What's the most serious environmental problem we face today?

Air Quality deterioration

Environmentalists and their bogus scientific claims.
They do more harm than good to their cause with their bullshit.Also,third world emerging nation states with lax environmental standards in manufacturing.

Only 1% of the water on the planet is drinkable. We will likely start feeling the effects of shortages in the next few decades.

The unwillingness of people to have a rational, evidence-based discussion about the environment and to consider the possibility that certain changes would be desirable even if worries about imminent danger were mistaken.

Global warming. It is affecting all of the ecological systems on the planet.

I agree, Global warming is the most serious environmental problem we face today.

overpopulation is outstripping the available resources.

Industrial pollution.
Destroying parts of the food chain destroys the entire chain.

The global nature and range of environmental impacts from climate change means that it tops my list, at least if we define “today” as this century.

There are many serious issues, for example nurdles polluting the food chains in the oceans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_particle_water_pollution

But there’s only a grave and very, very serious problem compared to all the others:

Global warming and climate change and the political ignorance about it. I fear in 30 years from now scientists need to resort to the use of drastic geoengineering to save our ecosystems to remain capable of feeding 8 billion human beings.

This ignorance and the rejection of the precautionary principle is scandalous. People who tell others they are pro unborn life and pro drill baby drill approaches and therefore against the protection of born life 30 years into the future, are in fact hate-filled hypocrites with no respect for life at all.

The ever increasing human population. As Bill Hicks said, we’re “a virus with shoes”.

So I guess there needs to be a distinction between symptoms and causes.

The symptoms: Habitat destruction, pollution, overharvesting of natual resources, invasive species, climate change, etc..

The causes: .. burgeoning human population of which a significant and increasing percentage live, travel, ingest, and use products relying on vast quantities of non-renewable and polluting resources, while concurrently denying the impacts and shortsightedness of such societal directions.

By the way, watching the Australian Government shift back on several climate change policies supposedly due to the need to cover the costs of flooding (not to mention what’s on the horizon) raised again that worrysome scenario with respect to climate change: governments anouncing that they can’t afford mitigation, because they’re too busy paying for the costs of climate change….

…and round and round it goes…

The current inability of the regulatory structures to properly internalize the cost of negative externalities, particularly in the global market.

We get things cheaply because we get to slough off a lot of the costs to those far away, or to those in the future. Consumer costs need to reflect the negative externalities of production better – and I don’t think that the “command and control” regulatory structure is the most efficient way to do it.

@cockswain – Clean water is an enormous issue – I tend to view it as a human rights rather than environmental issue, though.

@AdamF – I’m with you on symptoms and causes. I don’t view global warming, regardless of your view on the matter, as an effect or symptom.

So how would you view it?

With respect to clean water…it doesn’t have to be either/or. It can be, and is, both an environmental and a human rights issue.

@AdamF – Good question, because I totally screwed up that statement! Global warming is something that I would view as a symptom/effect, not a cause. Sorry for the confusion.

No worries…I posed it as a question, as that comment didn’t seem at all consistent with someone honestly concerned about externalities.

:)

We need to realize this:

Using our atmosphere is not free.

Overusing it has a price.

Ultra-conservative climate change deniers are socialists, not capitalists. They want to keep the profits while the losses are being paid for by society. True capitalists know that you can only claim gains when you are willing to pay for your losses on your own.

Bullet trains would already be a reality in the US, for example in Texas, if the airlines had not acted like socialists making false claims that air travel is profitable while bullet trains are not. This scheme only works as long as the destruction of the atmosphere is treated like a free lunch. The bullet trains in Texas were buried by the local socialist Republicans.