Air Pollution and the Political Ecology Framework: Sources, Dangers, and Possible Solutions

Jiarui Wu

《World Scientific Research Journal》 8卷1期 (2022/01) Pp. 33-40

https://doi.org/10.6911/WSRJ.202201_8(1).0006

摘要

This paper focus on a significant and widespread environmental problem -Air Pollution - through a political ecology approach. I will present the main sources of Air Pollution, the primary dangers of it, and how a political ecology framework understands this problem and propose solutions to it. In the first part of this paper, I will show the chief sources of air pollution, which include both the outdoor (such as emissions from factories and automobiles) and indoor air contamination (such as burning substances). I will also focus on the significant effects and consequences of Air pollution on human health, environmental change, and global warming. This section shows what is the major causes and results of this environmental problem. In the second part of this paper, I will present one of the most popular explanations of Air Pollution - the modernization theory. This mainstream explanation explores the causes of the Air Pollution problems but ascribes its essential reason to economic and social development. The key problem is human development will never stop, environmental problems exist and continuously grow in human's modern history. Also, the economic advance cannot solve the Air Pollution and the solutions to this problem will not naturally grow up from economic development. Therefore, a political ecology framework might criticize this problem, which I will present in the third section of this paper, and propose solutions to it. It requires political regulations to regulate the sources of Air Pollution and control the emissions. To sum up, I present the major causes and results of Air pollution, the mainstream explanation of this problem (modernization theory), and how a political ecology framework might criticize this theory and propose solutions to it.

關鍵字

Air Pollution ； Political Ecology ； Global Warming ； Modernization Theory ； Automobiles ； Emissions ； Solutions

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