The Protection of the Environment

Abstract

But citizens have found that there are other tasks, of increasing concern to them, which national governments are no longer capable of performing. They are conscious of the threat which industrialization within their own states poses to the national environment. They are concerned about the increasingly serious pollution of air and water resulting from factory emissions and the dumping of industrial waste produced by rapid economic growth. They are anxious about the threats to soil and climate which over-intensive systems of agriculture have brought about. They are increasingly aware of the impact of urbanization, hastened by excessive population increase, on the quality of life which they and, even more, their children can enjoy. They are anxious about the green-house effect and long-term climatic change. They are concerned about the depletion of the world’s natural resources which has already resulted from economic development in industrialized countries, and will be hugely increased as a result of the spread of that process to other parts of the world. They are worried at the destruction or despoiling of their natural habitats. They already demand, with increasing intensity, action by national governments to meet these concerns. But they are increasingly conscious that many of these problems cannot be overcome by the action of individual states alone.