Globalisation has not only increased our knowledge of other societies, it has also offered us new insights into how, collectively, we are impacting on the world’s resources. National levels of damaging production of greenhouse gases have been a recent focus for global bodies. Countries such as China and India are often negatively highlighted (see Figure 1). They may complain that much of the damage to the Earth’s climate atmosphere occurred in the past when Western societies were busy industrialising. So, why should these newly developing nations today be told to act differently during the period of their own industrial and post-industrial growth? It is a good question.
People who live in rural, rather than urban, areas also tend to produce higher levels of emissions, because of their greater reliance on private transport — the car (see Figure 3). Not unreasonably, these people often complain about the lack of public transport provision for those living outside of main urban zones. Which makes the very good sociological point, of course, that the choices we make in life are very often shaped by structural features defined by the kind of societies and places in which we live. Restricting people who want to buy SUVs, or improving public transport systems for rural folk are political decisions, but they are ones that increasingly have key environmental consequences.
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