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ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMICS
53
generation continues the process of exploitation and destruction, the coming generations would say that their ancestors were unwise. They themselves enjoyed comforts and compelled the successive generations to be impoverished and to live in an environment of distress. With regard to energy, the exploitation of oil, gas and other minerals has grown to such an extent that one can only wonder what would happen to land in the coming hundred or two hundred years. Scientists predict that problems like earthquakes would be aggravated. Although the real causes of earthquake are not known now, it is apprehended that this might be due to excessive exploitation of land and other natural resources.
Polluted Water
An important component of our environment is water. That is also becoming polluted. Potable water is getting reduced. The poisonous chemical materials of industries, passed through the sewerlines of cities, have been dumped into rivers. Millions of tons of oil leaks from ships cruising over the seas makes the water of seas polluted, which causes sea-life being destroyed.
Pollution of Air Likewise, air has become so badly polluted that it is injecting poison into man's body via breathing. People who live in the inner parts of Delhi, such as around the ITO area, say that the air pollution creates burning sensation in the eyes, in the nose and in the entire body. Hundreds of thousands of vehicles are running day and night. The huge quantum of smoke coming out of their exhausts with a substantial quantity of lead is doing harm to the entire body through inhaling of the smoke into the lungs.
It must be remembered that the three principal means of living are earth, water and air. All the three are getting excessively polluted. In recent years, a lot of concern has been caused by the problem of pollution. But even beyond this, serious attention has been attracted by the atmospheric umbrella of ozone getting punctured. With this, the temperature on earth would go up, and the water level of the sea would also rise. The danger on the
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