LECTURE 4 - PART 1 :

FOOD & SOIL

I. FOOD SECURITY & FOOD PRODUCTION :

- Many people suffer from chronic health and malnutrition
Food security means having daily access to enough nutritious food to live
an active and healthy life.
One of every six people in less-developed countries is not getting enough to
eat, facing food insecurityliving with chronic hunger and poor nutrition,
which threatens their ability to lead healthy and productive lives.
The root cause of food insecurity is poverty.
Other obstacles to food security are political upheaval, war, corruption,
and bad weather, including prolonged drought, flooding, and heat
waves.
To maintain good health and resist disease, individuals need fairly large
amounts of macronutrients, such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats, and
smaller amounts of micronutrientsvitamins and minerals.
People who cannot grow or buy enough food to meet their basic energy
needs suffer from chronic undernutrition, or hunger.
Many suffer from chronic malnutritiona deficiency of protein and other
key nutrients, which weakens them, makes them more vulnerable to
disease, and hinders the normal development of children.
- Many people do not get enough vitamins and minerals
Deficiency of one or more vitamins and minerals, usually vitamin A, iron,
and iodine.
Some 250,000500,000 children younger than age 6 go blind each year from
a lack of vitamin A, and within a year, more than half of them die.
Lack of iron causes anemia which causes fatigue, makes infection more
likely, and increases a womans chances of dying from hemorrhage in
childbirth.
1/5 people in the world suffers from iron deficiency.
Chronic lack of iodine can cause stunted growth, mental retardation, and
goiter.
Almost one-third of the worlds people do not get enough iodine in their food
and water.
According to the FAO and the WHO, eliminating this serious health problem
would cost the equivalent of only 23 cents per year for every person in the
world.
- Many people have health problems from eating too much
Overnutrition occurs when food energy intake exceeds energy use,
causing excess body fat.
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Face similar health problems as those under: lower life expectancy, greater
susceptibility to disease and illness, and lower productivity and life quality.
Globally about 925 million people have health problems because they do not
get enough to eat, and about 1.1 billion people face health problems from
eating too much.
About 68% of American adults are overweight and half of those people are
obese.
Obesity plays a role in four of the top ten causes of death in the United
Statesheart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, and some forms of cancer.
- Food production has increased dramatically
About 10,000 years ago, humans began to shift from hunting for and
gathering their food to growing it and raising animals for food and labor.
Today, three systems supply most of our food.
Croplands produce mostly grains.
Rangelands, pastures, and feedlots produce meat.
Fisheries and aquaculture provide us with seafood.
About 66% of the worlds people survive primarily by eating rice, wheat, and
corn.
Only a few species of mammals and fish provide most of the worlds
meat and seafood.
Since 1960, there has been an increase in global food production from all
three of the major food production systems because of technological
advances.
Tractors, farm machinery and high-tech fishing equipment.
Irrigation.
Inorganic chemical fertilizers, pesticides, high-yield grain varieties, and
industrialized production of livestock and fish.
- Industrialized crop production relies on high-input monocultures
Agriculture used to grow crops can be divided roughly into two types:
Industrialized agriculture, or high-input agriculture, uses heavy
equipment and large amounts of financial capital, fossil fuel, water,
commercial inorganic fertilizers, and pesticides to produce single crops,
or monocultures.
Major goal of industrialized agriculture is to increase yield, the
amount of food produced per unit of land.
Used on about 25% of the worlds cropland, mostly in moredeveloped countries, and produces about 80% of the worlds
food.
Plantation agriculture is a form of industrialized agriculture used
primarily in tropical less-developed countries.

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Grows cash crops such as bananas, soybeans, sugarcane,

