: Environmental technology

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The development of many modern machines has led to air pollution. this leads to poor air

quality.

Positives

 Better technology can helps us study and better understand how we are affecting

the environment.

Negatives

 Advancements in things that require fossil fuels reduces the amount we have, and

if burned, emits carbon dioxide into the air.

 Advancements in other exploitation techniques can also get rid of things such as

forests, aquifers, and other natural resources that we need.

Technology such as the invention of vehicles, air-conditioning and other advanced gadgets

have caused air pollution. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are released into the

air, causing global warming. Industrialization have also contributed to much of these.

[edit] Environment

Main article: Environmental technology

Technology provides an understanding, and an appreciation for the world around us.

Most modern technological processes produce unwanted byproducts in addition to the

desired products, which is known as industrial waste and pollution. While most material

waste is re-used in the industrial process, many forms are released into the environment,

with negative environmental side effects, such as pollution and lack of sustainability.

Different social and political systems establish different balances between the value they

place on additional goods versus the disvalues of waste products and pollution. Some

technologies are designed specifically with the environment in mind, but most are designed

first for economic or ergonomic effects. Historically, the value of a clean environment and

more efficient productive processes has been the result of an increase in the wealth of

society, because once people are able to provide for their basic needs, they are able to focus

on less-tangible goods such as clean air and water.

The effects of technology on the environment are both obvious and subtle. The more

obvious effects include the depletion of nonrenewable natural resources (such as

petroleum, coal, ores), and the added pollution of air, water, and land. The more subtle

effects include debates over long-term effects (e.g., global warming, deforestation, natural

habitat destruction, coastal wetland loss.)

Each wave of technology creates a set of waste previously unknown by humans: toxic

waste, radioactive waste, electronic waste.

One of the main problems is the lack of an effective way to remove these pollutants on a

large scale expediently. In nature, organisms "recycle" the wastes of other organisms, for

example, plants produce oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis, oxygen-breathing

organisms use oxygen to metabolize food, producing carbon dioxide as a by-product,

which plants use in a process to make sugar, with oxygen as a waste in the first place. No

such mechanism exists for the removal of technological wastes.

Humanity at the moment may be compared to a colony of bacteria in a Petri dish with a

constant food supply: with no way to remove the wastes of their metabolism, the bacteria

eventually poison themselves.

[edit] Government

Individuals rely on governmental assistance to control the side effects and negative

consequences of technology.

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The development of many modern machines has led to air pollution. this leads to poor air quality. Positives Better technology can helps us study and better understand how we are affecting the environment. Negatives Advancements in things that require fossil fuels reduces the amount we have, and if burned, emits carbon dioxide into the air. Advancements in other exploitation techniques can also get rid of things such as forests, aquifers, and other natural resources that we need. Technology such as the invention of vehicles, air-conditioning and other advanced gadgets have caused air p ...
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