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Impact of Development on Pollution Damage

That development and pollution go hand in hand cannot be disputed. Whether it is industrial development, housing development and urban sprawl, or implementing new farming techniques, pollution of some kind is inevitable, be it air pollution, water pollution, or soil contamination. Brook (611-617) puts the blame on capitalist corporations which, he says, impose these externalities on people and the environment, while privately collecting the profits of their ventures. Corporations freely dispose of their wastes into the environment at a minimum cost to themselves by shifting the costs to the public and the environment in terms of the damage done by the pollution to people in terms of higher health costs and shorter life expectancies, and to the environment in terms of polluted air and water, deforestation, desertification, soil erosion, global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, and even extinction of some animal species (612).

For more than a decade, sustainable development has been part of public policy debates as to how business and society should interact and function (Dorward-King 51). The chemical industry has been responsible for many advances which have been very beneficial to mankind, but has also brought about many disasters, such as the DDT, which saved many lives from malaria and typhus but also harmed beneficial species and was difficult to eradicate from the environment. Incidents of mercury contamination of local fishing streams in Japan, and the accidental release of a cloud of methyl isocyanate gas in Bhopal, India in 1984, which killed more than 6,400 people, also add to the concerns about the chemical industry and its safety measures. The chemical industry needs to focus on developing safe chemicals which do not pose a threat to people or the environment, while at the same time are energy efficient and enhance human well-being (52).

The recent growth of the city of Atlanta, Georgia is having a signi...

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Impact of Development on Pollution Damage. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 15:41, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1701402.html