Humanity and Its Impact on the Environment
The Impact of Technology on the Environment
By Chris Jeary
Over the last century there has been massive amounts of innovation in technology, and over the years this has caused great harm to our Earth and environment. This includes tons of greenhouse gasses entering our atmosphere, tones of plastics and other harmful contaminates in our seas, oceans and rivers, in India alone “its water bodies are getting toxic. It's estimated that around 70% of surface water in India is unfit for consumption.” [1]
In this blog I am going to talk about technological solutions to benefit the environment.
So, What Technology is Available to Help the Environment?
So, what technology is available to help the environment?
The first and the most obvious is renewable energy technology. Renewable energy is a source of energy that occurs naturally and does not deplete, such as solar, wind, and tidal.
By utilizing environmental technology, we can reduce the greenhouse gases we produce by not using fossil fuels to power our homes.
In 2015 renewable energy overtook coal to become the second-largest producer of energy.[2]
In the past, it has been very expensive to manufacture environmental technologies but from the success of these technologies and the large-scale environmental damage, the government has invested heavily to help with the switch over from fossil fuels to renewable energy and to improve the efficiency and commercialize the technology. [2]
Impact of Technology on Cities
It has recently been noticed that “we generate approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of data” a day, an amount so large that “90% of all the data in the world today has been created in the last two years” [3]
What can we do with all this data?
Barcelona has taken the lead in becoming the world’s first smart cities, assisted by machine learning and artificial intelligence there are “thousands of sensors throughout the city which measure noise levels, waste management and even street parking” and this includes streetlights with LEDs and when the streets are quiet the lights dim, the streetlights also gather data on the air quality. “in 2014, the city estimated an annual savings of over US $37million from intelligent street lighting alone.” [3]
Impact of Technologies on Transport
As we all know the production of EV’s (electric vehicles) is growing, this means by 2035 in the UK “all new cars and vans will be fully zero-emission at the tailpipe” [4]
A big worry about getting a fully electric vehicle now is where am I able to charge it? Well, the UK government are putting “£1.3 billion to accelerate the roll-out of charge points for electric vehicles in homes, streets across the UK and on motorways across England” [4] not only will this bring around 40,000 more jobs to the UK but it’s going to make charging your car as normal as charging your phone, which in turn will reduce air pollution in our towns and cities as we won’t be burning fossil fuels to run our cars.
The British government have said that in 2030 we “will see emissions reduction equivalent to taking more than 4 million cars off the road.”
On the 27th of November 2020, car manufactures from the largest markets, came together and will come up with a plan to help increase the pace of this international transition.
the UK has dedicated 500 million to fund the “Auto Transformation Fund” so we can have the top manufacturing and designs of next-gen zero-emissions transport.[4]
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Impacts of Technologies on Homes.
Renewable energy has changed the way we receive our energy as before we all received electrical energy from the national grid.
As technology has advanced the average home can be altered to generate its energy which can be stored using batteries for later use in the evening or even sometimes sell energy back to the grid with the use of solar panels.
“Solar panels and battery storage are getting cheaper, even cheaper than fossil fuels.” Before 2017 the prices of batteries had fallen by 70% and were expected to drop another 15% by the end of 2017, In Australia, this has crated 28,000 more jobs. [3]
Summary
In summary, it will not be long until we all see huge changes to the way we live, for the good though. In the future we will see smart cities which will be carbon neutral, we will have driverless cars that will be carbon neutral and no fatalities as all cars will be controlled by A.I. This will also result in less time spent in traffic.
References:
[1] World Economic Forum. (2021). ‘Water Pollution is killing millions of Indians. Here’s how technology and reliable data can change that’. Available at:https://www.weforum. org/agenda/2019/10/water-pollution-in-india-data-tech-solution/ (Accessed: 10/03/2021)
[2] Edinburgh Sensors. (2012). ‘The Impact of Technology on the Environment and How Environmental Technology Could Save the Planet’, Available at: https://edinburghsensors .com/news-and-events/impact-of-technology-on-the-environment-and-environmental-technology. (Accessed: 10/03/2021)
[3] WWF. (2017). ‘Can technology Save the planet? A discussion paper by WWF-Australia’, [Online] Sydney, WWF. Available at: https://www.wwf .org.au /ArticleDocuments/360/pub-can-technology-save-the-planet-30may17.pdf.aspx?Embed=Y (Accessed: 10/03/2021)
[4] GOV.UK. (nd.). ‘Government Takes Historic Step Towards Net-zero with End of Sale of New Petrol and Diesel Cars by 2030’, Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government /news/government-takes-historic-step-towards-net-zero-with-end-of-sale-of-new-petrol-and-diesel-cars-by-2030 (Accessed: 10/03/2021)
Image Sources
[1] European Commission. (2020). In focus: Renewable energy in Europe. [image] Available at: <https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/focus-renewable-energy-europe-2020-mar-18_en> (Accessed: 10/03/2021).
[2] Tunza Eco Generation. (2020). Thematic Report: Technology and Environment. [image] Available at: <https://tunza.eco-generation.org/m/view.jsp?board=ourActions&viewID=49020&searchType=&searchName=&pageNumber=136> (Accessed: 10/03/2021).