Chapter 1 Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and Sustainability 1 Living in an Exponential Age: Life in the Fast Lane Exponential

l growth: a quantity increases at a fixed percentage per unit of time (Example: 2% per year) Starts slowly but after a few doublings it grows to enormous numbers 53% of people in the world try to survive on the daily income of less than $2(U.S.) and 1/6 of the worlds people survive on less than $1(U.S.) a day This poverty affects the environment because then impoverished people deplete and degrade local wildlife to survive Human activities are causing a premature extinction on species Human activity can ruin some farming area, shift water supplies, alter and reduce biodiversity, and disrupt economies around the world Living More Sustainably A What is Environmental Science? Environment sum total of all living and nonliving things that affect any living organism Environmental science a study that integrates information and ideas from natural sciences and social sciences to learn how nature works, how the environment affects us, how we affect the environment, and how we can live more sustainably without degrading our life support system Ecology biological science that studies the relationship between living organisms and their environment B Sustainability: The Integrative Theme of This Book Sustainability ability of earths various systems to survive and adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinitely Natural capital natural resources and services that keep us and other species alive and support our economies Solar capital energy from the sun that warms planet and supports photosynthesis Produces indirect forms of renewable solar energy like wind, flowing water, and biofuels Natural capital is not fixed; it has changed over millions of years in response to environmental changes Many human activities degrade natural capital by using renewable resources faster than nature can renew them Rate is important when we are transforming parts of the world to fit our wants and needs Workable solutions to these environmental problems often involve conflicts and resolving the conflicts leads us to a trade off Sound science the concepts and ideas that are widely accepted by experts in a particular field of the natural or social sciences C Environmentally Sustainable Societies: Protecting Natural Capital and Living Off Its Income Environmentally sustainable society meets the basic resource needs for the current and future needs of its people without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs Living sustainably living off the natural income replenished by the earth and not depleting or degrading the earths natural capital Protect your capital and live off the income it provides Population Growth, Economic Growth, and Economic Development A Human Population Growth: Slowing but Still Rapid Exponential growth is incredibly powerful even at a fairly low rate B Economic Growth and Economic Development Economic growth increase in the capacity of a county to provide people with goods and services Measured by GDP annual market value of all goods and services provided by all firms and organizations operating in a country Economic development improvement of human living standards by economic growth Environmentally sustainable economic developments goal is to use political and economic systems to encourage environmentally beneficial and more sustainable forms of economic development and discourage environmentally harmful and unsustainable forms of economic growth

C Doubling Time and Exponential Growth: The Rule of 70 Quick way to calculate double time is to use the rule of 70 70/percentage growth = doubling time in years Resources A What is a Resource? Resource anything obtained from the environment to meet our needs and wants Some resources are attained by an interaction of natural capital and human capital B Perpetual and Renewable Resources Perpetual resource renewed continuously on a human time scale Renewable resource can replaced fairly rapidly through natural process as long as it is not used up faster than it renews Sustainable yield highest rate at which a renewable resource can be used indefinitely without reducing its available supply Environmental degradation when we exceed a resources natural replacement rate and the available supply begins to shrink C The Tragedy of the Commons Common property or free-access resources individuals do not own these resources and can be used by little or no charge Tragedy of the commons degradation of renewable free-access resources One solution is to use free-access resources at rates well below their estimated sustainable yield Another solution is to convert free-access resources to private ownership D Our Ecological Footprint Ecological footprint amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply an area with resources and to absorb the wastes and pollution produced by such resource use Per capita ecological footprint average ecological footprint of an individual in an area When an ecological footprint is larger than its ecological capacity its degrading its renewable resources faster than nature can replenish them and its exceeding the capacity of the environment to absorb and degrade the resulting waste and pollution When a country depletes its natural capital it has to import resources in and export pollutants and waste out E Nonrenewable Resources Nonrenewable Resources exist in a fixed quantity or stock in the earths crust It becomes economically depleted when the costs of extracting and using what is left exceed economic value Recycling collecting waste materials and processing them into new materials Reuse using a resource over and over in the same form Pollution A Sources and Harmful Effects of Pollutants Pollution the presence of chemicals at high enough levels to threaten the health, survival, or activities of humans or other living organisms Point sources single identifiable sources of pollution Non-Point Sources sources of pollution that are larger dispersed, and often difficult to find Have 3 types of harmful effects: Disrupt or degrade life-support systems for humans and other species Can damage wildlife, human health, and property Can create nuisances such as noise and unpleasant smells, tastes, and sights B Solutions: Prevention versus Cleanup Pollution prevention (input pollution control) reduces or eliminates the production of pollutants Pollution cleanup (output pollution control) involves cleaning up or diluting pollutants after they have been produced Environmental Problems: Causes and Connections A Key Environmental Problems and Their Basic Causes

