Definition of the environmental crisis, its signs. Modern environmental crisis

Ecological crisis- this is a tense state of relationship between society and nature, characterized by a discrepancy between the development of productive forces and production relations in society and the resource-ecological capabilities of the biosphere. As a result, the biosphere begins to threaten life itself on Earth.

Causes of the environmental crisis

Among the causes of depletion, pollution and destruction natural environment emanating from anthropogenic human activity can be distinguished as objective and subjective.

Towards objective the following can be attributed:

1. The ultimate abilities of earthly nature for self-purification and self-regulation;

2. Physical limitation of land territory within one planet;

3. Waste-free production in nature and waste-free human production;

4. Incomplete knowledge and use by man of the laws of natural development.

Towards subjective The causes of the environmental crisis include:

1. Disadvantages of the state’s organizational, legal and economic activities in environmental protection;

2. Defects environmental education and education;

3. Ecological ignorance - reluctance to study the laws of the relationship between man and the environment;

4. Ecological nihilism - reluctance to be guided by these laws, disdain for these laws.

Degradation of the natural environment- this is the destruction or significant disruption of ecological connections in nature, ensuring the exchange of substances and energy within nature, between nature and man, caused by human activity carried out without taking into account the laws of development of nature.

Criteria for an environmental crisis and the approaching environmental disaster:

Biosocial criteria:

As a result of increased radioactivity and chemical pollution of the environment, the number of pathologies of intrauterine development, malignant tumors, mental disorders, etc. increases. Environmental mutagens in the form chemical compounds, ionizing radiation, viruses penetrate cells and affect their genetic program - causing mutations. Mutations are sudden, natural (spontaneous) or caused, artificial (induced) inherited changes in genetic material that lead to changes in certain characteristics of the body.

Biosphere criteria:

1. Transition of renewable resources into non-renewable ones:

Soil condition. Due to weathering and anthropogenic pollution, 30-40% of the black soil has already died.

The planet's water supply. Humanity annually discharges up to 1.5 thousand cubic kilometers of wastewater. To purify them, more water is needed than in rivers in total. Globe. As a result of acid rain, the pH in water bodies decreases, microorganisms and fish die. The supply of fresh water suitable for drinking is sharply declining.

Self-sustaining biotas. For example, a forest: everything is balanced in it. The disappearance of one species entails the death of others. And since the forests are brutally cut down, it dies species diversity(hence the Red Book). At one time, forests covered 60-75% of the surface of Germany, now less than 25%.

Maintaining oxygen regime. Oxygen is normal atmospheric air is restored (photosynthesis). However, its supply on Earth is gradually decreasing. Rainforests- the main supplier of oxygen to the Earth's atmosphere - 50% cut down, forests temperate zone- by 40%. From 60 to 80% of the plankton in the world's oceans died as a result of the oil slick spill. And these are the “lungs” of our planet.

2. Global biosphere environmental problems:

« Greenhouse effect ». The accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is one of the main causes of the greenhouse effect, which increases from the heating of the Earth by the rays of the Sun. This gas does not pass solar heat back to Space. Consequences for Russia: redistribution of precipitation throughout the country; an increase in the number of droughts; changes in river flow regime and operating mode of hydroelectric power stations; the top layer of permafrost will melt (and this is 60% of the territory of Russia), the stability of the foundations of engineering structures will suffer; The level of the World Ocean will rise, which will lead to flooding of low-lying coasts.

« Ozone holes » . Ozone - triatomic oxygen molecules - is scattered above the Earth at an altitude of 15 to 50 km. If we hypothetically compress this shell at normal atmospheric pressure, you get a layer of 2 mm, but without it life on the planet is impossible. Stratospheric ozone layer Protects people and wildlife from harsh ultraviolet and soft x-rays in the ultraviolet part of the solar spectrum. Each lost percentage of ozone on a global scale causes up to 150 thousand additional cases of blindness from cataracts, and increases the number of skin cancers by 2.6%. UVR suppresses the body's immune system.

The main factors that destroy the Earth's ozone screen:

1) the use of freons in technology, perfumery and chemical products,

2) launching powerful rockets,

3) flights of jet aircraft in high layers of the atmosphere,

4) testing of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons,

5) destruction of natural ozonizer - forests.

