Were there any environmental problems in antiquity? Ecological disasters of antiquity

Ecological problem is a change in the natural environment as a result of human activity, leading to a violation of the structure and functioning nature ... This is a man-made problem. In other words, it arises as a result of the negative impact of man on nature.

Environmental problems can be local (a certain area is affected), regional (a specific region) and global (the impact is on the entire biosphere of the planet).

Can you give an example of a local environmental problem in your region?

Regional problems cover the territories of large regions, and their impact affects a significant part of the population. For example, pollution of the Volga is a regional problem of the entire Volga region.

The drainage of the Polesie bogs caused negative changes in Belarus and Ukraine. The change in the water level of the Aral Sea is a problem for the entire Central Asian region.

Global environmental problems include problems that pose a threat to all of humanity.

Which of the global environmental problems, in your opinion, are of greatest concern? Why?

Let's take a quick look at how environmental problems have evolved over the course of human history.

Actually, in a sense, the entire history of human development is the history of an increasing impact on the biosphere. In fact, humanity in its progressive development went from one ecological crisis to another. But crises in ancient times were of a local nature, and environmental changes were, as a rule, reversible, or did not threaten people with total death.

The primitive man, who was engaged in gathering and hunting, unwittingly everywhere disturbed the ecological balance in the biosphere, spontaneously harmed nature. It is believed that the first anthropogenic crisis (10-50 thousand years ago) was associated with the development of hunting and overhunting of wild animals, when the mammoth, cave lion and bear disappeared from the face of the earth, on which the hunting efforts of the Cro-Magnons were directed. Especially a lot of harm was caused by the use of fire by primitive people - they burned out forests. This led to a decrease in the level of rivers and groundwater. Overgrazing on pastures may have had an ecological result in the emergence of the Sahara Desert.

Then, about 2 thousand years ago, there was a crisis associated with the use of irrigated agriculture. It led to the development of a large number of clay and saline deserts. But let's take into account that at that time the population of the Earth was small, and, as a rule, people had the opportunity to move to other places that were more suitable for life (which is impossible to do now).

In the era of the great geographical discoveries, the impact on the biosphere has increased. This is due to the development of new lands, which was accompanied by the extermination of many species of animals (remember, for example, the fate of American bison) and the transformation of vast territories into fields and pastures. However, human impact on the biosphere acquired a global scale after the industrial revolution of the 17th-18th centuries. At this time, the scale of human activity increased significantly, as a result of which the geochemical processes taking place in the biosphere began to transform (1). In parallel with the course of scientific and technological progress, the number of people has sharply increased (from 500 million in 1650, the conditional start of the industrial revolution - to the current 7 billion), and, accordingly, the need for food and industrial goods, for more and more fuel , metal, cars. This led to a rapid increase in the load on ecological systems, and the level of this load in the middle of the XX century. - the beginning of the XXI century. reached a critical value.

How do you understand in this context the inconsistency of the results of technical progress for people?

Humanity has entered an era of a global environmental crisis. Its main components:

depletion of energy and other resources of the planet's interior
the greenhouse effect,
depletion of the ozone layer,
soil degradation,
radiation hazard,
transboundary transfer of pollution, etc.

The movement of mankind towards an ecological catastrophe of a planetary nature is confirmed by numerous facts. People are continuously accumulating the number of compounds not utilized by nature, developing hazardous technologies, storing and transporting many pesticides and explosives, polluting the atmosphere, hydrosphere and soil. In addition, the energy potential is constantly being increased, the greenhouse effect is stimulated, etc.

There is a threat of loss of stability of the biosphere (violation of the eternal course of events) and its transition to a new state, which excludes the very possibility of human existence. It is often said that one of the causes of the ecological crisis our planet is in is the crisis of human consciousness. What do you think of it?

But humanity is still able to solve environmental problems!

What conditions are required for this?

The unity of the goodwill of all the inhabitants of the planet in the problem of survival.
Establishing peace on Earth, ending wars.
Ending the destructive effect of modern production on the biosphere (resource consumption, environmental pollution, destruction of natural ecosystems and biodiversity).

Development of global models of nature restoration and scientifically based nature management.

Some of the points listed above seem impracticable or not? What do you think?

Undoubtedly, human awareness of the danger of environmental problems is associated with serious difficulties. One of them is caused by the non-obviousness for modern man of his natural basis, psychological alienation from nature. Hence the disdain for the observance of environmentally sound activities, or, to put it simply, the lack of an elementary culture of attitude to nature on various scales.

To solve environmental problems, it is necessary to develop new thinking in all people, to overcome the stereotypes of technocratic thinking, ideas about the inexhaustibility of natural resources and a lack of understanding of our absolute dependence on nature. An unconditional condition for the continued existence of mankind is the observance of the environmental imperative as the basis for environmentally friendly behavior in all areas. It is necessary to overcome alienation from nature, to realize and realize personal responsibility for how we relate to nature (for saving land, water, energy, for protecting nature). Video 5.

There is a phrase “think globally - act locally”. How do you understand this?

There are many successful publications and programs devoted to environmental problems and the possibilities of their solution. In the last decade, quite a few environmentally oriented films have been filmed, and regular environmental film festivals have begun to be held. One of the most outstanding films is the environmental education film HOME (Home. Travel Story), which was first presented on June 5, 2009 on World Environment Day by the distinguished photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand and renowned director and producer Luc Bessonne. This film tells about the history of the life of the planet Earth, the beauty of nature, environmental problems caused by the destructive impact of human activity on the environment, threatening the destruction of our common home.