coffee, palm oil, and vegetables.
Crops are grown on large monoculture plantations, mostly for
export to more-developed countries.
Modern industrialized agriculture violates the three principles of
sustainability by relying heavily on fossil fuels, reducing natural and
crop biodiversity, and neglecting the conservation and recycling of
nutrients in topsoil.
- Traditional agriculture often relies on low-input polycultures
Traditional agriculture provides about 20% of the worlds food crops on
about 75% of its cultivated land, mostly in less-developed countries.
There are two main types of traditional agriculture.
Traditional subsistence agriculture supplements energy from the
sun with the labor of humans and draft animals to produce enough
crops for a farm familys survival, with little left over to sell or store as
a reserve for hard times.
In traditional intensive agriculture, farmers increase their inputs of
human and draft-animal labor, animal manure for fertilizer, and water
to obtain higher crop yields, some of which can be sold for income.
Many traditional farmers grow several crops on the same plot
simultaneously, a practice known as polyculture.
Crop diversity reduces the chance of losing most or all of the years
food supply to pests, bad weather, and other misfortunes.
Crops mature at different times, provide food throughout the year,
reduce the input of human labor, and keep the soil covered to reduce
erosion from wind and water.
Lessens need for fertilizer and water, because root systems at different
depths in the soil capture nutrients and moisture efficiently.
Insecticides and herbicides are rarely needed because multiple
habitats are created for natural predators of crop-eating insects, and
weeds have trouble competing with the multitude of crop plants.
On average, such low-input polyculture produces higher yields than
does high-input monoculture.
- A closer look at industrialized crop production
Farmers can produce more food by increasing their land or their yields per
acre.
Since 1950, about 88% of the increase in global food production has come
from using high-input industrialized agriculture to increase yields in a
process called the green revolution.
Three steps of the green revolution:

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 First, develop and plant monocultures of selectively bred or genetically

engineered high-yield varieties of key crops such as rice, wheat, and
corn.
Second, produce high yields by using large inputs of water and
synthetic inorganic fertilizers, and pesticides.
Third, increase the number of crops grown per year on a plot of land
through multiple cropping.
The first green revolution used high-input agriculture to dramatically
increase crop yields in most of the worlds more-developed countries,
especially the United States, between 1950 and 1970.
A second green revolution has been taking place since 1967. Fastgrowing varieties of rice and wheat, specially bred for tropical and
subtropical climates, have been introduced into middle-income, lessdeveloped countries such as India, China, and Brazil.
Producing more food on less land has helped to protect some
biodiversity by preserving large areas of forests, grasslands, wetlands,
and easily eroded mountain terrain that might otherwise be used for
farming.
Largely because of the two green revolutions, world grain production tripled
between 1961 and 2009.
People directly consume about 48% of the worlds grain production. About
35% is used to feed livestock and indirectly consumed by people who eat
meat and meat products. The remaining 17% (mostly corn) is used to make
biofuels such as ethanol for cars and other vehicles.
In the U.S., industrialized farming has evolved into agribusiness, as a small
number of giant multinational corporations increasingly control the growing,
processing, distribution, and sale of food in U.S. and global markets.
Since 1950 U.S. industrialized agriculture has more than doubled the yields
of key crops such as wheat, corn, and soybeans without cultivating more
land.
Americans spend only about 13% of their disposable income on food,
compared to the percentages up to 50% that people in China and India and
most other less-developed countries have to pay for food.
- Crossbreeding and genetic engineering produce varieties of crops and
livestock
Crossbreeding through artificial selection has been used for centuries by
farmers and scientists to develop genetically improved varieties of crops and
livestock animals.

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 Such selective breeding in this first gene revolution has yielded

amazing results; ancient ears of corn were about the size of your little
finger, and wild tomatoes were once the size of grapes.
Typically takes 15 years or more to produce a commercially valuable
new crop variety, and it can combine traits only from genetically
similar species.
Typically, resulting varieties remain useful for only 510 years before
pests and diseases reduce their efficacy.
Modern scientists are creating a second gene revolution by using genetic
engineering to develop genetically improved strains of crops and livestock.
Alters an organisms genetic material through adding, deleting, or
changing segments of its DNA to produce desirable traits or to
eliminate undesirable ones (gene splicing); resulting organisms are
called genetically modified organisms.
Developing a new crop variety through gene splicing is faster selective
breeding, usually costs less, and allows for the insertion of genes from
almost any other organism into crop cells.
Currently, at least 70% of the food products on U.S. supermarket
shelves contain some form of genetically engineered food or
ingredients, but no law requires the labeling of GM products.
Certified organic food, which is labeled as makes no use of genetically
modified seeds or ingredients.
Bioengineers plan to develop new GM varieties of crops that are
resistant to heat, cold, herbicides, insect pests, parasites, viral
diseases, drought, and salty or acidic soil. They also hope to develop
crop plants that can grow faster and survive with little or no irrigation
and with less fertilizer and pesticides.
- Meat production has grown steadily
Meat and animal products such as eggs and milk are good sources of highquality protein and represent the worlds second major food-producing
system.

