Chapter 1

Environmental Problems, Their Causes and Sustainability

AP Environmental ScienceENHS

Discussion Questions

• What are the major themes of the book?• What keeps us alive? What is an environmentally

sustainable society?• How fast is the human population growing?• What is the difference between economic growth,

economic development, and environmentally sustainable economic development?

• What are the earth’s main type of resources? How can they be depleted or degraded?

• What are the principal types of pollution, and what can we do about pollution?

• What are the basic causes of today’s environmental problems, and how are these causes connected?

• What are the harmful effects of poverty and affluence?• What three major cultural changes have take place

since humans arrived?• What are the fours scientific principles of sustainability

and how can they help us build more environmentally sustainable and just societies?

Core Case Study - Living in a Sustainable Age: Life in the Fast Lane

• Chess between kings• Exponential growth –

a quantity increases at a fixed percentage per unit of time.– Starts slow but……

(Fig. 1-1)• 10000 YA – 5 million

people• present – 6.6 billion

humans• 2100 – 8-10 billion

• Human activities cause major changes to earth’s systems.– Mass extinctions (0.1-1% per year) – forests,

grasslands, wetlands, coral reefs, and topsoil vanish or degrade.

• Human ecological footprint spreads exponentially across the globe.

– Climate change is also due to exponential growth of human activities

• Can negatively effect:– Water supply– Agriculture– Biodiversity– Economies

Living More Sustainably

• What is environmental science (ES)?– Studies how earth works, how we interact

w/ the earth, and how to deal w/ environmental problems.

• Environment – sum of all living and nonliving things that affect organisms.– Living things can also influence the

environment.• Exponential increase in human population is

accompanied by an exponential increase in consumption degradation/depletion of air, water, soil, and biodiversity.

• Continuation of this trend can threaten long-term sustainability of our societies.

• ES is interdisciplinary study integrating (Fig. 1.2)– Natural sciences (Bio,

Chem, Geol)– Social Science (Economics,

Politics, Ethics)

• Goal of ES– Learn how natural systems

works– How environment affects us– How we affect the

environment– How we can live sustainably

w/o degrading our life-support system.

• Basic tool of ES, ecology – study of the relationships between organisms and their environment.

• Environmentalism (not the same as ES or Ecology)– Social movement for protecting earth’s life-support

system for us and other species.– Political in nature

• Pass and enforce laws• Promote solutions to environmental problems• Protest harmful environmental actions

Sustainability: The Integrative Theme of This Book

• Fig 1-3• Sustainability – ability of earth’s systems (including

human cultural systems and economies) to survive and adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinitely.– Natural capital– Natural capital degradation

• Use of normally renewable resources faster than nature can renew them.

– Solutions– Individuals matter (Fig. 1.4)

• Sound science – concepts and ideas that are widely accepted by experts in fields of natural and social sciences.

Environmentally Sustainable Societies: Protecting Natural Capital and Living off its Income.

• Meets current and future needs of its people for basic resources in a just and equitable manner w/o compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

• Living sustainably – living off natural income replenished by soils, plants, air and water and not depleting or degrading the earth’s natural capital that supplies this income.

• Economic Capital– 10 % annual interest and one million dollars– Spend $100 000 a year – sustainable – Spend $200 000 a year – gone in 7th year– Spend $110 000 a year – gone in 18th year– Lesson, protect capital and live on income

• Same lesson should be applied to earth’s natural capital.

Population Growth, Economic Growth, and Economic Development

• Human Population Growth: Slowing but Still Rapid– Population increasing exponentially, faster in poor

countries.– As of 2006, increasing by 1.23 %

• 81 million in 2006• or, 222 000 day-1

• 9250 h-1

• 2.6 sec-1

– Exponential increase in population is accompanied by an exponential increase in use of natural resources.

• Less time to find solutions to environmental problems.

• Economic Growth and Economic Development– Economic growth – increase in goods and services.

• Requires more producers and consumers (i.e., population growth);

• and/or, more production and consumption per person.– Gross domestic product (GDP) – annual market value

of all goods and services produced by all firms and organizations, foreign and domestic, operating w/in a country.

• Growth, measured by percent change in GDP.– per capita GDP – GDP divided by the total population

at midyear.• Six largest economies in 2006 – US, Japan, Germany,

UK, France, and China.

