Two of the biggest environmental issues the world faces today are plastic pollution and global warming.
1. Plastic Pollution:
In our day and age, plastic is used in various products; however, it decomposes slowly. More and more plastic ends up in the ocean, which is unquestionably dangerous for aquatic life. Not only can animals get entangled in plastic, which can physically harm them, they might also accidentally consume plastic waste and thus, introduce dangerous chemicals into the food chain.
Every year, 300 million tons of plastic are produced, some of which contributes to the production of about 500 billion plastic bags per year. If we consider that plastic bags can take up to 10 to 1000 years to decompose and that 50% of plastic bags are only used once, the amount of waste is unimaginably high. More than 8 million tons of plastic enter the ocean per year, which harms aquatic life.
However, nowadays, there is an increased awareness of this problem due to better internet access and the widespread promotion of activist-led campaigns against plastic waste on social media. As a result, a large amount of people try to reduce plastic waste in their everyday life. Seeing the change in the attitudes of consumers, many companies now try to produce more environmentally friendly materials. They also try to cut down on plastic, especially on plastic bags. Consequently, it is not uncommon to see shops which only sell paper or cloth bags.
2. Global Warming:
Another major environmental issue is global warming. Global warming can cause extreme weather conditions, which can harm animals, humans and the earth.Global warming is a phenomenon which is created and amplified by greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide and methane. The main greenhouse gas emitters come from the industrial sectors of production, transportation, farming, forestry and electricity.
The emissions remain trapped in the lower atmosphere of the earth. The shortwave radiation of the sun can easily pass the greenhouse gases and heat the surface of the earth. However, some of the longwave radiation which is emitted from the surface of the earth cannot pass through a high concentration of these gases. As a result, the longwave radiation is reflected back to earth, heating up our planet.
Compared to the pre-industrial level, which is considered to be around the year 1750, the surface temperature of the earth has shown an average increase of over 1°C, mostly taking place over the last three decades. If the earth continues to rapidly heat at this rate, it is estimated that by 2100 the earth will be, on average, 3°C to 4°C warmer, which will have a drastic effect on our climate.
It is expected that the sea level will rise due to the melting of glaciers, which will cause severe flooding. Moreover, global warming will lead to droughts and water scarcity around the planet. These and other extreme weather conditions and natural catastrophes can have a major impact on biodiversity. In order to prevent such an outcome, global warming needs to be stopped. Humanity has to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by implementing more renewable and green energy. Moreover, deforestation needs to be stopped one the one hand, since it leads to increased emissions through farming and, on the other hand, because we lose trees, which store carbon dioxide.
As the importance of stopping global warming is widely acknowledged, the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep the increase of average surface temperature below 1.5°C, was signed by 185 countries and entered into force in 2016. The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. In 2017, Trump announced that America would no longer be part of this agreement. The USA became a part of this agreement again in early 2021.
A free market economy is regulated by supply and demand. Companies compete with each other in an open competition to sell their products. In order to win the competition, products have to be better than others. The price, size, appearance or function of a product may all be incentives for people to buy said product. In many cases, price is an important factor in a consumer’s decision-making process.
Consequently, companies try to keep the production costs as low as possible in order to garner profit, while keeping the selling price comparatively low. In some cases, companies retreat to options that can be harmful for workers (bad working conditions) and for the environment (deforestation, contamination of bodies of water and overuse of farming land).
Nowadays, there are no real free market economies in the world. There is always a certain degree of government involvement in the economy to ensure that at least some untouchable principles, like human rights, are being followed. Therefore, some companies outsource their production to countries which do not have strict regulations and where workers can be employed to work for many hours in bad working conditions (sweatshops).
However, as a free market economy follows the rules of supply and demand, the consumers have a lot of power in the development of the market. If consumers do not buy products for certain reasons, companies have to react accordingly in order to keep selling their products.
Companies will only make profit if they adjust their products to match the demands of the consumer. Therefore, if consumers demand more environmentally friendly products produced in good working conditions and boycott products which do not fulfill these criteria, they can shape the market accordingly.
Companies have to listen to the demands of their customers in order to survive in a free market economy. Moreover, the market itself profits from a healthy environment as extreme weather situations and natural disasters affect the market negatively.
Germany’s economic order is labeled a “Social Market Economy”, which combines a welfare state with a free market economy. The idea behind this system is that everyone should benefit from economic growth. The US as well as Great Britain also do not have a complete free market economy and are moving towards a social market economy, in which the government can regulate the economy by providing a regulatory framework. Similarly, South Africa has a mixed economy, in which aspects of both capitalism and socialism can be found.