The human race and nature

The environment is surrounding,inwhich people, animals, plants live together.
Our environment is in very bad state nowadays. The most serious ecological problems are pollution of air, wather and soil, greenhouse effect, ozone hole and acid rains and also dissapearance of many species of animals and plants.
Most of these damage has not been caused by natural catastrophies such as earthquake, floods or tornados but by people themselves.
Becouse of the technical progress and quick economic growte, there are changes in our environment and environment is becoming very polluted.

Pollution: We need air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat, but there is a growing number of people in the Earth so that we have to share these everything with more people.
The growing number of cars and factories produce harmfull fumes which pollute the air. Car is the biggest air pollutant. People can help this situation, we can use unleaded petrol and catalytic converter.
Water is poisened by chemical and waste, which factories discharge into lakes,rivers.
Pollution of siol is caused by farmers. Farmers use pesticides, fertilizers, which pollute the soil. There is also a lot of waste but not enough landfill areas. This pollution can also poison groundwater.

The biggest global problem is ozone hole. Ozone layer protect us from ultraviolet light from sun.
Possible effects of the sun´s UV rays:
Eyes: cataracts and blindness
Skin: premature ageing, skin cancer and wrinkling
Immune system: they brake down the immune system
Crops: they could interrupt the process of photosynthesis
Sea life: growth of plantkon which are vital part of the food chain in the world´s oceans.
Ozone layer is damaged by chemicals which are called CFCs and we can find this CFCs in fridge, sprays and airconditioning.
The areas of largest ozone hole are Antarctica, South America, Australia, New Zealand.

Greenhouse effect is caused by harmfull gases which are produced when we burn fuels. Therefore there is a hugh amount of carbon dioxid in the atmosphere, it works like glass in the greenhouse. It allows heat to get in but does not allow heat to get out. And our Earth is getting warmer. In the last 100 years the Earth´s surface has warmed up by more than half a degree.
The best protection is to stop producing these gases and destroyin rain forests.

Acid rains: Acid from factory smoke contributes to acid rains. They fall into trees and kill them. Trees are very important becouse they give out oxygen.
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. These three important words can be learned by children. Some day, perhaps when these children are grown up, most people will reduce their usage of disposable, one-time-use itmes and reduce the amount of solid waste. People will reuse any materials they can and hopefully will recycle materials they can not use.

I, my family and environment:
We should buy environmentally-firendly products, that means products which do not pollute the environment. This products should not contain poisons, chemicals, wasteful ingredients.
We should not buy more goods then we need.
We should recycle plastic, glass.
We should use less energy and water, that means turn off computer, light or other electrical equipments, when we do not use it.
We should separate waste. We should put bottles into one special box, plastic bottles into second box.
We should plant trees and flowers, other small plant. We should compost.
We should put rubbish into the bin.
We should not use a car.
We should take short showers. Showers waste less water than baths...

Organizations for environmental protection:
Greenpeace is the most famous organization, which fights for cleaner earth. Green peace makes campaigns in many countries around world. They protest against hunting whales, building of nuclear power plants, destroying of rain forest, testing of nuclear weapons and many others issues.
Greenpeace supporters organize demonstrations and they also take direct actions. For example, they block pipes that pour pollution into the sea.
Another important environmental group is Friends of the Earth. They have led campaigns against global warming, the destruction of the rain forests.