Environment pollution is an inevitable consequence of worldwide improvements in the standards of living. Discuss.

In last few decades, we have observed a general improvement in standards of living across the world. This improvement can be gauged in terms of better access to food and medicare (resulting in higher life expectancy), higher per capita GDP and higher literacy rate, etc. Many of these improvements require consumption of resources. For example, more food means better irrigation, more consumption of chemicals (pesticides, fertilizers, etc.), more mechanization, etc. Similarly, higher per capita GDP...

In last few decades, we have observed a general improvement in standards of living across the world. This improvement can be gauged in terms of better access to food and medicare (resulting in higher life expectancy), higher per capita GDP and higher literacy rate, etc. Many of these improvements require consumption of resources. For example, more food means better irrigation, more consumption of chemicals (pesticides, fertilizers, etc.), more mechanization, etc. Similarly, higher per capita GDP is achieved through industrialization, which requires (among others) energy and resources. As such, all these improvements mean higher consumption of fossil fuels for energy, higher rate of generation of wastes (solid, liquid and gaseous) from our industries and homes, etc. All these have environmental costs. Fossil fuels generate gases, industrial waste finds its way to our water bodies and/or land, gaseous emissions contaminate our air, etc. Thus, environmental pollution is an inevitable consequence of improvement in standards of living and unfortunately, severe environmental issues would be there (especially for rapidly developing countries, such as India and China), as recently seen with air quality in Beijing and New Delhi.

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