Environmental Studies - Essay Example

We shall look at the influences that science has made in the energy sector, climate change and agriculture among others. In the scientific world, agriculture is a more recent human activity that humans experimented. Human beings were originally hunters and gatherers who survived by killing wild animals in the jungle. Then agriculture was accidentally discovered through man’s scientific exploration. Man began cultivating land in order to get food. Studies have shown that hunters and gatherers were more healthy, well nourished than the latter farmers.

In fact, agriculture did not improve the lives of humans and the skeletal evidence revealed that hunters and gatherers were healthier than the farmers were. Agriculture needed vast amounts of land for cultivation, and this led to the destruction of forests and animal’s natural habitat. The energy threshold of plants then decreased as most natural vegetation was destroyed and cleared to make way for cultivation. This interfered with the natural energy cycle since animals get energy from plants, which in turn obtain the necessary energy from the sun for photosynthesis.

Most of the percentage of the world’s energy relies on plants. If plants are destroyed, the energy needed by most organisms is decreased, and this can have devastating effects. This causes animals to face extinction as the energy cycle is affected by man’s activity, which in this case is agriculture, a scientific invention. Therefore, there is evidence that as much as science has helped the environment, it also hurts the same environment by altering nature’s normal activities (Rees, web).

The clearing of natural vegetation gives way to soil erosion. In today’s world, oil is the only form of energy that humans have resulted to use. It is interestingly hilarious that man secures oil more than food. This is because energy is vital for most activities and oil is the usual form of energy used to meet the demands of man. Research in America has shown that for every 2.3 calories of food energy produced there is a calorie of fossil energy used (Manning, web). This is devastating to the human life because as more oil is used to produce food energy that is required by a growing population, levels of pollution in the environment continue to increase.

All this is attributed to science inventions among other factors such as population growth and industrialization. The more industrialized we get, the more scientific inventions are discovered which continue to damage the environment in an attempt to meet the needs of man. In the 20th century, engine fueled cars dominated the roads which made transportation and communication easy. However, these advancements usually have a negative impact on the environment. For example, the greenhouse effect is caused by emission of gases into the atmosphere, which comes from combustion of fossil fuels and oil.

Scientific advancements in chemistry have also had a profound effect on man (Griffith, web). For example, in the cultivation of wheat in leading countries, fertilizers containing nitrogenous compounds are used to speed up the growth and maturity of wheat. However, studies show that these chemical compounds have adverse effects on human health. A research carried out showed that a child born in rural places producing wheat based on nitrogenous chemicals has high chances of suffering birth related defects compared to a child born where wheat is not