Nature and scope of environmental problems.

The aim of this article is that engineering and science students can understand the importance of interdisciplinary study that exists to attack the environmental problems that originate in many industrialized processes and our daily life . For all this it is important that we know how to deal with the causes that cause many of the environmental problems we have today, that we understand that these problems must be grounds for study and concern for our current society, and that we study all the ways possible to know how to control.

When we consider how we should improve the environmental quality of our planet, we must focus all our efforts on increasing the well-being of ourselves, that is, improving the conditions for achieving high human well-being. We must understand that the word environment must not only be understood to associate nature, fauna and ecosystems existing on the planet, this whole concept has to transcend and enlarge to take deeper and complementary elements that must also be included within of the environment, social aspects for example are characteristics that should be included in the environment, together with economic and cultural aspects. This type of extension to the environment is unmanageable in many real circumstances, and at the same time impractical in many perceptions that are held within society, where many professionals and even science itself do not know or do not give it due importance.

Image source

How could science and technology intervene in many existing environmental disturbance problems?

Important contributions to improve our environment and lifestyles can be given by science and technology, are clear examples of possible contributions the following:

• The higher production of better quality food, this is a goal that should not be unattainable for science and technology, if we think about our contaminated soils, water scarcity, are sources for the lack of food production. quality for our people, new forms of sanitary landfills with high technology standards to apply with the most advanced science should act both to preserve our soil contamination. The treatment of our waters and effluents must be treated for agricultural crops, recovery of the fauna of our rivers and lakes, all this must be of concern, study and contribution to the science and technology of our era.

• The creation of houses as protection against extreme climates and as a living space, previously mentioned that the environment should not only be considered as the natural elements and the ecosystem that shapes us, but also all those elements that provide us with a sense of well-being, for it is necessary that the technology advance to new forms of construction, where the way to build houses is in accordance with reused natural resources but that the protection against extreme climates is of quality.

• Construction of fast and reliable means of transport, following the same line of human welfare, means of transport such as roads, highways, can provide means for reliable connections exist and where there may be exchanges of goods and services. The engineers of these construction works are in charge of complying with all the legal norms in environmental matters.

With the growth of many of the mentioned points in which science and technology can contribute, there have been collateral disturbing effects such as the loss of cultivable land, disappearance of forests, diversity of contamination in the environment, and organisms resistant to controls.

Let's look at the past, and analyze how men of antiquity lived and developed, it was an agricultural society, people lived fundamentally in harmony with nature, growing food, gathering firewood and making tools with the resources of the earth. The waste of organic origin of animals, humans and plants was returned to the soil as fertilizers for the land. There were few problems of contamination of water, soil and air. It is time to take up many aspects of antiquity, associating them and optimizing them with new forms of technology.

Image source

The changing role of technology.

The technology has wanted to solve many of the environmental problems of today, which have been applied in different ways, the evolution that seeks to have the technology lies in changing fundamentally in two areas:

1. Possess a philosophy where the destructive form of society can be changed towards a form that promotes the protection of the environment and its inhabitants in the long term. All this meaning must be for scientists and engineers a change in their ways of operating their designs and research, apart from seeking efficiency, profitability, productivity must also take into account elements such as human health, environmental protection, conservation of resources and energy, take into account the management of solid waste among other problems.

2. Innovate on the basis of a technology of preventive use, in which it may be attractive for industrial use, but also preventive use of all the elements to be used where pollution effects can be minimized, for this technology and science have to go hand in hand to enter a process of reformulation in their products, seeking to be more compatible with the human being and our nature

Image source