Between 1961 and 2010, world meat productionmostly beef, pork, and
poultryincreased more than fourfold and average meat consumption per
person more than doubled.

Global meat production is likely to more than double again by 2050 as

affluence rises and more middle-income people begin consuming more meat
and animal products in rapidly developing countries such as China and India.
About half of the worlds meat comes from livestock grazing on grass in
unfenced rangelands and enclosed pastures.
The other half is produced through an industrialized system in which animals
are raised mostly in densely packed feedlots and concentrated animal
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feeding operations (CAFOs), where they are fed grain, fish meal, or fish oil,
which are usually doctored with growth hormones and antibiotics.
Feedlots and CAFOs, and the animal wastes and runoff associated with
them, create serious environmental impacts on the air and water.
- Fish and shellfish production have increased dramatically
The worlds third major food-producing system consists of fisheries and
aquaculture.
A fishery is a concentration of particular aquatic species suitable for
commercial harvesting in a given ocean area or inland body of water.
Industrial fishing fleets harvest most of the worlds marine catch of wild fish.
Fish and shellfish are also produced through aquaculturethe practice of
raising marine and freshwater fish in freshwater ponds and rice paddies or in
underwater cages in coastal waters or in deeper ocean waters.
Some fishery scientists warn that unless we reduce overfishing and ocean
pollution, and slow projected climate change, most of the worlds major
commercial ocean fisheries could collapse by 2050.
- Industrialized food production requires huge inputs of energy
The industrialization of food production has been made possible by the
availability of energy, mostly from nonrenewable oil and natural gas.
Energy is needed to run farm machinery, irrigate crops, and produce
synthetic pesticides and synthetic inorganic fertilizers, as well as to process
food and transport it long distances within and between countries.
As a result, producing, processing, transporting, and consuming
industrialized food result in a large net energy loss.
II. ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS FROM FOOD PRODUCTION
- Producing food has major environmental impacts
Spectacular increases in the worlds food production since 1950. The bad
news is the harmful environmental effects associated with such production
increases.
According to many analysts, agriculture has a greater total harmful
environmental impact than any human activity.
These environmental effects may limit future food production and make it
unsustainable.
- Topsoil erosion is a serious problem in parts of the world
Soil erosion is the movement of soil components, especially surface litter
and topsoil from one place to another by the actions of wind and water.
Erosion of topsoil has two major harmful effects.
Loss of soil fertility through depletion of plant nutrients in topsoil.

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 Water pollution in nearby surface waters, where eroded topsoil ends up