The ecological crisis is characterized by Reimers,(1992) not so much by the increased impact of humans on nature, but by the sharp increase in the influence of nature modified by humans on social development(boomerang effect).

Ecological boomerang - an expression to denote a difficult situation caused by poor consideration of environmental laws, as a result of which man's influence on nature is turned against him.

The boomerang effect comes in two forms:

1) in the form of an acute impact - drying out of forests from acid rain, thinning of the ozonosphere from the effects of ozone-depleting substances, etc.;

2) in the form of permanent, chronic processes such as gradual climate change (including the “greenhouse effect”).

Even the early Christians predicted the end of the world, the end of civilization, the death of humanity. The world will do without a person, but a person cannot exist without the natural environment.

At the turn of the XX-XXI centuries. civilization faces a real threat of a global environmental crisis.

Under environmental crisis understands first of all the burden of various environmental problems which currently hangs over humanity.

Intervention in the natural cycle began by man at the moment when he first threw grain into the ground. Thus began the era of man’s conquest of his planet.

But what prompted primitive man to take up agriculture and then cattle breeding? First of all, at the dawn of their development, the inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere destroyed almost all ungulates, using them as food (one example is mammoths in Siberia). The lack of food resources led to the fact that most of the individuals of the then human population became extinct. This was one of the first natural crises to hit people. It should be emphasized that the extermination of certain large mammals It might not have been universal. A sharp decline in numbers as a result of hunting leads to the division of the species' range into separate islands. The fate of small isolated populations is deplorable: if a species is not able to quickly restore the integrity of its range, its inevitable extinction occurs due to epizootics or a shortage of individuals of one sex with an overabundance of the other.

The first crises (not just lack of food) forced our ancestors to look for ways to maintain the size of their population. Gradually, man began to take the path of progress (how could it be otherwise?). The era of the great confrontation between man and nature has begun.

Man moved more and more away from the natural cycle, which is based on substitution natural parts and zero waste natural processes.

Over time, the confrontation turned out to be so serious that a return to the natural environment became impossible for humans.

In the second half of the 20th century. humanity is facing an environmental crisis.

Theorist of modern ecology N.F. Reimers defined the ecological crisis as a tense state of relations between humanity and nature, characterized by a discrepancy between the development of productive forces and production relations in human society and the resource-ecological capabilities of the biosphere. One of the characteristics of the environmental crisis is the increasing influence of nature changed by humans on social development. Unlike a catastrophe, a crisis is a reversible state in which a person is an active party.

In other words, environmental crisis— imbalance between natural conditions and human impact on the natural environment.

Sometimes an environmental crisis refers to a situation that has arisen in natural ecosystems under the influence of natural disasters (floods, volcanic eruptions, drought, hurricanes, etc.) or as a result of anthropogenic factors (environmental pollution, deforestation).

Causes and main trends of the environmental crisis

The use of the term “ecological crisis” to refer to environmental problems takes into account the fact that man is part of an ecosystem that is modified as a result of his activities (primarily production). Natural and social phenomena are a single whole, and their interaction is expressed in the destruction of the ecosystem.

It is now obvious to everyone that the environmental crisis is a global and universal concept that concerns every person living on Earth.

What specifically could indicate an approaching environmental disaster?

Far from it full list negative phenomena indicating general ill-being:

• global warming, greenhouse effect, shift in climate zones;
• ozone holes, destruction of the ozone screen;
• reduction of biological diversity on the planet;
• global environmental pollution;
• non-recyclable radioactive waste;
• water and wind erosion and reduction of fertile soil areas;
• population explosion, urbanization;
• depletion of non-renewable mineral resources;
• energy crisis;
• a sharp increase in the number of previously unknown and often incurable diseases;
• lack of food, a permanent state of hunger for most of the world's population;
• depletion and pollution of the resources of the World Ocean.

depends on three factors: population size, average level of consumption and widespread use of various technologies. The degree of environmental damage caused by a consumer society can be reduced by changing agricultural patterns, transport systems, urban planning methods, the intensity of energy consumption, revising industrial technologies, etc. In addition, when technology changes, the level of material demands may be reduced. And this is gradually happening due to the rise in cost of living, which is directly related to environmental problems.

