Human impact on the environment is taking on global proportions. The anthropogenic factor is becoming the leading one, and without taking it into account, it is impossible to understand and assess what else will happen to our common home. The level of human influence on the environment also determines how altered nature affects the further development of our society.
According to a geographical scientist who has been dealing with the interaction between man and nature for many years, there are three basic laws of the geosphere with which man simply cannot ignore:
The law of the interdependence of the development of individual elements of the geosphere.
The law of increasing human impact on the natural environment.
The law of increasing dependence of man on the natural environment.
The more we influence nature, the more it responds to us. And in most cases the answer is very far from being favorable: the ecological situation is worsening, natural disasters occur more often. The fate of further human development depends on how quickly the contradictions between the limited possibilities of our biosphere and the aggressive development of society will be resolved.
On the role of nature in human life…
At different times and in different cultures the concept of the role and significance of the surrounding world for man has varied considerably. During antiquity, nature was viewed as a mobile, constantly changing whole, yet regular, organized and perfect. Man in ancient philosophy was not opposed to nature, but rather was one of its parts. Life in harmony with nature was considered an ideal.
Medieval Western Christian culture, however, acquired a very different understanding of nature. Man in Christianity is the pinnacle of divine creation, endowed with a soul, and the whole world around him stands immeasurably below. Often nature was even understood as the source of evil to be subdued.
During the Renaissance, the attitude toward nature changes again. Man discovers its beauty, sees in it a source of joy and pleasure. Not without reason in this period of time there are so many great works of art, glorifying the beauty of the world around us.
And yet, if we face it, in one way or another, a consumerist and arrogant attitude toward nature has prevailed. Man perceived himself as the crown of creation, which allowed him to consider nature only as an object of his activity, remaking and reshaping it according to his needs.
At the dawn of civilization, in the era of hunting and gathering, man was completely dependent on the external environment. He could survive only by appropriating ready-made products given to him by nature: fruits, berries, meat and animal skins. Nature determined all the features of primitive life: the rate of growth of the number of community members, the nature of occupations, and the need to migrate to new places.
At the emergence of farming and cattle breeding, there was a transition from a consumerist economy to a productive one. Man learned to influence the nature: to cut down forests for crops, to build irrigation systems.
However, at that time human activity was still very much dependent on weather conditions, terrain, and soil type. For example, agriculture was mainly practiced in those countries where there were fertile soils – in the valleys of the Nile, Ganges, and Yangtze. In the steppe regions with a sharply continental climate cattle breeding was preferred.
A new stage in the relationship between nature and man came with the beginning of the industrial revolution. Rapidly advancing scientific and technological progress, combined with the same idea of human superiority and the need to take as much as possible from nature, eventually led to what we have now. Mankind is on the verge of ecological disaster.
And we, like all other living beings on the planet, are still inseparable from the biosphere. The framework of the natural environment within which we can exist is quite narrow. We need a certain temperature of the air, sunlight, the composition of the atmosphere, soil and water – exactly the ecological environment in which evolution has taken place throughout our history. Yes, humans are able to adapt to new environments. But only to a certain extent. And the speed of such adaptation is not very fast. As practice shows, destructive changes in the natural environment are much faster, which means that if we do not stop these changes, mankind will face hard times.