Humankind has tried to improve its standard of living since the very beginning of civilization. Back then, as well as today, providing food and security was the basic task for a person. However, nowadays the range of required goods has expanded significantly. People feel the need for not only some primary things, such as a piece of bread and a roof over their heads, but also for various facilities and luxuries. Providing humanity with these things is connected to the use of natural resources, which requires energy. In turn, the common sources of energy we use today cause pollution, so economic growth is almost inevitably associated with environmental damage.

Economic growth is the increase in numbers of goods and services produced over time by an economy, and it's calculated in terms of real Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Before growth is calculated, inflation(通货膨胀) is adjusted in order to take into account its misleading effect on the price of goods and services. Economic growth can also be explained as the increase in expected output, which results from an increase in actual output, or total demand.

There are certain aspects of economic growth which affect the environment. The first of these is the fact that in order to produce more goods and products, at a faster rate, the construction of large industrial plants is required. These plants produce a lot of waste, leading to the pollution of water and the atmosphere, which may cause negative long- term health effects to nearby populations of animals, or people. They also lead to global warming.

Industrial manufacturing leads to the constantly increasing energy consumption. The traditional energy sources, which are commonly used nowadays, are considered to be the greatest polluters to the environment. There also exist so-called eco-friendly sources of energy. They are sometimes preferred but replacing the traditional sources with them also requires time, during which people have to make some sacrifices to support these undertakings.

In order to produce economically practical energy, a sometimes significant transformation of the natural site is often inevitable. This is expensive and, has harmful effects on the environment. Application of wind energy would Block airflows' natural speed, which is the reason for their decrease in strength, after crossing the windmill. Consequently, the pressure balance that is brought about by this current will be affected, and it is important to remember that the environment and weather conditions are directly affected by atmospheric pressure.

For these reasons, bringing about economic growth without resulting in any environmental damage is impossible.

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Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness

As part of the environmental group on campus, my friends and I recently invited a recent college graduate, Colin Davis, to lecture about his deeds in climate change.

Davis graduated from Trinity College last spring. Despite a tempting (诱人的) internship (实习期) from Goldman Sachs that thousands of people dream about. Davis chose to ride a bike across the US to interview environmental experts.

Davis wasn’t a born environmentalist. To prove his bike ride, he had to find a “trendy (新潮的), sexy and good cause”. The cause was climate change. But Davis became more concerned than ever about this issue after the cross-country bike ride. He read hundreds of books on climate change and environmental consulting. Now, he works for non-profitable organizations and serves as a consultant for energy efficiency.

One of his messages during his talk, “shopping with a moral in mind” occurred in my mind again and again throughout the day.

Facing two similar products in a market, do we stop and read the back before throwing the product into our cart (推车)? We all live in a fast-paced society, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take a minute to choose a product that’s safer for our bodies and better for the environment. Davis made me know how important it is to be a smart consumer, by supporting organic (有机的) food and green products instead of only looking at the brands.

With little age gap and his unique way of presenting serious messages in a light tone, Davis captured the attention of most non “hardcore (中坚的) environmentalists” students. Davis said. “Working for a good cause makes me feel better than being an investment (投资) banker.”

Too much light at night can cut the number of seeds a plant makes, a new study finds. Researchers put up street lights in Swiss meadows, far from any real streets. The setup was built similarly to urban light pollution. In these now-light-polluted fields, flowers had 62 percent fewer night visitors — insect pollinators — than did the flowers in dark meadows.

The researchers reported a cabbage thistle bloom hosts a guest insect after dark. Cabbage thistles are the most common flowers in these meadows. Fewer insect visitors at night could mean less pollen pollinated from plant to plant (the first step in making seeds). For the thistles, daytime pollinator visits didn’t make up for this loss at night, says Eva Knop, an ecologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Overall, night-lit plants produced one-eighth fewer seeds than did plants that got full nights of darkness.

Light pollution might affect a whole network of plants and their pollinators, Knop and her colleagues now suggest. Indeed, night pollination was not just a lonely business for a few special plants. There were lots of links between pollen hauls by night and by day. Plants with a lot of night visits were often very busy by day, too. Light at night that decreases seed numbers could over time mean fewer new plants. And fewer plants could mean less food and shelter for daytime insects. So a lot of pollinators working the day and night shifts could be affected, Knop worries.

The new study is the first to show how artificial light affects plants’ ability to make seeds. The test is also unusual because it considers all kinds of insect pollinators instead of focusing only on night-flying insects. The researchers paid special attention to the cabbage thistle, but they also mapped which kinds of insects visited other plants by day or night.