How Does Technology Affect The Environment?
Hi everyone, my name, is Alan Jeong, and today I will be talking about how has technology affected the environment ever since human existed on this planet, we have always created some kind of technology that can help us with our daily tasks or improve our life quality. However, just in the past 200 years or so, technology has been developing at a faster pace than ever seen before, and new technological innovations are being introduced every single day. So how does this technology affect our environment? Okay, let's talk about the negatives first. First, off pollution is obviously a very big factor, since there are more and more technological products on the market. There is a great demand for them. As a result, factories work day and night, so they can produce more products in gain profit. However, factories are powered by burning coal or fossil fuels, so many harmful gases are being emitted into the air. In addition to that, harmful materials or waste, my leak from the factories into nearby waterways, causing water pollution and the water may get absorbed by the ground, causing soil pollution and so on. People are also clearing forests, so they can build more factories because of this more and more plants and animals are dying. Some species even becoming extinct because their natural habitat is being taken away from them. Last but not least, the air pollution caused by factories are getting worse and worse, especially in regions like China, speaking of air pollution. Let'S talk about global warming transportation devices such as cars and planes are causing great harm to the environment. They operate by burning fuels from made from crude oil or petroleum, and the emitted gas from the burning process is not good for the environment. One interesting thing I saw on the internet the other day is someone saying that people are actually traveling more and more without the actual need of doing so due to the technology available. This makes a lot of sense because imagine if you're in the past - and you have to ride your horse everywhere, you go, you would definitely go out less because it takes away more energy and effort chances. Are you won't go on commercial trips to other countries? On your horse, anyways, all these harmful emitted gas into the air is causing global warming. https://diamondpokemon.com/how-to-reset-pokemon-sun/ are melting everywhere and the water level is rising. Some people even argue that Venice will be completely flooded within a hundred years. Now I will tell you something about electricity. You go on the streets every day and all you can see is people using their smartphones or their laptops. Let me ask you a question: have you ever thought about how electricity is made and this the process harmed the environment? Well, electricity is generated and large power stations by large turbine engines, which are mainly powered by burning coal, oil or gas. This is just like any of the previous two problems and, needless to say, it emits harmful gases into our blue sky. However, there are new ways of addressing this issue by using science, more and more turbine engines are being powered by wind or solar energy. Let'S take a look at the structure of a wind turbine. It operates in the fashion opposite fashion of a fan instead of using electricity to generate wind, it uses when to generate electricity. The wind moves, those three blades which are connected to a rotor and spins it to generate electricity. Lastly, more and more wastes are being produced due to the speed of the development of new technologies. Outdated technology are always thrown away, however, when they are not disposed correctly, they can cause a lot of harm to the environment. For example, contemporary compact Florence can't light bulbs contain mercury which is harmful and toxic to living things. Also, other technological devices, such as your old phone, might end up in the dump and be washed by ring water, which will wash all the toxic materials off the phone that liquid will leak under the ground and spread to waterways. So next time make sure you don't just throw your way your outdated or broken technology into a normal trashcan enough of the negatives. Let'S talk about the positives now, one of the obvious positives is paperless communication. Nowadays, when you try to contact someone, you can simply shoot them a text or send them an email. Also, there are more and more e-books online, so less books made of paper are being produced. The result of this is great: less trees are being cut down and trees, give us fresh oxygen. New technologies allow scientists to monitor and study the environment better. This may help in the long term, because it makes it easier for them to come up with ways of improving the current condition. Also, the Internet allows us to spread awareness and knowledge about the environment to the public, so people can take actions to protect it. To sum up, technology definitely makes life easier for everyone, there's no doubt that it will have a huge impact on the environment and it's up to our decisions, whether to make that impact a positive one or a negative one. Thank you for watching you