I must say that the premiere of HOME was an unprecedented event in cinema: for the first time, the film was shown simultaneously in the largest cities of dozens of countries, including Moscow, Paris, London, Tokyo, New York, in an open screening format, and free of charge. TV viewers saw the one and a half hour film on large screens installed in open areas, in cinemas, on 60 TV channels (excluding cable networks), on the Internet. HOME has been shown in 53 countries. At the same time, in some countries, for example, in China and Saudi Arabia, the director was refused permission to conduct aerial photography. In India, half of the footage was simply confiscated, and in Argentina, Arthus-Bertrand and his assistants had to spend a week in prison. In many countries, a film about the beauty of the Earth and its environmental problems, the demonstration of which, according to the director, "borders on a political appeal", was banned from showing.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand (FR.Yann Arthus-Bertrand, born March 13, 1946 in Paris) - French photographer, photojournalist, Knight of the Legion of Honor and holder of many other awards

We end our conversation about environmental problems with a story about the film by J. Arthus-Bertrand. Watch this movie. Better than words, it will help you think about what awaits the Earth and humanity in the near future; to understand that everything in the world is interconnected, that our task now is common and for each of us - to try, as far as possible, to restore the ecological balance of the planet that we have disturbed, without which the existence of life on Earth is impossible.

In Video 6 pref den excerpt from the movie Home. The whole movie can be watched - http://www.cinemaplayer.ru/29761-_dom_istoriya_puteshestviya___Home.html.