First step in dealing with these problems is to identify their underlying causes B Poverty and Environmental Problems Poverty inability to meet ones basic economic needs and is concentrated mostly in the southern hemisphere Many of the worlds poor deplete and degrade land and wildlife for short-term survival Affects population growth as they tend to have more children Many impoverished people die prematurely from four preventable health problems Malnutrition Increased susceptibility to normal nonfatal infectious diseases Lack of access to drinking water Severe respiratory disease and premature death from inhaling indoor air pollutants C Resource Consumption and Environmental Problems Affluenza unsustainable addiction to overconsumption and materialism Using these resources produces large amounts of pollution, environmental degradation, and waste D Beneficial Effects of Affluence on Environmental Quality Can lead people to be more concerned with environmental quality Many affluent countries are living beyond their ecological means by running up unsustainable global ecological debts E Connections between Environmental Problems and Their Causes Environmental impact of a population depends on: Number of people Average resource use per person Beneficial and harmful environmental effects of technologies Some forms of technology are environmentally harmful and others are environmentally beneficial Cultural Changes And The Environment A Human Cultural Changes Three major cultural changes occurred over the last 12,000 years Agricultural revolution allowed people to settle in villages and raise crops and domesticated animals Industrial-medical revolution shift from rural villages and animal-powered agriculture to an urban society Information-globalization revolution using new technologies for gaining rapid access to much more info on a global scale B Eras of Environmental History in the United states The environmental history of the United States can be divided into 4 eras Tribal era native Americans occupied north America for at least 10,000 years before Europeans arrived Frontier era European colonists began settling in north America Early conservative era some people became alarmed at the scope of resource depletion and degradation in the united states Increased role of the federal government and private citizens in resource conservation, public health, and environmental protection Sustainability And Environmental Worldviews A Are Things Getting Better or Worse? A Millennium Assessment Some scientists believe that we will be able to clean up pollution to acceptable levels and find substitutes for scarce resources while others disagree saying that we are degrading the world at an exponentially accelerating rate Technological optimists tend to not worry so much over environmental degradation as environmental pessimists overstate the problems to which all hope is lost B Environmental Worldview and Ethics Environmental Worldview set of assumptions and values about how you think the world works Environmental Ethics your beliefs about what is right and wrong and how we treat the environment

Planetary management worldview we are separate from nature; nature exists to meet our needs and wants, we can manage the earths life-support systems and economic growth is unlimited Stewardship worldview we can manage the earth for our benefit but we have an ethical responsibility to the stewards of the earth Environmental wisdom worldview we are a part of and totally dependent on nature and that nature exists for all species not just for us C Four Scientific Principles of Sustainability: Copy Nature Natural sustainability is learning how the earth has survived and adapted for years and use that as a guide There are 4 basic components of natural sustainability Reliance on solar energy Biodiversity Population control Nutrient recycling D Building Social Capital: Talking and Listening to One Another Social capital making the shift to more sustainable societies and economies We should find trade-off situations to try to share ideas for a future we want Individuals matter when bringing on an important change E Case Study: Chattanooga, Tennessee Had the dirtiest air in the united states in the 1960s In 1984 they decided to improve their environmental quality Immensely successful in several different projects; shows how people working together can create a better environment