Question

Pollution is mainly caused by
(A) increase in population and decrease in natural resources
(B) industrialisation
(C) urbanization and deforestation
(D) all of the above.

Answer 1

Hint: Causes of pollution are mostly interconnected. Plants take up carbon dioxide from the environment which is one of the major constituents of pollution, excessive use of natural resources also leads to pollution.

Complete answer:
Emissions do increase as population increases, but not as fast. As the population of a city increases, the emissions also increase, but the per capita emissions decrease. There are fewer tons of emissions per person as cities grow because cities are more efficient than living dispersed over a large area.
Rapid population growth leads to environmental change. Rapid population growth has swelled the ranks of unemployed men and women at an alarming rate. Due to this, a large number of people are being pushed in ecologically sensitive areas such as hill sides and tropical forests. It leads to the cutting of forests for cultivation leading to several environmental changes. Besides all this, the increasing population growth leads to the migration of large numbers to urban areas with industrialization. This results in polluted air, water, noise and population in big cities and towns.
Deforestation is the permanent removal of trees to make room for something besides forest. This can include clearing the land for agriculture or grazing, or using the timber for fuel, construction or manufacturing. Forests cover more than 30% of the Earth's land surface, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Hence, the correct answer is option D.

Note:
If there are 10 times as many people in a city as there used to be, there will be only about 6 times as many local emissions over the same time period. So more people have a larger demand for goods and services, increasing the total emissions, but the emissions per capita decrease due to urbanization.