The significance of the environmental problem

There are regions on Earth that, due to a number of natural and ecological features, were most favorable for the development of ancient civilizations - these are plains suitable for processing, rivers, lakes and other places. They are a kind of platforms of attraction for primitive people. Five such favorable places can be distinguished: the Nile and Mesopotamia with Egypt and Sumer, the valleys of the Ganges and Indus rivers with the civilizations of India, the Yellow River basin (Yellow River) with the Chinese civilization and, finally, Central America that appeared later with the Mayan civilization, the islands of the Pacific and Indian oceans with the Polynesian civilization, while each ethnic group has experienced periods of its most active activity. Under pressure from more powerful ethnic groups, small civilizations receded into the background or disappeared altogether. This is how the civilizations of Central Africa, Easter Island and others disappeared. A more stable path of development was preserved only in European civilization, which was rooted in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome, and Hellas. For a long time, Europeans perceived the religious and philosophical teachings of China and India as a way to foster passivity, detachment, and contemplation. However, at the end of the XX century. Western civilization began to rethink the spiritual guidelines of its development. From the point of view of ecological ethics, Judeo-Christian dogmas that assert the right of man to dominate nature are inferior to the ideas of Buddhism, Taoism and other Eastern teachings that preach the inextricable connection between man and nature. The history of urban life is no less significant than the development of agriculture and the production of certain goods. The way of life in the cities of antiquity was not much different from the modern one. However, mankind has retained the memory of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the Egyptian pyramids in Giza, the hanging gardens of Babylon, the statue of Zeus in Olympia, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. The river valleys were oases of blossom among the surrounding desert landscapes. Man, having mastered the river valleys, created man-made agricultural landscapes, the functioning of which was supported by constant creative activity. The close dependence of people's lives on the regime of rivers, for example, the Nile, ensured a longer existence of the Egyptian state. The magnificent pyramids and temples serve as an excellent symbol of this stability. Babylon, which was the capital of the Middle East for one and a half thousand years, existed from the 19th to the 6th century. BC e. The death of the Babylonian kingdom was the result of inept management. The Egyptians, who had rich experience in the construction of irrigation facilities for irrigating land in the Nile Valley, proposed to build a canal and increase the area of irrigated land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Water irrigated the lands underlain by saline soils. Secondary soil salinization began. Water in the Euphrates, from where it was taken into the new canal, began to flow more slowly, which caused sedimentation in the old irrigation network. She began to fail. Thus, the consequences of yet another "victory over nature", wrote LN Gumilev (1912-1992), "ruined the great city." By the beginning of the new era, only ruins remained of it. Techniques for cultivating and irrigating the land, breeding plants - all these achievements of the most ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Nile were used by subsequent peoples, which ensured their rapid development. And here's what's interesting. On the pyramid of Cheops it was written as a warning to descendants: "People will die from inability to use the forces of nature and from ignorance of the true world." The ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, as we know from history, have not once been subjected to major tectonic catastrophes, which led to the death of the existing civilization. In the first case, a rift fracture of the earth's crust occurred in the Atlantic Ocean, which may have destroyed the legendary Atlantis. The second event was associated with the eruption of the Santorini volcano, as a result of which the Cretan civilization perished, and with the massive resettlement of the Phoenicians to the western Mediterranean Sea and beyond. The emergence of the Ol-Mec civilization on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico dates back to this period. The Maya called themselves the descendants of seafarers who came from the East. It is quite possible that grandiose tectonic catastrophes could lead not only to local, but also to global migrations of peoples. It should be noted that already in ancient times, great people possessed knowledge and understanding of those problems that we now call ecological (ancient Greek philosophers Plato (427-348 BC), Aristotle (384 - 322 BC). An ecological crisis was characteristic of the civilization of Ancient Greece. Forests were forced out by fields, orchards, vineyards. Deforestation led to soil erosion, especially on the slopes. Soil washout from mountain slopes radically changed the appearance of efficient landscapes. According to the testimony of the ancient Greek natural scientist Feof-Rasta (372 - 287 BC), the ship forest grew only in mountainous Arcadia and outside Greece.In turn, the conquest of nature in ancient Rome turned into an aggravation of environmental problems. Mostly forests, arable lands, mountain slopes were affected. The harvests from the fields were getting smaller. In August 1998, a catastrophic flood occurred in China, which flooded the northern provinces of Inner Mongolia and areas of the Chinese Amur region, the central parts of China in the provinces of Hubei and Jiangxi, killing more than 10 thousand residents. The flood affected nearly 20% of China's population and affected the national economy. The tragedy raised the questions: what to do and who is to blame? Scientists point to not only natural, but also man-made causes of the disaster: deforestation along the Yangtze led to soil erosion, soil washout into the river and an increase in the height of the river bottom. The Renaissance era with its medieval period is called in history the era of the "great uprooting". By the beginning of the XI century. the peoples inhabiting Western Europe were influenced by the Roman Catholic Church: the feudal system was established. In the XI - XIII centuries. there was a massive deforestation for agriculture. Castles, monasteries, cities were built, the mining industry developed. At this stage, the ecological situation in Europe has become much more complicated. Defensive walls still limited the growth of cities to some extent. However, the lack of sanitation has led to the pollution of ground and surface waters. And because of the tightness of the building, fires, which were not uncommon, had devastating consequences. Overcrowding and unsanitary conditions contributed to the spread of epidemics. Thus, in the middle of the XIV century. according to various estimates, up to 50% of the entire population of Europe died out from the plague epidemic. Arab culture has been represented by many scholars. First of all, it should be noted the legendary physician Ibn Sina (Avicena) (c. 980-1037), who wrote in the chapter "About things that arise from a cause belonging to common causes" about the effect on the body of the surrounding air, about the seasons and natural phenomena. Ibn Sina also dealt with the problems of the origin of the animal world, the formation of the relief of the earth's surface. At the turn of the VIII - IX centuries. Kievan Rus arose. With the adoption of Christianity in 988, relations between the Russians and the Greeks, and then with other European countries, were revived. Before the baptism of Russia, the enlighteners Cyril (c. 827 - 869) and Methodius (c. 815 - 855), brothers from Solunya created the Slavic alphabet, translated the scriptures from Greek. In the XII century. the most ancient chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years" was compiled. This chronicle mentions not only historical events, but also remarkable natural phenomena. In the Age of Enlightenment, observation and experiment began to play an important role in the natural sciences. The body of knowledge from the field of natural sciences (in the explanation of nature) was called natural philosophy - the philosophy of nature. Natural philosophers include: Rene Descartes (1596-1650), Voltaire (1694-1778), Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Buffon (1707-1788), Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). The Age of Enlightenment in Russia (XVIII) is inextricably linked with the name of M.V. Lomonosov (1711-1765). In his writings and research "On the layers of the earth", where he formulated the tasks of geology and other tasks, Lomonosov supported the position of transformism, spreading the idea of the development of not only the earth's crust, but the whole world. Thus, M.V. Lomonosov was the first Russian transforming natural philosopher who paved the way for the evolutionary idea. The successes of enlightenment and the rise of creative thought were a prerequisite for the renewal of the ancient science of geography, and within its framework, in the era of natural science, for the emergence of a new science - ecology. The scientific foundations of natural science, as well as ecology, were formed in the mainstream of natural philosophy, but with some contradiction: on the one hand, the materiality and cognizability of the laws of the environment was asserted, on the other, the initial act of the creation of the world by God was explicitly or implicitly recognized. At the same time, it became obvious that philosophy without natural science is as impossible as natural science without philosophy (AI Herzen (1812-1870) "Letters on the Study of Nature"). In the era of natural science, the world around us in all its diversity as a living nature attracted the attention of many representatives of science, naturalists and biologists who made a huge invaluable contribution to the foundations of natural science and knowledge of the environment: Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Wolfgang Goethe, Alexander Humboldt and Charles Darwin. Among Russian researchers, the geographer and geologist, honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences Pyotr Aleksandrovich Chikhachev (1808-1890), who outlined the problems of interaction between man and nature, stood out. Leading a geological expedition to Eastern Altai and adjacent regions of Siberia, he saw how forest vegetation was dying. PA Chikhachev described the means to which the hunters resorted to find and track down the beast, while destroying the wonderful