Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and Sustainability

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Chapter 1

• Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and
  Sustainability

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What is Environmental Science?

• Environment
• the sum total of all living and nonliving things
  that affect any living organism.
• Environmental Science
• An interdisciplinary study that integrates
  information and ideas from the natural sciences
  and the social sciences
• Environmentalism
• Socio-political movement dedicated to passing
  environmental legislation, promoting solutions to
  environmental problems, and protesting harmful
  environmental activities.
• From Miller, G.Tyler. (2007) Living in the
  Environment, Belmont, CA Thompson Learning, Inc.

3
Goals of Environmental Science

• The goals of environmental science are to learn
• how nature works.
• how the environment affects us.
• how we affect the environment
• how we can live more sustainably without
  degrading our life supporting system.
• From Miller, G.Tyler. (2007) Living in the
  Environment, Belmont, CA Thompson Learning, Inc.

4
Ecological Footprint

• Go to www.myfootprint.org
• Consider the four consumption categories
• In which category(s) did your group do better
  than the national average?
• In which category(s) did your group do worse than
  the national average?
• What personal practices might you change to
  reduce your ecological footprint?

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Sustainability

• A few definitions
• ability of an ecosystem to maintain ecological
  processes and functions, biological diversity,
  and productivity over time.
• ability of a natural system to maintain
  essential processes and remain productive
  indefinitely.
• A particular practice is sustainable if it
  produces a yield of a natural resource that can
  be produced continually from generation to
  generation without depleting the resource.

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What is natural capital?

• From Miller, G.Tyler. (2007) Living in the
  Environment, Belmont, CA Thompson Learning, Inc.

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Causes of Environmental Problems
8
The Story of Stuff
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World Population Growth

• "World population development." UNEP/GRID-Arendal
  Maps and Graphics Library. 1997?.
  UNEP/GRID-Arendal. 4 Sep 2008 lthttp//maps.grida.n
  o/go/graphic/world_population_developmentgt.

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Population Growth Projections
Learn More!
ACTUAL HUMAN POPULATION
Thomas Malthus Essay

• "World Population Trends." International Data
  Base (IDB). 08 June 2008. U.S. Census Bureau. 4
  Sep 2008 lthttp//www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldp
  opinfo.htmlgt.

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Renewable Resources

• Perpetual resource solar energy
• Renewable resource can be replenished fairly
  rapidly (hours to decades)
• wind
• forests
• grasslands
• crops
• wild and domesticated animals
• fresh air
• fresh water depends on type of degradation
• fertile soil takes 100 years to make 1

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Nonrenewable Resources

• Nonrenewable resources exist in fixed
  quantities (renewal time is in millions to
  billions of years)
• energy resources
• metallic mineral resources
• non-metallic mineral resources

13
Pollution

• Undesirable natural or human release of
  substances or energy into ecosystems that harms
  living resources, or life, poses a hazard to
  human health, hinders human activities, or
  impairs the quality of the ecological resources.

From The Green Lane, Environment Canada based
on Wells and Rolston, 1991, and Miller, 2008
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Pollution Types

• point source traceable to a single,
  identifiable source
• non-point source cannot be traced to a single
  point
• comes from many sources
• comes from a widespread area

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Prevention vs. Cleanup
Prevention Cleanup
Reduces or eliminates the production of the pollutants Cleaning up or diluting the pollutants after they have been produced
How can we not produce the smoke in the first place? How can we clean up the smoke?
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The Gap

• Tony Auth/Philadelphia Inquirer

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Affluenza

• Coined by de Graff, Wann, and Naylor
• painful, contagious, socially transmitted
  condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste
  resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.
• Syn Overconsumption
• Enormous environmental impact. Why?
• FILM RESOURCES
• http//www.pbs.org/kcts/affluenza/
• http//www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/affl.html

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Povertys Role

• What is poverty?
• A person is considered poor if his or her
  consumption or income level falls below some
  minimum level necessary to meet basic needs. This
  minimum level is usually called the "poverty
  line".

• Environmental Effects of Poverty
• The poor deplete and degrade land and water
  resources.
• Often have many children as a form of economic
  security
• Participate in transient or short-sighted
  economic ventures
• Lack economic capital to either prevent or
  cleanup pollution
• The poor are not able to mitigate the effects of
  natural disasters that damage infrastructure or
  add natural pollutants to ecosystems.
• And?....

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Environmental Impact in theory
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IPAT Equation - Another View
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IPAT Comparison
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IPAT Equation GDP
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IPAT Equation Practice

• Use the IPAT equation to calculate the
  environmental impact of driving in terms of CO2
  emissions per year at the beginning of the 21st
  Century, when there were 6 billion people, an
  average of 0.1 motor vehicles per person, and 5.4
  tons of CO2 emitted by each car per year.
• A. 3.24 trillion tons of CO2 emitted
• B. 6.48 billion tons of CO2 emitted
• C. 3.24 billion tons of CO2 emitted
• D. 16.1 billion tons of CO2 emitted
• Source Raven, Berg Environment, 5th edition.

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Human Cultural Changes Increase Impact

• Homo sapiens (knowing man)
• 90,000 to 195,000 ya
• Agricultural revolution
• (12,000 ya)
• Industrial-medical revolution
• (275 ya)
• Information-globalization revolution
• (50 ya)
• Despite poverty indices, global living conditions
  have improved for majority

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Environmental World Views

• set of assumptions and values about how you
  think the world works and what you think your
  role in the world should be.
• Frontier
• Planetary management
• Stewardship
• Environmental wisdom
• Deep-ecology
• Ecofeminism

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Four Components of Sustainability
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References

• "Glossary of Water Terms." 2008. Water
  Environment Federation. 10 Sep 2008
  lthttp//www.wef.org/AboutWater/ForThePublic/WaterT
  erms/gt.
• Miller, G. Tyler. Living in the Environment.
  15th. Belmont, CA Thomson Learning, Inc., 2007.
• Polgreen. Lydia. "World Bank Ends Effort to Help
  Chad Ease Poverty," The New York Times 11 Sep
  2008. 10 Sep 2008 lthttp//www.nytimes.com/2008/09/
  11/world/africa/11chad.html?refworldgt
• "Stormwater Program." The City of Patterson. 10
  Sep 2008 lthttp//www.ci.patterson.ca.us/Default.as
  px?pi89ni110gt.
• "Understanding Poverty." PovertyNet. 2008. The
  World Bank. 10 Sep 2008 lthttp//go.worldbank.org/R
  QBDCTUXW0gt.
• Wells, P.G. and S.J. Rolston (eds.). 1991. Health
  of our oceans a status report on Canadian marine
  environmental quality. Ottawa Environment
  Canada, Conservation and Protection.