Environment - Definition and meaning

Word "environment" is most commonly used describing "natural" environment and means the sum of all living and non-living things that surround an organism, or group of organisms. Environment includes all elements, factors , and conditions that have some impact on growth and development of certain organism. Environment includes both biotic and abiotic factors that have influence on observed organism. Abiotic factors such as light, temperature, water, atmospheric gases combine with biotic factors (all surrounding living species). Environment often changes after some time and therefore many organisms have ability to adapt to these changes. However tolerance range is not the same with all species and exposure to environmental conditions at the limit of an certain organism's tolerance range represents environmental stress.

Environmentalism is very important political and social movement with goal to protect nature environment by emphasizing importance of nature role in protection of the environment in combination with various actions and policies oriented to nature preservation. Environmentalism is movement connected with environmental scientists and many of their goals. Some of these goals include:
1. to reduce world consumption of fossil fuels
2. to reduce and clean up all sorts of pollution (air, sea, river...) with future goal of zero pollution
3. emphasis on clean, alternative energy sources that have low carbon emissions
4. sustainable use of water, land, and other scarce resources
5. preservation of existing endangered species
6. protection of biodiversity

Future of our planet lies in our hands

First goal reducing the world consumption of fossil fuels is very important to fight against climate change and global warming phenomenon. Fossil (non renewable) fuels are mainly responsible for global warming as during the combustion of fossil fuels carbon dioxide (one of the greenhouse gases) gets released into the atmosphere. In fact reducing the emission of carbon dioxide is the most important thing if we want to successfully fight global warming.
Reducing and cleaning up pollution is also very important task. Every day we hear the news about tremendous pollution of our air, seas, rivers. Pollution creates unhealthy environment, and often causes many health problems and different diseases. Third goal is very obvious. World needs a lot of energy and if we want to reduce the use of fossil fuels then we should have some other alternative energy sources to satisfy world energetic needs. These alternative energy sources such as wind energy, solar power and hydroenergy, have all great potential, and are also ecologically acceptable. However their use is still negligent on global scale and fossil fuels are still dominant energy sources. Water is precious but also scarce resource that needs to be preserved for future generations. Sustainable use of water, land and other resources is therefore vital to enable future life of our planet. The number of endangered species is lately increasing rapidly and many species have become extinct in the last 50 years or so. Preservation of endangered species is important to save number of ecosystems and to protect biodiversity of our planet. Biodiversity is very important in enabling the life on earth since all species are connected in perfectly balanced circle, each with their very own role. Humans are not owners of this circle but only one small part that needs even the smallest parts of this circle for its proper functioning. However we seem to be forgetting this more often than not.
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