forests. Using the Zmeinogorsk deposits as an example, Chikhachev showed the damage caused to nature by polymetallic and silver mines. He wrote: “The place of processing is filled up with wood, which ignites and heats the rock for a long time, after which it is poured with cold water and cracked. This is considered a cheaper way than using gunpowder, although the forests have already retreated 125 km from Zmeinogorsk. Human habitation is also disappearing around the mines. For Russia, the scientific works of A. Humboldt (1769 - 1859), a German naturalist, a foreign honorary member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1818), a geographer and a traveler were of great importance. Alexander Humboldt received an invitation from Emperor Nicholas I to come to Russia "in view of the great benefits that could result from this for science and the state." In addition to the Urals and Siberia, A. Humboldt studied the nature of various countries in Europe, Central and South America. He was one of the founders of plant geography and the doctrine of life forms. A. Humboldt substantiated the idea of vertical zoning, laid the foundations of general geography and climatology, prepared the main work "Cosmos", which sets out the foundations of his natural philosophical outlook on nature, for example, 7 shows the history of thinking about the unity of phenomena and interactions -N ^ the forces in the universe. It should be noted that the work "Cosmos" NN was a work that awakened in the broad layers of the population of different countries interest and striving for knowledge of the laws of nature. The works of A. Humboldt had a great influence on the development of evolutionary ideas and the comparative method in natural science. A supporter of Humboldt, who had a passion for distant wanderings and for the nature of his native places, was the professor of Moscow University K.F. Roulye (1814-1858), who was not only a scientist, but also a popularizer of natural science and evolutionary ideas in Russia, a predecessor of Charles Darwin. In the classic work General Zoology, Roulier argued that nature is eternal; all its phenomena are interconnected and constitute a single whole. Any living thing depends on external conditions, i.e. from air, water, soil, climate, plants and, finally, from humans. Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) was one of the most prominent representatives of French science in the first third of the 19th century. In 1802 Lamarck published his work "Hydrogeology". It examined the natural processes leading to changes on the surface of the globe. (Now you can, of course, add not only natural forces, but also anthropogenic influences.) Lamarck in his work noted the importance of living organisms in natural processes, emphasized the fundamental difference between the organic and inorganic world. Lamarck first coined the term "biology". He came close to the concept of "biosphere". In 1809, the classic work "Philosophy of Zoology" was published, which brought Lamarck a lot of suffering during his lifetime, especially from the generally recognized authority in science of the French zoologist J. Cuvier (1769-1832), and was only recognized after his death. What are Lamarck's evolutionary views? He proved that individuals of one species, changing their place of residence, lifestyle or habits and being influenced, change composition, proportions and even organization, i.e. individuals who belonged to the same species by origin, in the end turn out to be transformed into a new species, different from the original, under the influence of environmental factors. Before Lamarck, no one had developed the doctrine of the origin of some species from others and of evolution in the world of animals and plants. His views were evolutionary and ecological. Another great humanist was Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) from Germany. Zoology and botany, anatomy and physiology, geology and paleontology, physics and mineralogy - all these sciences were equally interested in Goethe. He created a science, calling it "morphology" or "the science of the formation and transformation of organic bodies." Goethe's hobbies are diverse, but love for the world of wildlife was a powerful stimulus for Goethe in his poetic, philosophical and scientific research. Ecological concepts can be called his statements about the growth and development of plants, about the modification of leaves under the influence of light, heat and moisture. Goethe lived and worked in the heyday of the philosophy of I. Kant, F. Schelling (1754-1854), F. Hegel (1770-1831). However, Goethe's natural philosophical worldview was deeply original. He was characterized by a deep faith in the power of natural science, capable of penetrating the most intimate secrets of nature. The English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882), like Alexander Humboldt, was the forerunner of modern geography and ecology. According to Darwin, each organism has constant connections not only with the conditions of its habitats, but also with all the creatures around it. It is as if the imprint of the entire environment falls on it. This double dependence of organisms results in two types of adaptation: to abiotic conditions (the nature of the soil, climate and other factors) and biotic (coexistence with other organisms). The doctrine had a deep evolutionary meaning, indicating the possibility of the origin of organisms and plants from the simplest forms. This approach to Darwin's research gave rise to the German scientist E. Haeckel (1834-1919) to declare the expediency of separating a new science - ecology - the science of the relationship of living organisms and the communities formed by them with each other and with the environment. As an independent science, ecology was formed by the beginning of the 20th century, when in 1901. Danish botanist J. Warming (1841 -1924) first used this term in the modern sense in the publication "Oncological Geography of Plants". Among biologists and geographers of Russia in the pre-revolutionary years, one can name such outstanding scientists as I.P. Pavlov (1849-1936), K.A. Timiryazev (1843-1920), A.N. Severtsov (1866-1936), V. .L. Komarov (1869-1945), N. M. Knipovich (1862-1939), V. N. Sukachev (1880-1967), L. S. Berg (1876-1950), G. F. Morozov (1867-1920) , GN Vysotsky (1865-1940) and others. Among them is the natural scientist VI Vernadsky (1863 - 1945), who plays a special role in the development of the theory of the biosphere - the shell of the Earth. According to him, the biosphere is a planetary phenomenon of a cosmic nature. The entire biosphere is permeated with the interaction of not only terrestrial, but also cosmic bodies and phenomena. And the main role among them is played by living organisms, "living substances" of the planet. “The biosphere,” noted Vernadsky, “can be regarded as an area of the earth's crust occupied by transformers that convert cosmic radiation into earthly energy; the rays of the sun determine the main features of the biosphere mechanism ”. Thus, defining the biosphere, Vernadsky introduces the concept of "living matter" - this is the totality of all living organisms. The area of distribution of living matter includes the lower part of the air shell (atmosphere), the entire water shell (hydrosphere) and the upper part of the hard shell (lithosphere). The understanding of V.I. Vernadsky's ideas came only in the 1960s. It seemed to grow stronger as mankind became aware of the threat of an ecological crisis. Therefore, the solution of global environmental problems is impossible without knowledge of the laws governing living organisms in the biosphere. In his works V.I. Vernadsky singled out the dominant role of the human factor in the development and preservation of the biosphere, which is confirmed (in recent decades) by the emergence of a number of environmental problems of a global scale. The words of the founder of the doctrine of the biosphere sound like a reminder: “The biosphere is the environment of our life, it is that“ nature ”that surrounds us, about which we speak in colloquial language. A person, first of all, by his breathing and the manifestation of his functions is inextricably linked with this "nature", even if he lived in a city or in a secluded house ”. A huge contribution to the improvement and development of environmental problems in the last decade of the XX century. introduced by the organic chemist Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Valentin Afanasevich Koptyug (1931 - 1997). He was also vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1979 (then the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1991. ), since 1980 the chairman of the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences. And after his death he left a huge legacy, including works on environmental issues. V.A.Koptyug focused his main attention on the preservation of the unique natural lake Baikal, participated in the examination of a number of projects, including the project for the construction of the Katunskaya hydroelectric power station in Altai. Let us recall the Russian thinker of the late XX century. - L.M. Leonova (1899-1994), what does it have to do with the protection of nature and the environment. Leonov, the famous classic of Russian literature, spoke of a catastrophe threatening humanity. About that catastrophe, whose approach had long worried him, and his presentiment dictated the last obsession novel "The Pyramid". The depth of social and moral-philosophical problems led Leonov to the conclusion that “our current situation in Russia and other countries, caused by the claims of senseless national pride, and flaring up on a sixth of the land, which has literally always been a single country, should be instructive for those who are still prosperous. while individual nations ... a seemingly brilliant, but in reality infinitely fragile spiritual and material civilization today is too reminiscent of Belshazzar's feast ”1. And the ominous incomprehensible words that predicted death in due time: “me, tekel, uparsil! are already on fire ”; it is a fatal warning to our inhabited community, a warning against impending catastrophe. L. Leonov named these signs. The scientific forecast promises that in 2200, if the demographic process continues as it is now, the population on planet Earth will be 260 billion people, "which could be more dangerous than mutual bitterness and explosive enmity between them." Let's add also uncontrollability and non-observance of ecological laws of environmental protection. The environmental problem in Russia is being dealt with not only by scientists and specialists of relevant organizations (for example, the Ecograd Scientific Research Center, the RAS Environmental Safety Research Center, the RF Atmospheric Air Protection Research Institute, etc.), but also by trade unions and regional ( city) authorities. Home> Document

