Environmental pollution is a serious issue and it is important to take steps on an individual level to reduce it. But now, since it is becoming an international issue, it is time to take environmental protection to a higher level. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Environmental pollution has become a pressing issue recently. By now, it had even evolved to an international problem. It is argued that to protect the environment effectively higher level of involvement is needed than simple individual level. There are two reasons, notably the need of regulating individuals and imposing harmonised government policies that will be outlined in the following.
Firstly, regulation of individuals is required at social level. The reason for this is that there will always be careless individuals who harm the environment, for instance, by littering in the nature while hiking or using plastic shopping bags excessively. Thus, environment protection cannot be effective if based solely on individuals. This is why some sort of regulation is needed at higher level.
The second reason is that harmonised government policies should be imposed. As the effects of environmental pollution do not stop at national borders but largely affect the living conditions of polluting countries’ neighbours too supra-national coordination is required. The emission of CO2 due to burning of fossil fuels, for instance, occur within countries, however, it pollutes the whole climate. In such circumstances individual actions are simply not sufficient as they cannot reduce cross-border pollution in an effective way. Therefore this has to be tackled at higher level by imposing harmonised government policies.
In conclusion, both the need of regulating individuals and that of imposing harmonised government policies indicate environmental protection at higher level. The environmental protection at social and supra-national level, in turn, is required to reduce environmental pollution in an effective manner. It can be foreseen that even climate-change denial countries will take the environmental pollution issue more seriously in the future and do not leave solely for individuals to solve it.
Word count: 285