– Economic development – improvement of human living standards by economic growth.

• Classification depends on degree of industrialization and per capita GDP-PPP.

• Developed countries – 1.2 billion. US, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Europe.

• Developing countries – 5.4 billion. African, Asian, and Latin American

– Moderately developed countries – China, India, Brazil, and Mex.

– About 97% of projected population increase will be from developing countries (Figs. 1.5 and 1.6).

– Environmentally sustainable economic development

• Doubling Time and Exponential Growth: The Rule of 70.– Doubling time can be calculated with the

following:

GRtdouble %

70

Resources

• What is a resource?– Anything obtained from the environment to

meet our needs (and wants).• Food, water, shelter, and metals

– Some directly available, others indirectly• Directly – sun, fresh air, wind, fresh surface water,

fertile soil, and wild edible plants.• Indirectly – petroleum, ground water, iron, and

modern crops.– Such resources require human capital (and

ingenuity) and natural capital.

• Perpetual and Renewable Resources– Perpetual resources – continuously renewable on a

human timescale– Renewable resource – can be replenished fairly rapidly

as long as it is not used faster than it can be replaced.• Forests, grasslands, wildlife, fresh air and water, and

fertile soil– Sustainable yield – highest rate a renewable resource

can be used without degrading or depleting.– Environmental degradation – when natural

replacement rate is exceeded.• Urban sprawl, topsoil erosion, pollution, clearing forests,

depleting groundwater, reduction of biodiversity because of habitat loss.

• Tragedy of the Commons– Overuse of common-property (or free access

resources).• Clean air, open ocean, migratory birds, freshwater

– Degradation of renewable free access resources, called tragedy of the commons by biologist Garrett Hardin.

• Example: collapse of fisheries.

– Solutions to preventing such degradation.• Use free access renewable resources at rates below

sustainable yields.• Convert free-access resources to private ownership.

• Ecological Footprint – the amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply an area with resources and to absorb the wastes and pollution produced from such resource use.– per capita ecological footprint (Fig. 1.7).– Humanity’s ecological footprint is estimated to be 39%

above earth’s ecological capacity.• US, EU, China, India and Japan together use 74% of earth’s

ecological capacity.• The US outdoes every other country by at least two-fold.• If China and India were to catch up to present US consumption,

they would need two require two planet earths.– Three factors that have the greatest ecological footprint:

agriculture, transportation, and heating and cooling buildings.

• Nonrenewable Resources– Includes energy resources, metallic mineral

resources, and nonmetallic mineral resources.

– Fossil fuels would be exhausted as there is exponential growth in their use.

– Recycling and reusing metals and non-metallic minerals

Pollution

• Sources of Harmful Effects of Pollutants– Pollution – the presence of chemicals a t high enough

levels in air, water, soil, or food to threaten the health, survival, or activities of humans or other living organisms.

• Point sources (Fig. 1.9)• Non-point sources

– Three types of unwanted effects:• Disrupt or degrade life-support systems• Damage wildlife, human health, and property• Create nuisances, noise and unpleasant smells, tastes,

and sights.

• Solutions: Prevention versus Cleanup– Pollution prevention (input pollution control)– Pollution cleanup (output pollution control)

• Problems with relying on cleanup– Temporary bandage– Removes pollutants from one part of the

environment causing pollution elsewhere.– Once pollutants are at harmful level, too expensive

or impossible to reduce them to acceptable levels.

Environmental Problems: Causes and Connections

• Key Environmental Problems and Their Basic Causes– Problems are mostly the result of exponential

population growth and resource use (Fig. 1.10).– Underlying causes (Fig. 1.11)

• Three other likely causes:– Global trade policies that undermine environmental

protection.– Influence of money and politics.– Failure to provide inspiring and positive visions of a

more sustainable and durable economic future.

