Environmental Issues, Their Causes, and Sustainability

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Environmental Issues, Their Causes, and
Sustainability

• Environmental Science

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Some thoughts on nature and the environment

• It is not until the last tree has died and the
  last river poisoned and the last fish has been
  caught will we realize that we cannot eat money.
  19th Century Cree Indian Saying

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What is the Difference Between Environment,
Ecology, and Environmental Science?

• Environment is everything that affects a living
  organism
• Ecology is a biological science that studies the
  relationships between living organisms and their
  environment

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What is the Difference Between Environment,
Ecology, and Environmental Science?

• Environmental science is an interdisciplinary
  science that uses concepts from natural sciences
  and social sciences to help understand how the
  earth works, learn how we are affecting the
  earths life support systems, and propose
  solutions to the problems we face

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What Keeps Us Alive?

• Our existence, lifestyles, and economies depend
  completely on the sun and the earth

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What is an Environmentally Sustainable Society?

• An environmentally sustainable society satisfies
  the basic needs of its people without depleting
  or degrading its natural resources and thereby
  does not prevent current and future generations
  of humans and other species from meeting their
  basic needs

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What is the Difference Between Linear Growth and
Exponential Growth?

• Linear growth occurs when a quantity increases by
  a constant amount per unit of time
• Plotted on a graph, this is a straight line curve
• Exponential growth is extraordinary because its
  base of growth doubles again and again
• Plotted on a graph, this is a J-curve

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How Rapidly is the Human Population Growing?

• The increasing size of the human population is an
  example of exponential growth due to a drop in
  death rates over the last 100 years

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What is Economic Growth?

• Economic growth is an increase in a countrys
  capacity to provide goods and services for
  peoples final use

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What is Environmentally Sustainable Economic
Development?

• This form of development encourages
  environmentally sustainable forms of economic
  growth that meet the basic needs of the current
  generations of humans and other species without
  preventing future generations of human and other
  species from meeting their basic needs

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What is the Wealth Gap?

• Since 1960, and especially since 1980, the gap
  between the rich, middle income, poor and acutely
  poor has widened
• 20 of people, or 1.2 billion, have a high income
  per day
• 25 of people, or 1.5 billion, make no more than
  1.00 per day

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What is Globalization?

• Globalization is the broad process of global,
  social, economic, and environmental change that
  leads to an increasingly integrated world

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What are Ecological and Economic Resources?

• An ecological resource is anything an organism
  needs for normal maintenance, growth, and
  reproduction such as habitat, food, water, and
  shelter
• An economic resource is anything obtained from
  the environment to meet human needs and wants
  such as manufactured goods, transportation,
  communication, and recreation

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What are Perpetual and Renewable Resources?

• Solar energy is a perpetual resource because, on
  a human time scale, it is continually renewed
• On a human time scale, a renewable resource can
  be replenished fairly rapidly (hours to several
  decades) through natural processes as long as it
  is not used up faster than it is replaced

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What are Nonrenewable Resources?

• Resources that exist in a fixed quantity or stock
  in the earths crust are called nonrenewable
  resources
• These can be renewed, but very slowly, and are
  depleted much faster than they are formed

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What is Pollution?

• Any addition to air, water, soil, or food that
  threatens the health, survival, or activities of
  human or other living organisms is called
  pollution

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Where Do Pollutants Come from and What Types of
Harm Do They Cause?

• Point source pollutants come from single,
  identifiable sources, such as smokestacks and
  drainpipes
• Non-point source pollutants come from dispersed
  and difficult to identify sources, such as
  fertilizers and pesticides

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Solutions What Can We Do About Pollution?

• Two basic ways to deal with pollution are to
  prevent it from reaching the environment, and
  clean it up if it does

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How are Environmental Problems and Their Causes
Connected?

• Population size, affluence, or consumption per
  person, and technology affect the environmental
  impact of population in developing and developed
  countries

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Are Things Getting Better or Worse?

• There are conflicting views about how severe our
  environmental problems are
• Scientists and environmentalists tend to be more
  negative and economists and businesspeople tend
  to be more optimistic

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Whom Should We Believe? A Clash of Environmental
Worldviews

• The planetary management worldview states that,
  We are the planets most important species, and
  we are apart from and in charge of the rest of
  nature, the earth has an unlimited supply of
  resources, economic growth increases human
  well-being, and our success depends on how well
  we can understand, control, and manage the
  earths life support systems for our benefit

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Whom Should We Believe? A Clash of Environmental
Worldviews

• The environmental wisdom worldview is based on
  the following beliefs, We are part of nature,
  and nature does not exist just for us, the
  earths resources are limited and should not be
  wasted, technology and economic growth can be
  beneficial and sometimes harmful, our success
  depends on learning how the earth sustains itself

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Some Thoughts on Nature and the Environment

• Whats the use of a house if you dont have a
  decent planet to put it on? Henry David Thoreau

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The End!

• Thank your for your attention!