Man, technology and the environment

The Homo sapiens, in their current evolved form, have been around on Earth for about 200,000 years. Many advances have taken place since then, with each advance seeming to have had a greater impact on our environment than the previous one. More recently, the use of technology that brought human society an unprecedented level of comfort and material well-being is threatening to destroy our planet, the only one that is in the Goldilocks zone of the solar system.

The negative impacts on the environment caused by our unbridled use of technologies are numerous. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss in detail all the adverse side-effects. Instead, I will focus on perhaps the most significant one—climate change, followed closely by air pollution, water pollution and resource depletion, albeit not necessarily in the same order.