Environment is becoming a topic of discussion among all sections of the society today.  Human communities are conscious of their existence and dependence on environmental assets like land, forest, lakes and rivers. But with the passage of time and especially with urbanisation, human populations began to distance themselves, due to certain compulsions, from the natural environment. This also gave rise to a process of social evolution that continued to occur independently of the environmental impacts. The frills and the trappings of material development that have taken place in the last 200 years are so powerful and engaging that it has virtually kept humanity in yawning isolation.

Environmental pollution is a cumulative output of the entire gamut of human activities that have taken place on earth since man began to clear the forests to settle down and start agriculture. That he was either unconscious or ignorant of how his actions affected the surroundings or the nature around him aided and abetted the inadvertent and gradual degeneration of the environment and the ecology.

The meagre population that the earth had then tolerated the impact of human actions. Judged in this context his actions would be pardonable. But the pity or what is condemnable is that humans commit grave mistakes in the full knowledge that their actions are seriously affecting the environment and endangering the planet on which they are surviving. Why do they do this is a big question.

Indeed our cities produce more pollution than the countryside simply because our cities have everything around and within them; factories, commercial establishments, administrative buildings, hospitals, all kinds of educational institutions, large population, endless lines of automobiles, practically on all roads and a complex network of infrastructural facilities. Our cities have grown at the cost of the environment. We construct uildings and roads by cutting down trees and wiping out lakes.

We run industries and automobiles injecting pollutants in the air. We keep expanding the boundaries of cities asphalting the life-supporting fertile soil. We acquire agricultural lands that sustain our lives and those of our cattle, birds and other creatures and convert these precious lands into concrete jungles of cement and steel and call them Special Economic Zones.

We need to know how the business of economics and commerce runs. Make no mistake that higher returns on any business involves higher consumption of natural resources either directly or indirectly. So a country that is aiming at higher economic growth is certainly putting greater pressure on our limited resources.
In the present circumstances, viewed against the backdrop of globalisation, every other country is trying to become richer that others. But the impact of all these activities is bound to enhance degeneration of the global environment. Hence there is a need to rethink our planning processes; economic policies; social goals and objectives.

With the present economic lifestyles in the advanced countries not showing any signs of slackening and the developing ones fervently trying to catch up with them, the natural resources of this earth may not support the needs of the population for long. More than anything else it is global warming that is looming large which needs to be stalled before it is too late.
(Eco-Watch)