In today’s world, continuous development and progress are undoubtedly important, as they are related to the improvement of people’s living standards. However, as environmental problems become more and more serious, the debate between environmental problems and economic development also rise. Some individuals say that economic development is more important than the environment, while others argue that environmental issues are the primary issues that people should focus on. This essay will discuss both views, but the latter perspective is emphasized.
On the one hand, environmental problems such as climate change have become a urgent issues, if it is not be treated seriously or rapidly, it would cause a damage to human well-being. Since the carbon emissions are widely produced and emitted into atmosphere by human activities such as over-burning the fossil fuels including gas and oil. It has brought a huge negative impact on environment, which lead to climate change. According to the WHO, there is a huge number of people are suffering from severe water shortages due to droughts which is caused by climate change, and this number is expected to rise to 250,000 between 2030 and 2050. Also, because of lack of food security and water security, the Sustainable Development Goals are affected significantly.
On the other hand, opponetes believe that economic development is essential, since it is the fundation of every development like research in various fields such as science and technology, also without funds, people are not able to solve any climate change problems. However, this view ignores a fact which climate change can bring a huge impact on economic losses. For example, climate change has lead the sea level increased which is caused flooding exist in the regions. In this case, houses and infrastructure are distroyed, while the income and property are also affected.
To sum up, even though economic development is important, but environmental problems can bring more problems to human beings, which will not only threaten human health and security, but also economy would be affected significantly.