14.ENVIROMENTAL PROBLEMS

14. ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Air pollution

Water pollution

Other

What can we do to protect our environment

Firstly, I would like to explain what is environment. We call the Earth's environment these four parts: the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the lithosphere and the biosphere, which have been in balance on the Earth for over millions of years. Let me explain second important expression in environmental topic, an ecosystem. An ecosystem is a group of living things and the whole place where they live. They all live together and need each other. For example, one kind of ecosystem in Czech Republic is a pond. It has special plants and typical fauna (fóna) such as freshwater fishes (like carp or trout).

Speaking about pond, one of the environmental problem in the Czech Republic is water pollution. Water is polluted by pesticides or toxic waste. Toxic waste kills fish in rivers, lakes and ponds. Wastes getting into our drinking water or chemicals getting into our food cause illness and diseases. One of the reason of the pollution is that there are many factories around rivers (for example, one of the most affected river is Ostravice) and many people burn coal. I believe that solution is on the politician side. Laws and regulations must be updated and followed.

Let just don’t focus on the Czech environmental problem, I hope that most of the world is experiencing global warming. Global warming is the general increase in air and water temperatures around the world. It’s normal for temperatures to sometimes be cooler for many hundreds of years, and then sometimes to be warmer. But this time, humans have caused the increase, with carbon from cars and factories. However, climatologist Dr Jan Pretel from the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute points out that it is not only the CO2 emissions that affect the temperature and climate, but also other human activities such as urbanization, soil degradation, etc”. Another Czech famous person, who is connected with global warming, is ex-president Václav Klaus. He is a strong opponent of climate change, claiming that the increase in the global temperatures has been small and the forecasts are speculative. I’m not a scientist, but in my opinion, the global warming is a big problem, just there aren’t many evident for someone.

Another big problem is the ozone hole. Scientists discovered that the ozone layer in the atmosphere over the Antarctic was missing. In other populated places such as Australia it was very thin. The ozone layer, about 30km above the Earth's surface, absorbs dangerous ultra violet (UV) radiation. UV causes damage to the DNA of cells and various cancers can result especially after sunbathing. Sheep at high altitude in the Andes are often blinded by UV. Ban the use of dangerous chemicals in aerosols, refrigerators and car air conditioning.

I believe that everyone can help to improve our environment. Even though, that in a global way it’s a small help. There are many ways we can help the environment: We can use special light bulbs, turn off the TV or radio when we aren’t really paying attention to it and especially it’s recycling. We can recycle all our paper, glass and plastic and this is an activity, which is very reachable in Czech republic- there are bins for recycling everywhere!