Environmental Issues Journal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Environmental Issues Journal - Essay Example the temperature on earth continues to rise, the water cycle is further driven to evaporation, which allows water to be more available for storm formation but less accessible for some land masses. This increases the risk for flooding in the usual storm-afflicted areas, and the likelihood of drought in locations that get relatively less precipitation. The change in temperature also makes the storm tracks vary, making the weather less predictable. More importantly for humans, increasing temperature will lead to heat-related health incidents, air-quality respiratory illnesses, and low crop yields (Environment Protection Agency). The naturally-occurring gases contribute to climate change because the mechanisms that regulate their amounts in the atmosphere become less efficient. Although the temperature in earth started increasing since the 1800, the most rapid increase has been observed in the recent decades, most possibly due to human activity (Environmental Protection Agency). In the case of carbon dioxide, it is regulated by the carbon cycle. However, its increasing level in the atmosphere is partly attributed to industrialization that started 150 years ago, which emit the gas by burning fossil fuels to power the machineries. Currently, electricity generation and transportation add into the carbon dioxide emission. Methane from landfills, coal mines, oil and gas operations, and agriculture also add to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As well, the continuing deforestation depletes the plant population that absorbs carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (National Energy Information Center, 2004). Unfortunately, we cannot prevent the earth from heating up. This is because many greenhouse gases take a long time to be degraded, and the cycling of the heat from the ocean to the atmosphere is relatively slow. What we can do is to slow it down. When the problem of increasing levels of greenhouse gas continues, the rate at which temperature of the Earth’s surface rise

Human Rights, Law and Police Ethics in Ireland and India Essay

Human Rights, Law and Police Ethics in Ireland and India - Essay Example And they have organised this close similarity in their belief and adherence to democratic values into operational institutions of democratic practice such as the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, each deriving its power and authority from the constitutions that the people, in their respective constituent assemblies, have given to themselves. A unanimous opinion of scholarly commentators is that both the constitutions provide for the 'rule of law'. "... every official, from the Prime Minister down to a constable or a collector of taxes, is under the same responsibility for every act done without legal justification as any other citizen and all subordinates, though carrying out the commands of their official superiors, are as responsible for any act which the law does not authorise as is any private and unofficial person." (A V Dicey, Law of the Constitution,: MacMillan, London, 9th ed., 1950, p.194). An American interpretation of the Rule of Law equates it with the separation of powers between the three branches of government. Thus in exposing the theme the popular internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia, says: "In American law, the most famous exposition of the same principle (of Rule of Law) was drafted by John Adams for the constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in justification of the principle of separation of powers: "In the government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men." Massachusetts Constitution, Part The First, art. XXX (1780)" (from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, retrieved on May 25, 2006) Safeguarding the liberty of the individual citizen is a prime responsibility of the democratic state. The most effective safeguard of liberty is when 'government is a government of law and not of men'. To the extent that the rule of law prevails, to that extent also liberty has the chance of being safeguarded. Separation of powers is a necessary condition for safeguarding liberty; for, as Montesquieu said: "When the legislative and judicial powers are united in the same person or body of persons there can be no liberty; for apprehensions may arise that the same monarch or senate should pass tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical way. Again there is no liberty if the judicial power is not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to the arbitrary control and were it joined with