• Poverty – is the inability to meet one’s basic economic needs and is concentrated mostly in the southern hemisphere.– Many desperate for basic needs (Fig. 1.12)– Deplete or degrade forests, soil, grasslands, and wildlife for

short-term survival• Don’t have luxury of worrying about long-term environmental

quality

• Poor people often have many children as a form of economic security

• 7 million die prematurely each year– Malnutrition– Depressed immunity– Lack of clean drinking water– Respiratory disease from inhaling indoor pollutants

• Beneficial Effects of Affluence on Environmental Quality– Money for developing cleaner and more efficient

technologies.– Affluence financed improvements in the US since the

1970s– Downside

• Clean up by transferring wastes and pollution to more distant locations

• Obtain resources from anywhere in the world w/o seeing harmful environmental impacts of high-consumption life styles.

• Resource Consumption and Environmental Problems– Prosperous over-consume– Affluenza – term coined to describe the unsustainable

addiction to over-consumption and materialism exhibited in the lifestyles of many affluent consumers in the US and other developed countries and the rising middle class in China and India.

• Has enormous environmental impact• Large amounts of pollution, environmental degradation, and

wastes.– Expert on the growth and decline of civilizations Arnold

Toynbee• True measure of growth – law of progressive simplification –

shift from material to nonmaterial developing culture, compassion, sense of community, and strength of democracy.

• Connections between Environmental Problems and Their Causes– Three factor model (Fig. 1-14)

• Impact = Population x Affluence x Technologies• In US, per capita resource use is up to 100 times

greater than the world’s poorest countries.• Some technologies are environmentally harmful,

others beneficial.

Cultural Changes and the environment

• Human Cultural Changes– Homo sapiens sapiens – 90 to 195 thousand

y.a.• Agricultural revolution – 12 000 y.a.• Industrial-medical revolution – 275 y.a. (Fig. 1.15)• Information-globalization revolution – 50 y.a.

– Living conditions are better, but progress has put a strain on earth’s natural capital.

• Eras of Environmental History in the US– Tribal era, at least 10 000 years before

European settelers– Frontier era, 1607-1890– Early conservation era, 1832-1870– Modern environmental era, 1870 to present

– government and private citizens in resource conservation, public health, and environmental protection.

Sustainability and Environmental Worldviews

• Are Things Getting Better or Worse? A Millennium Assessment– Two schools of thought:

• Technological advances will allow us to keep growing.

• Global economy is outgrowing the capacity for earth to support it.

– The 2005 UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

• 1360 experts from 95 countries• Human activity degrading or using unsustainably

about 60 % of world’s free natural services.• Report also says we have the tools to preserve

earth’s natural capital.• Challenge: not to get trapped into confusion and

inaction by listening primarily to either two:– Technological optimists– Environmental pessimists

– Sustaining our current global civilization depends on:

• Shifting to a renewable energy-base;• a reuse/recycle economy;• and a diversified transport system.• Making the transition requires:

– restructuring a global economy to sustain civilization;

– an all-out effort to eradicate poverty, stabilize population, and restore hope; and

– a systematic effort to restore natural systems.

• Environmental Worldviews and Ethics– Differing views on the state of the environment depends

on environmental worldview and environmental ethics.– Environmental worldview – set of assumptions and

values about how you think the world works and what you think your role in the world should be.

• Planetary management worldview – separate from the natural world

• Stewardship worldview – manage earth for our benefit, stewardship

• Environmental wisdom worldview – part of and totally dependent on nature; nature exists for all species.

– Environmental ethics – beliefs about what is right and wrong w/ how we treat the environment.

• Four Scientific Principles: Copy Nature– Four basic components of the earth: natural

sustainability• Reliance on solar energy• Biodiversity – genes, species, ecosystems, and

ecological processes• Population control• Nutrient recycling (Fig. 1-16)

– Fig. 1-17– The four scientific principles of sustainability as a

guide could lead to an environmental revolution (Fig. 1-18).

• Building Social Capital: Talking and Listening to One Another– Social capital – positive force created when people w/

different views and values find common ground and work together to build understanding, trust and informed shared visions of what their communities, states, nations, and world could and should be.

– Stakeholders of all sides have some legitimate and useful insights.

• Social capital can be built by finding trade-off solutions.• Individuals matter – 5 to 10% of population can bring

major social change.

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Depletion of nonrenewable resources

SOLAR CAPITAL

Human Capital Human Economic

and Cultural Systems

Pollution and waste

Degradation of renewable resources

Heat

Goods and services

Natural Capital

EARTH

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