Separately, it should be noted the crisis phenomena occurring as a result of the increasing frequency of Lately local military actions. An example of an environmental disaster caused by an interstate conflict was the events that took place in Kuwait and nearby countries on the Persian Gulf coast after Operation Desert Storm in early 1991. Retreating from Kuwait, the Iraqi occupiers blew up over 500 oil wells. A significant part of them burned for six months, poisoning them with harmful gases and soot. large territory. From drilling wells that did not ignite, oil flowed like a fountain, forming large lakes, and flowed into Persian Gulf. This is where it came out a large number of oil from damaged terminals and tankers. As a result, about 1,554 km 2 of the sea surface and 450 km of the coastline were covered with oil. Most of the birds died sea ​​turtles, dugongs and other animals. The fire flares burned 7.3 million liters of oil every day, which is equal to the volume of oil imported daily by the United States. Clouds of soot from the fires rose to a height of 3 km and were carried by winds far beyond the borders of Kuwait: black rain fell in Saudi Arabia and Iran, black snow in India (2000 km from Kuwait). Air pollution from oil soot has affected people's health, as soot contains many carcinogens.

Experts have determined that this disaster caused the following negative consequences:

• Thermal pollution (86 million kWg/day). For comparison: the same amount of heat is released due to a forest fire over an area of ​​200 hectares.
• Burning oil produced 12,000 tons of soot every day.
• 1.9 million tons of carbon dioxide were generated daily. This amounts to 2% of the total C0 2 that is released into the Earth's atmosphere due to the combustion of mineral fuels by all countries of the world.
• Emissions of S0 2 into the atmosphere amounted to 20,000 tons daily. This is 57% of the total amount of S0 2 supplied daily from the furnaces of all US thermal power plants.

The essence of the environmental threat is that the ever-increasing pressure on the biosphere from anthropogenic factors can lead to a complete breakdown of the natural cycles of reproduction of biological resources, self-purification of soil, water, and atmosphere. This will cause a sharp and rapid deterioration of the environmental situation, which could lead to the death of the planet's population. Ecologists are already warning about the growing greenhouse effect, the spreading of ozone holes, the loss of ever-increasing amounts of acid precipitation, etc. The listed negative trends in the development of the biosphere are gradually becoming global in nature and pose a threat to the future of humanity.

Global(from the French globalus - universal) - these are problems that are of vital importance for all humanity. Their decision determines not only the foreseeable, but also the distant future. Global problems can be divided into three groups:

- intersocial(contradictions in the society-society system) – the problem of war and peace, the establishment of a new economic order;

- anthroposocial(contradictions in the society-person system) – demographic problem, eradication of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, health issues;

- natural-social(contradictions in the human-society-nature system) – providing people with raw materials, energy, fresh water, environmental problems, exploration of the world's oceans and outer space.

3. Modern environmental crisis: concepts and causes. Indicators of the global environmental crisis (GEC).

Since its inception, human activity has repeatedly contradicted nature, which has given rise to crises of various scales. But due to the small population and its poor technical equipment, they never took on a global scale. A person could exhaust some resource using the methods available to him or destroy nature and ecosystems in spaces of limited size. Today we are on the threshold of a new radical restructuring of the biosphere. The anthropogenic load on the biosphere is constantly growing, and at an ever-increasing speed, which threatens the loss of its stability.

In turn, from the point of view of synergetics, 1 the more unstable the system is, the closer it is to the moment of aggravation or to the point of bifurcation, the more sensitive it becomes to the entire mass of influences introduced into it from various levels of existence.

An ecological crisis is understood as changes in the biosphere or parts over a large area, accompanied by the transformation of the environment and systems as a whole into a new quality.

An environmental crisis means an impending threat to the stability of the environment as a whole, or more precisely, a threat to the stability of human existence and society.

The main feature of the modern environmental crisis and its difference from previous ones is its global nature. It has spread or threatens to spread throughout the entire planet. The causes of the environmental crisis and the global environmental problems generated by it can be summarized as follows.

1) Population explosion, as a result of which, over the course of every ten years, the population increases by an amount equal to the population of China (1.1 billion people). This largely provokes food, energy, raw materials problems and, as a consequence, an environmental problem.

