Environmental issues in England

The main features of England’s ecosystem.

England’s ecosystem is pretty luscious, with plenty of water, it’s a very fertile and green country, but due to the dense population this has been cut into by roads and cities.

Plant life in England

Animal life in England

Soils

England’s climates

The temperature in England is not high though nor is it below zero out of winter time. This is a good temperature for plant life, though it is a little chilly for people. The average temperature is about 26 degrees in the summer and 10 degrees in the winter. Though at its peak in the summer it can get really hot (35 degrees) and same for the winter, the temperature can get very cold (-5 degrees).

Human Impacts

But though all this new technology may be enhancing our everyday lives, in the long run it is making or going to make life a lot worse. As you can see from the graph below the carbon dioxide level in the World is rising .Since the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased. This increase has rapidly accelerated during the past forty years. Carbon dioxide is emitted from most things when they are burnt. So now with the millions of cars on the road and huge factories burning fuel and pushing huge amounts of the gas into the atmosphere, we are really damaging ourselves. Carbon dioxide being a main cause of thousands of diseases, and the main threat to the o-zone layer (the barrier from the suns UV’s rays without which skin diseases are very likely).

Carbon dioxide, a waste product of all cells, needs to be constantly removed to avoid death.

This pollution problem in the long run will destroy lots of animal and plant life including our own. If you drive along a motorway you notice the dead areas with no plant life by the sides this if because of the excessive amount of CO2 being pumped out onto them. Imagine that but on a larger scale with more damaging effects, its like sucking on an exhaust pipe and waiting for the effects, that is generally what the world is doing to its self.

Not only that but we have also managed to drive some species to extinction though this blame falls on the entire world. The dodo for example and at the moment the tiger seems to be under pretty serious threat from our greedy hands. Also the new technology that we are testing on animals and genetically modified fruits and vegetables. I feel we have misplaced our position on this planet and are playing too much the “God” role.

Though we are slowly destroying the world we live in we have used some of its resources successfully. We have used the soil and grown produce to feed ourselves and have also attempted to create clean energy sources. Wind, hydro-electric and solar energy are all examples of this but so far we have not been able to modify these to use them efficiently enough. England has placed wind farms in higher regions of the country, but found that solar power did not work that efficiently due to the lack of sun on a constant basis. Hydro-electric power also was not put into action due to the lack of fast flowing rivers, but small generators that supply only a few number of houses have been set up.

England does not suffer from any huge environmental problems such as tornado’s or earthquakes, the most serious threat is only in the south west where flooding is quite a common problem, though it is not as serious as floods in other countries.

Conservation

Around England there are a lot of national parks, with a main goal of protecting the environment and wildlife that they contain. The lake district for example is a national park, it looks after its lakes and natural animals and plants that live there. Without national parks these areas would not be as well kept condition as they are and would not keep up the wildlife they hold.