Population, Consumption And Technological Change: The IPAT Model

The IPAT model is based on the population, the capacity to consume, and technological change. This model is a way for us to understand how population, consumption, and technology contribute to the environmental effects we are seeing. This can mean a number of things, as all the things listed on the IPAT model together contribute to different environmental impacts. The population as a whole, and certain populations in different countries or regions may contribute to environmental impacts whether they are the ones who are consuming, providing, or aiding to. Currently the world population is estimated to be over 7billion, the population has grown rapidly and continues to grow. With the population growing so rapidly this causes urbanization, …show more content…
In The USA the number of co2 emissions which is one of the greenhouse gasses, is extremely high in comparison to other countries, this is an indication of higher demand vs actual need. Although co2 emissions are naturally occurring, human activity greatly increases this and disturbs the atmosphere. Ways in which human activity contributes to high co2 emissions includes the burning of fossil fuels. In order to have things like electricity we need to burn fossil fuels, although renewable sources of energy have risen and may soon help reduce the amount of fossil fuels that are burned. We are aware that renewable energy is important and we are currently working on ways to maximize the amount of energy we can extract from these sources including solar power and not disposing of materials that can be re-used such as wood. Things like transportation also contribute to co2 emissions, this may be anything from everyday commute to transporting goods throughout the …show more content…
The rise of agriculture has really affected the environment, in order to provide for the billions of people in the world the demand for agriculture increases. In order to grow the amount of crops that are necessary to sustain us we often turn to deforestation. The problem with deforestation is even if the crops get replanted sometimes the soil is no longer fertile and the new crops die anyway. The effects of deforestation are serious, and not only affect the forest and surrounding areas but the whole world. Local negative effects of deforestation include using a high amount of pesticides and fertilizers, pesticides have one purpose and that is to kill certain organisms including plants and animals in order to allow the crops that are wanted to thrive. This is a problem because we are possibly ruining the environment by altering