Mankind's effect on the environment has been one of the most controversial social issues in recent years. The environment has constantly been in the forefront in most political debates. There are two sides to every story. Chris Bright says that yes, mankind is dangerously harming the environment. On the other side, Bjorn Lomborg, says the environment is in fact improving, not declining. I'm going to be discussing both sides of this issue and then giving my own opinion.
             Much of the information on development in the 1960s was based on the belief that all of mankind would prosper. It really ignored the strong effects of development on the environment and assumed that the readiness of raw materials would not be a factor. The thinking was that all people working together would get richer because they would be investing in new technologies that would bring more wealth to all.
             By the end of the 1960s, a marine scientist Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, had an enormous impact on the public. Her book noticed the loss of birds to pesticides. Her book also made all classes of the population to realize that the pollution affects everyone, not just the rich.
             Another professor, Paul Ehrlich, was worried about overpopulation being the demise of mankind. He thought that the population was about five times too large, and we were using our resources to not only overpopulate but to also over use our environment. We were poisoning the ecological systems which we were dependent on for all of our food and oxygen. Chris Bright said the world population would double to 8 billion sometime between 2010 and 2020. That means at the same time that the population is growing, people are striving to get richer, which in turn means that they would consume more, pollute more and use up all of our resources. He also thought that humans would disturb the ecological system.
             One example he used was what happened to Honduras in the...