Environmental protection, in my opinion, is the most burning problem of today. Nature is something that cannot be constructed by man. Once it is gone it is gone forever. It sounds strange, but it is the man (the most intelligent but the most thoughtless animal) that causes most of the problems. About 2 hundred years ago man lived in harmony with his environment because industry wasn`t greatly developed. Today the situation is rather different, the contradictions between man and nature are acquiring a dramatic character. Newspapers and magazines write about the pollution of the air, of the world’s oceans, seas, rivers and lakes, and the destruction of the ozone layer.
People of many cities suffer from smog. Industrial enterprises emit tons of harmful substances and they are the main reason for acid rains. Rains, full of acid chemicals change lakes, rivers, as well as forests. Acid water is like vinegar or lemon juice. It hurts when it gets in your eyes. It also kids the plants and animals that usually five in water. That is why various kinds of fish are dying too. In some large areas trees are dying not just one here and there, but whole forests. Acid rain is the cause. It makes the earth more acidic and some kinds of trees can’t live in the soil that is very acidic. Forests are disappearing and this upsets the oxygen balance. Ecologists and scientists have also proved the negative effects of acid rain on larger animals. They study the relation between living things and their environment and say that this may lead our planet to a global catastrophe.
And even greater environmental threats are nuclear power stations. Everybody knows how tragic the consequences of Chernobyl disaster are. People began to realize that environmental problems are very dose. About 160 countries – members of the United Nations Organizations – have set up environmental protection agencies. They have worked out hundreds of projects to protect nature.
It was the problem of Lake Baikal that made our people think seriously about the principals of man – nature relations. Resolutions and laws on environmental protection began to appear in the 1960-ies, but these decisions didn’t solve the problem then. The Aral sea is on the brink of extinction. If no immediate measures are taken it will disappear. The disaster in the Aral puts in a dangerous situation the health and lives of nearly 3 million people living by the sea.
The same can be said about a great number of towns and Nizhny Tagil in particular. It is one of the most polluted industrial cities in Russia. It is suffering great ecological problems. The main polluters are: the iron and steel plant, the chemicals and plastics plant, the coking plant and a lot of other smaller plants. According to the sanitary-epidemiological station about 2 tons of harmful substances per person are discharged into the air every year. As a result of this pollution the residents of N. Tagil have suffered serious health problems. The city has the highest disease rates for cancer, asthma and heart and lung disease. Russia’s federal financial ministry of environment designated N. Tagil an environmental emergency zone, so that the city could receive federal financial assistance to improve the local and environmental and human health conditions. The United States has been providing technical assistance for years by conducting environmental training courses to help the local population in getting an environmental education and by participating in pollution prevention activities.
