Problemi ambientali: l’inquinamento oggi, in Cina e in Italia, nel confronto con l’inquinamento - PowerPoint Presentation

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Problemi ambientali: l’inquinamento oggi, in Cina e in Italia, nel confronto con l’inquinamento nella Gran Bretagna vittoriana, come descritto da Ch. Dickens, a Coketown, in “Hard Times”

Environmental

problems

:

nowadays

pollution

in China and in

Italy

, in

comparison

to Victorian Great Britain,

like

Ch

. Dickens

described

it

at

Coketown

, in “Hard

Times

”

Nowadays environmental problems Nowadays

society

is

worried

about

contemporary

environmental

problems

.

Pollution

is

a big

concern

in

every

industrialized

country

by

now

.

There

can

be

air

pollution

, water

pollution

, etc.

L

et

’s

see

what

the situation

is

in

both

China and Italy.

Air pollution in Milan

Beijing in a fog due to pollution

Chemical analysis of airItaly

Main

chemical

compounds

in

Italian polluted air are:Sulfure dioxide (SO2)Nitrogen oxide (NO)Carbon monoxide (CO)

PM2.5PM2.5 which can go directly to the lungs contains many toxic heavy metals and hazardous organic pollutants. It attacks bacteria and viruses in the environment, so its

particles have

a more

serious impact on

our

both the

environment and human health.

China

Water pollution in ChinaJune 2006A boy swimming in a polluted pond.

March 2013

A large amount of

dead

pigs were found in Huangpu River in Shanghai.

Present water pollutionMore than half of the most important water systems are polluted.17

large freshwater

lakes out of 31

are in bad

conditions .

More than 300 cities are in the list of “water

lacking places” according to The

United Nations Human

Settlement

Programme .

Is red a lucky color?In addition, government identified several hundreds

of what

has

been called "cancer villages."

They

are areas where

cancer rate

is

unusually high because of industrial pollution.

There are more than 1,700 water pollution incidents in China every year. Many Chinese rivers and lakes are polluted. China is facing a serious water pollution challenge. Much of our rivers, lakes and even our aquifers have been contaminated, especially in more

populated regions. This has posed a serious

risk

:

300 million

city residents

can’t

have safe

drinking water.

December 2011,two industrial factories in

HeNan

LuoYang

drained

effluents

into

river

which was an illegal

action.

NOW LET’S GO BACK TO 1st CENTURY A.D. AND TO 19th CENTURY…

Environmental problems in Latin literature: Plinius the Elder

We

could

consider

Plinius

the Elder as the first ecologist in the history of humanity. In the 1st century A.D., Plinius pays

attention

to

the

effects

of

environmental

strain, due

to

human

causes

.

For

example, in his work “Naturalis Historia” he condemns excessive mineral extraction, because it destroys Earth skeleton.

Pollution in Victorian Great Britain

During

the

Victorian

Age

, industrial

cities

suffered air pollution, squalor and disease. Here is a picture of Coketown

as

described

by

Charles Dickens in “Hard

Times

”.

According to Lee Jackson, author of “Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth”, mud was actually a euphemism in 19th century London.

"It was essentially composed of horse

dung.

"There were tens of thousands of working horses in London [with] inevitable consequences for the streets. And the Victorians never really found an effective way of removing

all that

, unfortunately

.“

Air

itself was generally filled with soot and smoke. It was famously said of the sheep in Regent's Park — there were still grazing sheep in Regent's Park in the mid-Victorian period — that you could tell how long they'd been in the capital by how dirty their coats were. They [went] increasingly from white to black over a period of

days.If you were a respectable person, you had to wash your face and hands several times during the day to make sure that you looked half decent.

Images of cities during the industrial revolution’s peak are settled in the popular mind. It’s a bustling Victorian metropolis, sooty and poverty-stricken, where pollution was an ever-present but necessary evil. City-dwellers may have coughed up black phlegm at every turn as they battled their way through constant coal smoke, but these poor conditions laid the groundwork for the prosperity and better conditions we enjoy today.

Heavy pollution caused by unregulated, inefficient coal burning probably hindered the growth of the most polluted cities, slowing down the pace of urban development as poor air quality both discouraged people from settling in cities and reduced productivity among workers. Even more than a century later, where the Victorian factory town still forms a template for urbanism in new industrial superpowers like China and India, this is highly significant.

During the Victorian age, thousands of people died of

cholera

as

a

result

of the

pollution

in the

Thames. Sewage was being discharged directly into the Thames. Despite the

smell

,

people

continued

to wash,

bathe

and drink from the

river

. Michael Faraday in

The Times

newspaper

described

the

polluted

state of the River

Thames

he had observed on a boat trip:«The whole of the river was an opaque pale brown fluid. Surely the river which flows for so

many

miles

through

London

ought

not to be allowed to became a fermenter sewer.»

Charles Dickens Charles Dickens (1812-1870) lived during the Victorian

Age

. He

was

a social

novelist

because

he described the social situation at his time. His works deal with the difficult living conditions of the poorest

social

classes

,

especially

of

exploited

children

who

lived

in

workhouses

.

Hard Times“Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays. You only knew the town was there because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that showed nothing but masses of darkness—

Coketown

in the distance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be seen

.”

Like many other descriptions of Coketown, this passage, from the Second Book, Chapter 1, emphasizes its somber smokiness. The murky soot that fills the air represents the moral filth that permeates the manufacturing town. Similarly, the sun’s rays represent both physical and moral beauty that Coketown lacks. While pollution from

factories

makes

Coketown

literally a dark, dirty place to

live in,

the suffering of its poor

and

cold self-interest of its rich inhabitants

make Coketown figuratively dark. In stating that Coketown’s appearance on the horizon is “suggestive of itself,” the narrator implies that Coketown is exactly what it appears to be. The dark “sulky blotch” hides no secrets but simply represents what is, on closer inspection, a dark, formless town. Built entirely of hard, red brick, Coketown has no redeeming beauty or mystery—instead, it embodies Mr. Gradgrind’s predilection for unaccommodating material reality.

New hope for our environmentM

ore

and more people have realized

the problem by

now

and

governments all over the world are working together to solve

the

problem, for which

aim to organize many meetings and international festivals like the “World Environment Day”.We can also protect our planet on our own by using eco-friendly products, using public transport and denouncing illegal factories, for example.

We

must believe

that tomorrow is

a different, better

day!

EDU-CHANGE PROGECT CLASS: VA LSTEACHER: Mrs. Maria RecchiaWORK TYPOLOGY: power point INVOLVED SUBJECTS: English, Latin, Science