2) The colossal scale of human activity. Humanity, according to V.I. Vernadsky, becomes a powerful geological force. For example, a person currently extracts and transports by all types of his activities more hard rocks (approximately 140-150 billion tons/year) than occurs as a result of the action of water, wind, living organisms and other natural forces (115-120 billion tons). t/year).

3) Irrational consumption of primary natural resources, most actively used in social production and the world economy. Modern man involves in production and consumption an amount of matter and energy that is tens and hundreds of times greater than its purely biological needs; it is estimated that the people of the Earth need about 2 million tons every day. food, 10 million tons drinking water and billions of cubic meters of oxygen. The consumption of resources and energy for industrial purposes cannot be compared with the scale that is necessary to satisfy biological needs. Almost 300 million tons of substances and materials are mined and processed per day. 30 million tons of fuel are burned, about 2 billion m 3 of water and more than 65 billion m 3 of oxygen are removed from sources. People's needs for resources are becoming incommensurate with the capabilities of the biosphere.

4) Technocratic thinking. The ancient cult of nature was replaced by the cult of technology. The most widespread ideology is the conquest of nature and its extreme exploitation. This approach was expressed in such catchphrases as “Man is the king of nature”, “We do not need to wait for favors from nature, it is our task to take them from her.” The ecological crisis, which manifests itself as an imbalance between conditions and influences in the environment, has arisen as a result of human “exploitation mentality” towards nature.

There is no consensus in science on the question of how dangerous the current environmental situation is. Three fundamental positions can be distinguished:

humanity and the world have already entered a global environmental catastrophe;

the current situation is a global environmental crisis that could lead to disaster by the middle of the 21st century;

no global crisis, and especially since there is no catastrophe, there are only local environmental crises and the potential risk of regional 1 .

The second position is shared by a large group of scientists, both domestic (N.F. Reimers, N.N. Moiseev, V.A. Krasilov, V.A. Zubakov, etc.) and foreign (R. Dorst, B. Commoner, A. Peccei, A. King, W. Schneider, etc.). Let us consider in more detail the main arguments of the supporters of this position. Based on their content, the indicators (indices) are divided into two groups (Table 1). The first is associated with the biosocial features of the development of society, the second with its technogenic activities.

Table 1. Main indicators (indices) of the global environmental crisis, according to V.A. Zubakov (1998)

Nature-conquering worldview ideology is a fundamental feature that determined the emergence of HES and the distinctive feature of civilization. It was she who predetermined the phenomenal scientific and technological progress of civilization over 10 thousand years ago. years of its history and especially over the last century. But it was also the cause of a global ecocrisis that threatened the existence of humanity. The nature-conquering ideology received its philosophical content in the works of R. Descartes, F. Bacon and others. Its echoes can be found in biblical texts.

The second biosocial parameter of HES is exponential growth of the Earth's population. If in order to reach the first billion for humanity, and it reached this level during the time of A.S. Pushkin in 1830 took 2 million years, but it took 100 years for the second billion to appear. the third is 33 years old, the fourth is 14 years old, the fifth is 13 years old and the sixth (1998) is only 10 years old. American biologist Paul Ehrlich called this unprecedentedly sharp jump in the growth of the world's population a “demographic explosion.”

Socio-economic differentiation of the countries of the South and the North third indicator of HES. If the countries of the North, having created a “consumer society,” are prospering, then the countries of the south are impoverished. The income ratio of the richest and poorest 20% has changed twofold over the past 29 years, from 30:1 to 59:1 1 . This indicates a rare increase in the instability of the socio-ecological and political structure of the modern world, which directly leads to major ethnic conflicts and a clash of “civilizations”.

The fourth parameter of the HES is growing scale of military conflicts. It is estimated that during the history of civilization, humanity has experienced 14,550 wars, that it has been at peace for only 292 years, and that about 3.6 billion people have died in wars 2 . Material losses and costs associated with wars, and above all human losses, are also growing exponentially. Thus, in the First World War, 9.5 million were killed and 20 million people died from wounds and illnesses. During the Second World War, human losses amounted to 55 million people. After 1945 there were 180 local wars in which 20 million people died.

Weapons of mass destruction are now classified into 5 types: conventional, nuclear, chemical, biological and environmental. The last three types have practically already been tested in recent wars (Vietnam War, Kuwait, Iraq). In particular, Iraq's use of unknown bacteriological or chemical agents is evidenced by the fact that 30 thousand American soldiers were stricken with an unknown disease, and their families are now producing children with pathological deformities and Down syndrome 3 .

