Globalisation can be defined as the increasing cross-border interaction and intergration if various aspects of human activity. Based on this view of globalisation, identify one problematic area if the phenomenon and discuss its influence on contemporary society. What actual and possible means are there to ameliorate the issue you have highlighted.
In today's world, a renowned course- Globalisation,
has shifted the entire world leaps and bounds away from a place it was at just
about a decade ago. The hike in international intercommunication and harmonisation have evidently brought
about many positive impacts such as a greater flow of goods, people and ideas
across borders. While globalisation is at its course of impacting the world favourably,
many problems have also inevitably risen that make contemporary society
question the overall impact of globalisation. A leading problem involves the
environment and leading world powers such as China. Slightest carbon footprints
left are bound to have consequences, even if it takes years. Thus, various
means have been taken to ameliorate the situation such as seeking cleaner energy alternation and infrastruction reformation.
Rapid
expansion through globalisation has increased the air pollution levels in China
tremendously, which affects the rest of the world too. Deemed as the leading world
producer, churning as much as a fifth of overall world output(Marsh, 2011),
China currently suffers from a 3.8% GDP loss due to environmental degradation(Wong,
2013). Many cities that have been undergoing major developmental changes in
order to accommodate to soaring global consumerism. An USA embassy measured a
pollution particle concentration level of 800ppm(BBC, 2013), nearly thrice that
of the supposedly hazardous level. With fuel burning and car exhaust topping
the causes, China has adopted many measures to try to cope with the situation. One of which was the introduction of vehicles
including public buses that have low emission and consume alternative energy such
as Compressed Natural Gas(CNG) since 2005. About 70000 more environmentally vehicles
have been on the road since. While this may seem to be successful at first
glance, this number is definitely insignificant when compared as percentage of
total number of cars that have been rising. Just over a course of one year
since 2008, number of personal cars have increased by 25.1%(Dong, 2012) as
Chinese have greater purchasing power with their booming economy. Not only does
this results in greater levels of harmful emissions but also heightened traffic
jams whereby precious energy sources are wasted. The approach on tackling
vehicle emission levels has proven to be ineffective with the worsening air
conditions in China today. The government ought to efficiently take on stricter
enforcement or adopt other measures such as curbing the volume of cars in order
to successfully improve air quality.
Apart from
adopting cleaner energy sources, China has also upgraded their infrastructure
in order to improve the condition of their environment as brought about by
globalisation. In 2004, China was also appointed as host country of Olympic
Games 2008. This became a great propelling drive for China to ensure the world
saw them as first-class. Beijing, being their capital, underwent major
development in preparation of the Olympics. Factories that utilised coal
heavily like Capital Iron that are culprits of high air pollution levels were
transferred out of Beijing. Just this itself brought about a cut in 30% of
pollutant discharge(Schleicher,2012) in 2008. More roads and subway lines were built
to ease traffic conditions that were previously bad due to the large vehicle numbers.
Public transportation that consumed CNG were also introduced and promoted on
the roads so much so that private vehicles were reduced by about at least 34%(Schleicher,2012).
All these measures taken on boosting the infrastructure along with consistent
road cleaning gave rise to an astounding pollution level of merely 50ppm (Zhou et al.,
2010).
The success of China in lifting her air quality
during the Olympics has demonstrated that stringent prosecution of laws and
measures can certainly accomplish their goals. In the this case, China saw that
the Olympics would bring about prosperity to their country, driving them to
ensure the enforcements took place as they were dire at that point of time.
Excellent
governance is crucial in safeguarding the environment. Unfortunately, it seemingly
appears that the Chinese leaders concentrated significantly more in the
economic aspect of their country. Inevitably, the economic advancements came at
the cost of the environment. In turn, this brings about even more internal
problems in the country. While the root of the problem boils down to the
renowned phenomenon mentioned, does this mean China had no ability over controlling
its deteriorating environmental status that is now affecting the world?
Word count: 708
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