Environmental problems of cities It is often believed that the ecological state of cities has noticeably deteriorated in recent decades as a result of the rapid development of industrial production. But this is a delusion. The ecological problems of cities have arisen with their birth. The cities of the ancient world were distinguished by a large overcrowding of the population. For example, in Alexandria, the population density in the 1st-2nd centuries. reached 760 people, in Rome - 1500 people per 1 hectare (for comparison, let's say that in the center of modern New York there are no more than 1 thousand people per 1 hectare). The width of the streets in Rome did not exceed 1.5-4, in Babylon - 1.5-3 m. The sanitary improvement of the cities was at an extremely low level. All this led to frequent outbreaks of epidemics, pandemics, in which diseases covered the whole country, or even several neighboring countries. The first recorded plague pandemic (it entered the literature under the name "Justinian's plague") arose in the 6th century. in the Eastern Roman Empire and covered many countries of the world. For 50 years, the plague claimed about 100 million human lives. Now it is difficult to even imagine how ancient cities with their thousands of population could do without public transport, without street lighting, without sewage and other elements of urban amenities. And, probably, it is no coincidence that at that time many philosophers began to have doubts about the expediency of the existence of large cities. Aristotle, Plato, Hippodamus of Miletus, and later Vitruvius repeatedly presented treatises in which they considered the optimal size of settlements and their structure, problems of planning, building art, architecture and even the relationship with the natural environment. Medieval cities were already significantly inferior in size to their classical counterparts and rarely numbered more than several tens of thousands of inhabitants. So, in the XIV century. the population of the largest European cities - London and Paris - was respectively 100 and 30 thousand inhabitants. However, the environmental problems of cities have not become less acute. Epidemics remained the main scourge. The second plague pandemic - "Black Death" - broke out in the XIV century. and took away almost a third of the population of Europe. With the development of industry, the rapidly growing capitalist cities quickly outnumbered their predecessors. In 1850 London crossed the million mark, then Paris. By the beginning of the XX century. there were already 12 cities in the world - "millionaires" (including two in Russia). The growth of large cities proceeded at an ever faster pace. And again, as the most formidable manifestation of disharmony between man and nature, outbreaks of epidemics of dysentery, cholera, typhoid fever began one after another. The rivers in the cities were monstrously polluted. The Thames in London began to be called the "black river". Fetid streams and reservoirs in other large cities became sources of gastrointestinal epidemics. So, in 1837 in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh, a tenth of the population fell ill with typhoid fever and about a third of the patients died. From 1817 to 1926, there were six cholera pandemics in Europe. In Russia, in 1848 alone, about 700 thousand people died from cholera. However, over time, thanks to advances in science and technology, advances in biology and medicine, the development of water supply and sewerage facilities, the epidemiological danger began to significantly weaken. We can say that at that stage the ecological crisis of large cities was overcome. Of course, such overcoming each time was worth colossal efforts and sacrifices, but the collective intelligence, persistence and ingenuity of people have always turned out to be stronger than the crisis situations created by them. contributed to the rapid development of the productive forces. These are not only huge advances in nuclear physics, molecular biology, chemistry, space exploration, but also the rapid, unceasing growth in the number of large cities and urban population. The volume of industrial production has increased hundreds and thousands of times, the power supply of mankind has increased more than 1000 times, the speed of movement - 400 times, the speed of information transfer - millions of times, etc. Such active human activity, of course, does not pass without leaving a trace for nature. , since resources are drawn directly from the biosphere And this is only one side of the environmental problems of a large city. The other is that in addition to the consumption of natural resources and energy drawn from vast areas, a modern city with a population of millions generates a huge amount of waste. Such a city annually emits into the atmosphere at least 10-11 million tons of water vapor, 1.5-2 million tons of dust, 1.5 million tons of carbon monoxide, 0.25 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 0.3 million tons of nitrogen oxides and a large the amount of other pollution that is not indifferent to human health and the environment. In terms of the scale of its impact on the atmosphere, a modern city can be compared to a volcano. What are the features of the current environmental problems of large cities? First of all - the multiplicity of sources of environmental impact and their scale. Industry and transport - and these are hundreds of large enterprises, hundreds of thousands or even millions of vehicles - are the main culprits in urban pollution. The nature of waste has also changed in our time. Previously, almost all waste was of natural origin (bones, wool, natural fabrics, wood, paper, manure, etc.), and they were easily included in the circulation of nature. Now a significant part of the waste is synthetic substances. Their transformation in natural conditions is extremely slow. One of the environmental problems is associated with the intensive growth of unconventional "pollution" of a wave nature. The electromagnetic fields of high voltage power lines, radio broadcasting and television stations, as well as a large number of electric motors are increasing. The overall level of acoustic noise increases (due to high transport speeds, due to the operation of various mechanisms and machines). On the other hand, ultraviolet radiation decreases (due to air pollution). Energy consumption per unit area is growing, and, consequently, heat output and thermal pollution increase. Under the influence of huge masses of multi-storey buildings, the properties of the geological rocks on which the city stands are changing. The consequences of such phenomena for people and the environment have not yet been sufficiently studied. But they are no less dangerous than pollution of water and air basins and soil and vegetation cover. For residents of large cities, all this in a complex turns into a large overstrain of the nervous system. The townspeople quickly get tired, are prone to various diseases and neuroses, and suffer from increased irritability. Chronic ill health of a significant part of urban residents in some Western countries is considered a specific disease. It got the name "urbanite". Road transport and the environment In many large cities, such as Berlin, Mexico City, Tokyo, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, air pollution from car exhaust and dust is, according to various estimates, from 80 to 95% of all other pollution. Smoke emitted from factory chimneys, vapors from chemical plants and all other waste from a large city account for about 7% of the total mass of pollution. Automobile exhaust in cities is especially dangerous because it pollutes the air mainly at the level of human growth. And people are forced to breathe polluted air. A person consumes 12m 3 of air per day, a car - a thousand times more. For example, in Moscow, automobile transport absorbs oxygen 50 times more than the entire population of the city. In calm weather and low atmospheric pressure on busy highways, the oxygen content in the air often drops to a value close to the critical value, at which people begin to suffocate and faint. Not only the lack of oxygen affects, but also the harmful substances of automobile exhaust. This is especially dangerous for children and people with poor health. Cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases are aggravated, and viral epidemics develop. People often do not even suspect that this is due to car gas poisoning. The number of cars in cities and on highways increases from year to year. Ecologists believe that where their number exceeds one thousand per km 2, the habitat can be considered destroyed. The number of cars is calculated as passenger cars. Oil-fueled heavy transport vehicles are particularly harmful to the air, eroding road surfaces, destroying green spaces along roads, and poisoning water bodies and surface waters. In addition, they emit such a huge amount of gas that in Europe and the European part of Russia it exceeds the mass of evaporated water from all reservoirs and rivers. As a result, cloudiness appears more and more often, and the number of sunny days decreases. Gray days without sun, unheated soil, constantly high air humidity - all this contributes to the growth of various diseases, a decrease in crop yields. More than 3 billion tons of oil are produced annually in the world. It is obtained by hard work, at colossal costs, with great environmental damage to nature. A significant part of it (about 2 billion) goes to gasoline and diesel transport. The average efficiency of a car engine is only 23% (for gasoline engines - 20, for diesel engines - 35%). This means that more than half of the oil is burned in vain, goes to heating and pollution of the atmosphere. But this is not all the loss. The main indicator is not engine efficiency, but transport load factor. Unfortunately, road transport is used extremely inefficiently. A sensibly constructed vehicle must carry more than its own weight, and this is where its efficiency lies. In practice, only bicycles and light motorcycles meet this requirement, the rest of the cars mostly carry themselves. It turns out that the efficiency of road transport is no more than 3-4%. A huge amount of fuel oil is burned, and energy is consumed extremely irrationally. For example, one KamAZ car consumes so much energy that it would be enough to heat 50 apartments in winter. For many centuries, the main mode of transport for humans has been a horse. Energy in 1 liter. With. (this is an average of 736 W), added to a person's own power, allows him to move quickly enough and do almost any necessary work. The boom in the automotive industry has carried us towards power values of 100, 200, 400 hp. with., and now it is extremely difficult to return to a completely sufficient rate - 1 liter. with., in which it would not be so difficult to ensure the ecological purity of the environment. How to solve the problem of creating an efficient transport? Switching vehicles to gas fuel, switching to electric vehicles, installing a special absorber of harmful combustion products on each car and burning them out in the muffler - all this is a search for a way out of the dead end in which not only Russia, but the whole of Europe, USA, Canada, Mexico found themselves, Brazil, Argentina, Japan, China. Unfortunately, none of these paths leads to a complete solution to the problem. With any of them, there is an overconsumption of energy, emissions of steam, carbon dioxide and much more. Obviously, a well-balanced package of measures is needed. And their compulsory implementation should be based on clear, strict laws, among which there may be, for example, the following: a ban on the production of cars that consume more than 1-2 liters of fuel per ton of vehicle weight during 100 km mileage (single exceptions are possible); given that one or two people usually travel in a passenger car, it is advisable to produce more two-seater cars. The amount of tax on transport (car, tractor, trailer, etc.) should be determined by the amount of fuel consumed. This will make it possible to harmonize the economic feasibility of transporting goods by road and the increasing level of environmental pollution. Whoever pollutes our environment more is obliged to pay a higher tax to society. One of the ways to reduce harmful car emissions is to use new types of car fuels: gas, methanol, methyl alcohol or a mixture of it with gasoline - gazohol. For example, all public transport in Stockholm has been running on methanol for several years. The impact of vehicle exhaust gases on the atmosphere is significantly reduced by conventional green spaces. Air analysis on adjacent sections of the same highway shows that there are fewer pollutants where there is an island of greenery, at least a few trees or shrubs. The amount of toxic substances in the air directly depends on the speed of traffic on the streets of the city. The more traffic jams, the thicker the exhaust. In this regard, it is necessary to continuously improve the city's road transport system to create optimal conditions for traffic.