Let's briefly look at technogenic indices. Under technogenesis, academician A.E. Fersman understood “the totality of chemical and technological processes produced by human activity and leading to the redistribution of the chemical masses of the earth’s crust” 1. The goal of technogenesis is the use of non-renewable resources, i.e. mineral. These resources are now close to exhaustion. However, for the first half of the 21st century. they may be sufficient provided that consumption growth stabilizes.

The situation is more complicated with the consequences of technogenesis, the most important of which is the production of waste in ever-increasing amounts. There is no waste at all in the biosphere. It functions on the basis of closed cycles of matter and energy. Waste production is a feature of civilization. Philosophically, the fifth criterion of HES can be defined as displacement of natural by artificial, as a fundamental change in the very structure of nature.

Geochemical pollution of the environment“First of all, this is atmospheric pollution, which has given rise to such phenomena as the “greenhouse effect”, “ozone holes”, and acid rain.”

According to scientists' forecasts 2, by the middle of the 21st century. the concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide - CO 2, methane - CH 4, nitrous oxide - N 2 O, etc.) will double, and the average temperature on Earth will increase by 3.5 +1.0 0 C. Among the consequences of catastrophically rapid warming can be noted the following: drying climate and a sharp drop in crop yields; thawing of “permafrost”; changing the boundaries of natural climatic zones with adverse consequences for vegetation; the potential threat of surges - instantaneous descents into the ocean of part of the ice shelves of Antarctica. Which creates a real threat of flooding of the most populated coastal plains and the largest cities on the planet.

Ozone forms a thin screen in the stratosphere at an altitude of 15-20 km that absorbs hard ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Without it, life on Earth would be impossible.

“Acid rain”, formed as a result of the release of sulfur and nitrogen compounds into the atmosphere, has a detrimental effect on the plant world, as well as fresh water bodies, especially lakes, the acidity of which sharply increases and the inhabitants die. In Scandinavia, in our North and in North America, more than 150 thousand completely dead lakes have already appeared.

Geochemical poisoning of biota can be divided into three independent parameters: metallization, chemotoxification and radiotoxication.

Under metallization The biosphere should be understood as a sharp increase in the concentration of heavy metals on the Earth's surface: mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, etc. Modern man inhales lead with ethyl gasoline vapors. In the US, inhalation of these fumes is associated with the premature death of 300,000 people each year.

Chemotoxication The biosphere is called the rapidly progressing process of saturating it with artificial chemical compounds, primarily various polyvinyl chloride materials, plastics, pesticides and herbicides. The total number of such connections exceeded 400 thousand. All these chlorine products are very stable and toxic, capable of accumulating in living organisms and affecting the genetic apparatus.

Radiotoxication biosphere occurs as a result of nuclear weapons testing, accidents such as the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The problem of radioactive waste disposal remains an extremely complex and still unresolved problem.

Analysis of the above indices shows: firstly, that the threshold of the global environmental crisis has already been passed; and secondly, that geochemical parameters predominate - “This allows us to define GES as mainly geochemical pollution of the environment with waste products of humanity, which has exceeded the ecologically permissible population size” 1 .

The search for the causes of environmental degradation and the solution of environmental problems, which have arisen, although not recently, began quite late in the history of human society. However, as life shows, the study of ecological balance reduces the possibility of its restoration and investment of capital brings greater profits. They didn't appear economic problems, until they threatened the very way of organizing production process, an organization that is based on and cannot be carried out without increasingly exploiting two sources of wealth: the land and the worker.

Moreover, the answers given to the question of why environmental disturbances occur are often varied and incomplete, and some of them are class-based and cannot be considered scientific at all. For example, the central problem, due to which the specific difficulties of the natural environment are only symptoms, is that humanity is systematically reducing the capabilities of the natural environment, destroying what it has. However, this answer is not complete, because... does not reveal the socio-economic relations in which production is carried out, the features of technologies leading to environmental violations, because degradation of the natural environment arises not only as a consequence of the “development” of nature with the development of productive forces, but also when these productive forces are used in production within certain social-ecological relations. Production, from the very beginning guided only by profit, showed its destructive attitude towards the natural environment.

