Chapter 1 Environmental Problems, Their Causes and Sustainability

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Chapter 1Environmental Problems, Their Causes
and Sustainability

• AP Environmental Science
• ENHS

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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 earths 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?

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• What are the basic causes of todays
  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?

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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

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• Human activities cause major changes to earths
  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

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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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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 earths
  life-support system for us and other species.
• Political in nature
• Pass and enforce laws
• Promote solutions to environmental problems
• Protest harmful environmental actions

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Sustainability The Integrative Theme of This Book

• Fig 1-3
• Sustainability ability of earths 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.

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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 earths natural
  capital that supplies this income.

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• 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 earths natural
  capital.

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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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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

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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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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).
• Humanitys ecological footprint is estimated to
  be 39 above earths ecological capacity.
• US, EU, China, India and Japan together use 74
  of earths 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.

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• 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

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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.

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• 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.

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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.

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• Poverty is the inability to meet ones 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
• Dont 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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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 worlds poorest countries.
• Some technologies are environmentally harmful,
  others beneficial.

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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 earths natural capital.

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• 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.

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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.

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• The 2005 UNs Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
• 1360 experts from 95 countries
• Human activity degrading or using unsustainably
  about 60 of worlds free natural services.
• Report also says we have the tools to preserve
  earths natural capital.
• Challenge not to get trapped into confusion and
  inaction by listening primarily to either two
• Technological optimists
• Environmental pessimists

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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).

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• 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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