The sixteen sources of environmental problems in the 21st century

• Published in: Technological forecasting & social change Vol. 113; no. 1; pp. 23 - 25
• Main Author: Coates, Joseph F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Elsevier Inc 01.12.2016; Elsevier; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: 21st century; Citizen participation; Complex societies; Environment; Environmental aspects; Environmental degradation; Environmental impact; Environmental management; Public concern; Public interest; Resource management
• ISSN: 0040-1625; 1873-5509
• DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2016.10.053

Today's environmental problems are familiar, widely discussed, and subject to substantial public and private controversy. People know today's problems in this minimum sense. Processes are under way in several institutions to define and assess the scope, strength, and significance of the problems. The search for remedies, preventives, and compensatory actions is under way. Recognized problems are the core of public interest group, corporate, government, and individual citizen concerns about the environment. Anything substantially wrong in the complex and integrated society of the US must involve enormous complexities in the search for acceptable solutions or resolutions. However erratic, jagged, ideologically driven, resistant, and contradictory the various actors and actions may be, standing back they can see a general process under way for coming to better management of today's environmental problems. A conceptual problem at least as interesting as understanding and managing today's problems is anticipating the problems that will unfold over the next decades.