Today, ecological imbalance comes in many forms. It can be said that there is a consensus that the main forms are: irrational exploitation of non-renewable natural resources (sources of raw materials and energy), accompanied by the danger of quickly being depleted; pollution of the biosphere with harmful waste; a large concentration of economic facilities and urbanization, the impoverishment of natural landscapes and a reduction in free areas for recreation and treatment. The main reasons for these forms of expression of environmental crisis are rapid economic growth and accelerated industrialization leading to urbanization.

Rapid economic growth based on the development of productive forces also ensures their further development, improving working conditions, reducing poverty and increasing social wealth, increasing the cultural and material wealth of society and increasing average life expectancy.

But at the same time, the consequence of accelerated economic growth is the degradation of nature, i.e. disturbance of ecological balance. With the acceleration of economic development, the economic development of nature accelerates, the use of natural materials and all resources. With the exponential growth of production, all production resources also grow, the use of capital increases, the waste of raw materials and energy and solids and wastes, which increasingly pollute the environment so that the pollution of nature occurs along an exponential curve.

The consequences of urbanized economic growth for the natural environment are multifaceted; first of all, the more intensive use of natural resources, primarily irreplaceable ones, puts us in danger of their complete depletion. At the same time, with the increasing exploitation of natural resources, the amount of waste introduced into nature increases. The enormous waste of raw materials and energy that accompanies industrial development directs modern technology n quick search of natural resources. And the production of secondary products increases the mass and number of new substances that do not exist in nature and that do not have natural assimilators, thus, more and more materials appear in the ecosphere that are not inherent to it and which it cannot process or use in its life processes. One can freely agree that the specificity of modern ecological situation stems both from the increasing human impact on nature and from qualitative changes caused by the quantitative growth of productive forces in the world. Both the first and second points are based on modern scientific and technological progress, the dominant production technology, which are mainly created by developed capitalist countries. The development of equipment and technology is primarily focused on one-sided exploitation natural sources, and not on their renewal and expanded reproduction, this leads to accelerated development of rare non-renewable resources. New technology, in turn, introduces changes into the natural environment that are not evolutionarily adapted to the prevailing conditions in it, whether we are talking about new processes and reactions, or mass production in a short time. These relatively rapid changes differ from the rhythm of natural processes, where mutations occur over fairly long periods of time. This discrepancy between the evolutionary course of natural macroprocesses and changes as a result of human activity in individual components of the natural system creates significant disturbances in the natural environment and is one of the factors of the present environmental crisis in the world.

The degradation of the natural environment and the resulting environmental disturbances are not the product of technological development alone and are an expression of temporary and random disturbances. On the contrary, the degradation of the natural environment is an indicator of the deepest industrial civilization and a super-intensive mode of production. Since the industrial system of capitalism greatly increases the possibilities of production and power over the natural, it also contains the seeds of a systematic dispersion of human and natural forces. Economic expansion of production potential, where the only rational thing is that it brings profit (power, money and opportunities), is achieved at the cost of dispersing natural sources and ambient... Production based on three pillars: profit, opportunity, prestige - on artificial stimulation of needs, artificial wear and tear and accelerated replacement of production products becomes one of the main causes of disruption of nature. Therefore, protecting the natural environment from degradation, or rather protecting the natural environment, and improving modern society cannot occur in inhumane relationships based on the blind pursuit of profit.

In an economy that aims to maximize profits, there is a combination of factors: natural sources (air, water, minerals, which were until now free and for which there was no substitute); means of production, representing real estate capital (which wears out and needs to be replaced with more powerful and efficient ones), and labor force (which also needs to be reproduced). The struggle to achieve a goal has a decisive impact not only on the way in which these factors are combined, but also on the relative importance that is attached to each of these factors. If, in the combination of these factors, the enterprise is only interested in producing the maximum commodity value at the minimum cost expressed in money (monetary), then it strives to ensure the greatest functioning of rare and expensive machines, and as for the physical and mental health of workers, they can be changed frequently , and it's inexpensive. The company also strives to reduce its costs and does this mainly through environmental balance, because the destruction of ecological balance does not weigh on them. The logic of an enterprise is to produce something that can be sold at a high price, even if valuable (useful) things can be produced at lower costs.