It is often believed that the ecological state of cities has noticeably deteriorated in recent decades as a result of the rapid development of industrial production. But this is a delusion. The ecological problems of cities arose with their birth. The cities of the ancient world were distinguished by a large overcrowding of the population. For example, in Alexandria, the population density in the 1st-2nd centuries. reached 760 people, in Rome - 1500 people per 1 hectare (for comparison, let's say that in the center of modern New York there are no more than 1 thousand people per 1 hectare). The width of the streets in Rome did not exceed 1.5–4 m, in Babylon - 1.5–3 m. The sanitary improvement of the cities was at an extremely low level. All this led to frequent outbreaks of epidemics, pandemics, in which diseases covered the whole country, or even several neighboring countries. The first recorded plague pandemic (it entered the literature under the name "Justinian's plague") arose in the 6th century. in the Eastern Roman Empire and covered many countries of the world. For 50 years, the plague claimed about 100 million human lives.

Now it is difficult even to imagine how ancient cities with their thousands of population could do without public transport, without street lighting, without sewage and other elements of urban amenities. And, probably, it is no coincidence that at that time many philosophers began to have doubts about the expediency of the existence of large cities. Aristotle, Plato, Hippodamus of Miletus, and later Vitruvius repeatedly presented treatises that dealt with the optimal size of settlements and their structure, problems of planning, construction art, architecture, and even the relationship with the natural environment.

