User talk:Maridani

Unequal Development and the Movement of Peoples�Technological and Environmental Change

Increased levels of migration and urbanization led to the global expansion of agricultural and industrial production. The multiplication of farms and factories intensified environmental threats. At the end of the twentieth century loss of rain forests, soil erosion, global warming, air and water pollution, and extinction of species threatened the quality of life and survival of human societies. Nuclear energy, jet engines, and tape recording were among the many World War II developments that later had an impact on consumers’ life. When applied to industries it increased the productivity, reduced labor requirements, and improved the flow of information that made markets more efficient.

But no product had more popularity than the computer. The first ones were big, expensive, and slow, only large corporations, governments, and universities could afford them. Transnational manufactures appeared which meant the companies moved the factories to places were workers could be hired for lower wages, anti-pollution measures weren’t that strict, or taxes too high, usually poor nations formed part of this. In the 1960s environmental activist and political leaders began warning about the devastating consequences that population growth, industrialization, and the expansion of agriculture had brought to the environment. Assaults to rain forests and redwoods, disappearance of species, and the poisoning of streams and rivers raised public consciousness. Environmental damage occurred worldwide.

Successful efforts appeared such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act were passed in the United States in the 1970s, which brought a better environment. Rivers in the United States and Europe improved, still in the U.S. more than thirty thousand deaths each year are attributed to exposure to pesticides and other chemicals.

Unequal Development and the Movement of Peoples In the 1960s world population increased to high levels and most of the increase was on poor nation, the combination of growing population with poverty generated the start of international migration. Social consequences of postwar economic developments include the thousands of homeless children who live in the urbanized streets of Rio’s banking district. The gap between the rich and the poor has grown much wider since 1945. One billion of the world’s people, approximately 20 percent, lived on less than $500 a year in 2001. This poverty concentrated in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

City life was betters than the one in the countryside. A World Bank study estimated that three out of four migrants to cities made economic gains. An unskilled migrant from the depressed northeast of Brazil could triple his or her income by moving to Rio de Janeiro. But as the rate of rural-to-urban migration increased, these benefits began to decrease. In 1990 in Mexico City more than thirty thousand people lived in garbage dumps. Many governments tried to slow the rate of migration and in other cases they used relocation, like Indonesia who since 1969 has relocated more than half a million residents.

Ethnic and racial tensions in host nations worsened, since native-born workers saw immigrants as competitors willing to work for lower wages and less likely to support unions. This led to political refugees facing violence in Germany, a new right-wing political movement in France, and an expanded border between the United States and Mexico.