year 2025, more than 1.8 billion people will have no water to drink
(Chidumayo and Gumbo, 2013.), next is coal, the most used fossil fuel leading to high rates of
global warming as well. Oil is another non-renewable natural resources facing strict crisis along
with natural gas and phosphorous.
Going by the reports of Brundtland Commission, named Our Common Future,
published in 1987 there can be three sustainability models (McManus, 2014) adapted by the
developed and developing countries to reduce theses environmental crisis. 3-legged stool model
which emphasizes of the most common dimensions of sustainability that is: economic,
environment and the society or the culture. This model reinforces on the aspect that a balance
between these 3 dimensions are very much important to ascertain healthy living, second is the 3-
overlapping circles model which intends to acknowledge the intersection of the economic,
environmental as well as the social factors. However this model tends to precisely indicate that
economy can exist being independent of the existing societal and environmental turbulence
which in turn has been criticized by varied experts throughout these years and finally there is the
3-nested dependencies model which specifically reflects how the human society is completely

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ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS AND WAYS TO SOLVE THE ISSUE
owned and controlled element of the environment and without food, clean drinking water, fresh
air to breath human and the society at large cannot survive

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ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS AND WAYS TO SOLVE THE ISSUE
References:
Chidumayo, E.N. and Gumbo, D.J., 2013. The environmental impacts of charcoal production in
tropical ecosystems of the world: A synthesis. Energy for Sustainable Development, 17(2),
pp.86-94.
Hartwick, J., 2013. Non-renewable resources extraction programs and markets. Routledge.
Hite, K.A. and Seitz, J.L., 2016. Global issues: an introduction. John Wiley & Sons.
Lynch, M.J. and Stretesky, P.B., 2013. Global warming, global crime: A green criminological
perspective. In Global Environmental Harm (pp. 80-102). Willan.
McManus, P., 2014. Defining sustainable development for our common future: a history of the
World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission).
Wamsler, C., Brink, E. and Rivera, C., 2013. Planning for climate change in urban areas: from
theory to practice. Journal of Cleaner Production, 50, pp.68-81.