Medieval cities were already significantly inferior in size to their classical counterparts and rarely had more than several tens of thousands of inhabitants. Thus, in the XIV century. the population of the largest European cities - London and Paris - was respectively 100 and 30 thousand inhabitants. However, the environmental problems of cities have not become less acute. Epidemics remained the main scourge. The second plague pandemic - "Black Death" - broke out in the XIV century. and took away almost a third of the population of Europe.

With the development of industry, the rapidly growing capitalist cities quickly outnumbered their predecessors. In 1850 London crossed the million mark, then Paris. By the beginning of the XX century. there were already 12 cities in the world - "millionaires" (including two in Russia). The growth of large cities proceeded at an ever faster pace. And again, as the most formidable manifestation of disharmony between man and nature, outbreaks of epidemics of dysentery, cholera, typhoid fever began one after another. The rivers in the cities were monstrously polluted. The Thames in London began to be called the "black river". Fetid streams and reservoirs in other large cities became sources of gastrointestinal epidemics. So, in 1837 in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh, a tenth of the population fell ill with typhoid fever and about a third of the patients died. From 1817 to 1926, there were six cholera pandemics in Europe. In Russia, in 1848 alone, about 700 thousand people died from cholera. However, over time, thanks to advances in science and technology, advances in biology and medicine, the development of water supply and sewerage facilities, the epidemiological danger began to significantly weaken. We can say that at that stage the ecological crisis of large cities was overcome. Of course, such overcoming each time cost colossal efforts and sacrifices, but the collective intelligence, perseverance and ingenuity of people have always turned out to be stronger than the crisis situations they created themselves.

Scientific and technical achievements based on outstanding natural scientific discoveries of the XX century. contributed to the rapid development of the productive forces. These are not only huge advances in nuclear physics, molecular biology, chemistry, space exploration, but also the rapid, unceasing growth in the number of large cities and urban population. The volume of industrial production has increased hundreds and thousands of times, the power supply of mankind has increased more than 1000 times, the speed of movement - 400 times, the speed of information transfer - millions of times, etc. Such active human activity, of course, does not pass without leaving a trace for nature. , since resources are drawn directly from the biosphere

And this is just one side of the environmental problems of a big city. The other is that in addition to the consumption of natural resources and energy drawn from vast areas, a modern city with a population of millions generates a huge amount of waste. Such a city annually emits into the atmosphere at least 10-11 million tons of water vapor, 1.5-2 million tons of dust, 1.5 million tons of carbon monoxide, 0.25 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 0.3 million tons of nitrogen oxides and a large the amount of other pollution that is not indifferent to human health and the environment. In terms of the scale of its impact on the atmosphere, a modern city can be compared to a volcano.

What are the features of the current environmental problems of large cities? First of all - the multiplicity of sources of environmental impact and their scale. Industry and transport - and these are hundreds of large enterprises, hundreds of thousands or even millions of vehicles - are the main culprits in urban pollution. The nature of waste has also changed in our time. Previously, almost all waste was of natural origin (bones, wool, natural fabrics, wood, paper, manure, etc.), and they were easily included in the circulation of nature. Now a significant part of the waste is synthetic substances. Their transformation in natural conditions is extremely slow.

One of the environmental problems is associated with the intensive growth of unconventional "pollution" of a wave nature. The electromagnetic fields of high voltage power lines, radio broadcasting and television stations, as well as a large number of electric motors are increasing. The overall level of acoustic noise increases (due to high transport speeds, due to the operation of various mechanisms and machines). On the other hand, ultraviolet radiation decreases (due to air pollution). Energy consumption per unit area is growing, and, consequently, heat output and thermal pollution increase. Under the influence of huge masses of multi-storey buildings, the properties of the geological rocks on which the city stands are changing.

The consequences of such phenomena for people and the environment have not yet been sufficiently studied. But they are no less dangerous than pollution of water and air basins and soil and vegetation cover. For residents of large cities, all this in a complex turns into a large overstrain of the nervous system. The townspeople quickly get tired, are prone to various diseases and neuroses, and suffer from increased irritability. Chronic ill health of a significant part of urban residents in some Western countries is considered a specific disease. It got the name "urbanite".

Ecological disasters of antiquity.

The word "ecology" is most often used not in a strict sense, but in a narrower one, denoting the relationship between man and the environment, those changes that occur due to anthropogenic pressure in the biosphere, as well as the problems of people, which have their source of force of nature. People are often inclined to idealize the "bright past", and vice versa, to experience apocaleptic moods in relation to the "hazy future".

Fortunately or not, it shows us that "every century is an iron age," and if we are talking about ecology, then ecological disasters on a regional scale, at least on a regional scale, took place even before the birth of Christ. Since ancient times, man has only done what he has changed, transformed the nature around him, and since ancient times the fruits of his activity have returned to him like a boomerang. Usually, anthropogenic changes in nature were superimposed on natural rhythms proper, intensifying unfavorable tendencies and hindering the development of favorable ones. Because of this, it is often difficult to distinguish between the negative influences of civilization and where the natural phenomena themselves. Even today, disputes do not stop, for example, over whether ozone holes and global warming are a consequence of natural processes or not, but the negativity of human activity is not questioned, the dispute can only be about the degree of influence.

Perhaps (although this fact has not been proven absolutely reliably), man made a great contribution to the emergence of the largest Sahara desert on the planet. Frescoes and rock paintings found there and dating back to 6-4 millennium BC show us the rich fauna of Africa. The frescoes depict buffaloes, antelopes, hippos. As studies show, the desertification of the savannah on the territory of modern Sahara began about 500,000 years ago, but the process took on a landslide character from 3 BC. e. The nature of life of the nomadic tribes of the South of the Sahara, the way of life, which has not changed too much since then. As well as data on the economy of the ancient inhabitants of the North of the continent, it can be assumed that slash-and-burn agriculture, felling of trees, contributed to the drainage of rivers on the territory of the future Sahara. And the immoderate grazing of livestock led to the knocking out of fertile soils by their hooves, the result of this was a sharp increase in soil erosion and land desertification.

The same processes destroyed several large oases in the Sahara and a strip of fertile land north of the desert after the arrival of the nomadic Arabs. The advance of the Sahara to the south today is also associated with the economic activities of the indigenous peoples. "The goats ate Greece" - this saying has been known since ancient times. Goat breeding destroyed woody vegetation in Greece, goats' hooves trampled the soil. The process of soil erosion in the Mediterranean in ancient times was 10 times higher in cultivated areas. There were huge landfills near the ancient cities. In particular, near Rome, one of the dump hills was 35 meters high and 850 meters in diameter. Rodents and beggars who fed there spread disease. Waste discharges into city streets, discharges of urban waste water into reservoirs, from where the same residents then took water. In the same Rome, there were about 1 million people, you can imagine how much they produced garbage.

Deforestation along the river banks has turned the once navigable water streams into shallow and drying up. Irrational reclamation led to soil salinization, the use of a plow turned over soil layers (it was actively used since the beginning of our era), deforestation led to massive soil degradation, and, according to many researchers, led to the decline of ancient agriculture, the economy as a whole and the collapse of the entire ancient culture ...

There were similar phenomena in the East. One of the largest and most ancient cities of the Harrap civilization (II-III millennium BC), Monchefno-Daro was flooded with water several times, more than 5 times, and each time for more than 100 years. The floods are believed to have been caused by the siltation of watercourses due to inept reclamation. If in India the imperfection of irrigation systems led to flooding, then in Mesopotamia to soil salinization.

The creation of powerful irrigation systems led to the emergence of extensive salt marshes due to a violation of the water-salt balance. Finally, due to environmental disasters caused by human activities, several highly developed cultures simply died. Such a fate befell, for example, the Mayan civilization in Central America and the culture of Easter Island. The Maya Indians, who built many stone cities, using hieroglyphics, who knew mathematics and astronomy better than their European contemporaries (first millennium AD), subjected the soil to such exploitation that the depleted land around the cities could no longer feed the population. There is a hypothesis that this caused the migration of the population from place to place, and led to the degradation of culture.

On Easter Island (Rapanui) in the Pacific Ocean, one of the most interesting cultures of the ancient world mysteriously arose and died. The island, rich in flora and fauna, was able to become the home of a highly developed culture. Inhabitants of Easter knew how to write, made sailings for many days. But at some point (probably around 1000 AD), the mass production of huge stone idols began on the island, possibly personifying the tribal leaders. During the construction of the statues and their delivery to the parking lot (there are only about 80 statues ready, weighing up to 85 tons), the forests of the island were reduced to nothing. The lack of wood impeded the construction of figures and the production of tools. The links between Rapanui Island and other islands of the Pacific Ocean were sharply reduced, the population became impoverished, the society degraded.

And lastly, Ecocide is a word that entered our circulation relatively recently, but we can find examples of ecocide even in antiquity. So, the warriors of Genghis Khan who invaded Turkestan and Western Asia destroyed irrigation facilities there, which in particular caused salinization and desertification of lands in the area of ancient Karezm, even the Amu Darya turned west because of this, which caused the decline of the Central Asian oasis of civilization. But more often, environmental problems arise from the economic activities of people.

Bibliography

Yuri Dorokhov. Ecological disasters of antiquity .

For the preparation of this work were used materials from the site eco.km.ru/