as sediment. This can kill fish and shellfish and clog irrigation ditches,
boat channels, reservoirs, and lakes.
By removing vital plant nutrients from topsoil and adding excess plant
nutrients to aquatic systems, we degrade the topsoil and pollute the water,
and thus alter the carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles.
- Drought and human activities are degrading drylands
Desertification in arid and semiarid parts of the world threatens livestock
and crop contributions to the worlds food supply.
Desertification occurs when the productive potential of topsoil falls by 10%
or more because of a combination of prolonged drought and human
activities that expose topsoil to erosion.
The FAOs 2007 report on the Status of the Worlds Forests estimated that
some 70% of worlds arid and semiarid lands used for agriculture are
degraded and threatened by desertification.
- Excessive irrigation has serious consequences
Irrigation boosts productivity of farms; roughly 20% of the worlds cropland
that is irrigated produces about 45% of the worlds food.
Most irrigation water is a dilute solution of various salts that are picked up as
the water flows over or through soil and rocks.
Repeated annual applications of irrigation water in dry climates lead to the
gradual accumulation of salts in the upper soil layersa soil degradation
process called salinization that stunts crop growth, lowers crop yields, and
can eventually kill plants and ruin the land.
Severe salinization has reduced yields on at least 10% of the worlds
irrigated cropland, and almost 25% of irrigated cropland in the United
States, especially in western states
Irrigation can cause waterlogging, in which water accumulates
underground and gradually raises the water table; at least one-tenth of the
worlds irrigated land suffers from waterlogging, and the problem is getting
worse.
Excessive irrigation contributes to depletion of groundwater and surface
water supplies.
- Agriculture contributes to air pollution and projected climate change
Agricultural activities create a lot of air pollution.
Account for more than 25% of the human-generated emissions of carbon
dioxide, other greenhouse gases.
Industrialized livestock production alone generates about 18% of the worlds
greenhouse gases; cattle and dairy cows release the greenhouse gas
methane and methane is generated by liquid animal manure stored in
waste lagoons.
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Nitrous oxide, with about 300 times the warming capacity of CO 2 per
molecule, is released in huge quantities by synthetic inorganic fertilizers as
well as by livestock manure.
- Food and biofuel production systems have caused major losses of
biodiversity
Natural biodiversity and some ecological services are threatened when
forests are cleared and grasslands are plowed up and replaced with
croplands used to produce food or biofuels, such as ethanol.
There is increasing loss of agrobiodiversity, the worlds genetic variety of
animal and plant species.
In the United States, about 97% of the food plant varieties that were
available to farmers in the 1940s no longer exist, except perhaps in small
amounts in seed banks and in the backyards of a few gardeners.
The worlds genetic library, which is critical for increasing food yields, is
rapidly shrinking.
- There is controversy over genetically engineered foods
Controversy has arisen over the use of genetically modified (GM) food and
other products of genetic engineering.
Its producers and investors see GM food as a potentially sustainable way to
solve world hunger problems and improve human health.
Some critics consider it potentially dangerous Frankenfood.
Recognize the potential benefits of GM crops.
Warn that we know too little about the long-term potential harm to
human health and ecosystems from the widespread use of such crops.
Warn that GM organisms released into the environment may cause
some unintended harmful genetic and ecological effects.
Genes in plant pollen from GM crops can spread among nonengineered
species. The new strains can then form hybrids with wild crop varieties,
which could reduce the natural genetic biodiversity of wild strains.
Most scientists and economists who have evaluated the genetic
engineering of crops believe that its potential benefits will eventually
outweigh its risks.
Others have serious doubts about the ability of GM crops to increase
food security compared to other more effective and sustainable
alternative solutions.
- There are limits to expansion of the green revolution
Factors that have limited the current and future success of the green
revolution:
Without huge inputs of inorganic fertilizer, pesticides, and water, most
green revolution and genetically engineered crop varieties produce

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yields that are no higher (and are sometimes lower) than those from
traditional strains.
High inputs cost too much for most subsistence farmers in lessdeveloped countries.
Scientists point out that continuing to increase these inputs eventually
produces no additional increase in crop yields.
Since 1978, the amount of irrigated land per person has been
declining, due to population growth, wasteful use of irrigation water,
soil salinization, and depletion of both aquifers and surface water, and
the fact that most of the worlds farmers do not have enough money to
irrigate their crops.
We can get more crops per drop of irrigation water by using known
methods and technologies to greatly improve the efficiency of
irrigation.
Clearing tropical forests and irrigating arid land could more than double
the worlds cropland, but much of this land has poor soil fertility, steep
slopes, or both.
Cultivating such land usually is expensive, is unlikely to be sustainable,
and reduces biodiversity by degrading and destroying wildlife habitats
During this century, fertile croplands in coastal areas are likely to be
flooded by rising sea levels resulting from projected climate change.
Food production could drop sharply in some major food-producing
areas because of increased drought and longer and more intense heat
waves, also resulting from projected climate change.
Industrialized
meat
production
has
harmful
environmental
consequences
Producing meat by using feedlots and other confined animal production
facilities increases meat production, reduces overgrazing, and yields higher
profits.
Such systems use large amounts of energy (mostly fossil fuels) and water
and produce huge amounts of animal waste that sometimes pollute surface
water and groundwater and saturate the air with their odors and emitting
large quantities of climate-changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Meat produced by industrialized agriculture is artificially cheap harmful
environmental and health costs are not included in the prices.
Overgrazing and soil compaction and erosion by livestock have degraded
about 20% of the worlds grasslands and pastures.
Rangeland grazing and industrialized livestock production cause about 55%
of all topsoil erosion and sediment pollution, and 33% of the water pollution
that results from runoff from excessive inputs of synthetic fertilizers.
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The use of fossil fuels energy pollutes the air and water, and emits
greenhouse gases.
Use of antibiotics is widespread in industrialized livestock production
facilities.
70% of all antibiotics used in the United States are added to animal
feed to prevent the spread of diseases in crowded feedlots and CAFOs
and to make the livestock animals grow faster.
Widespread antibiotic use in livestock is an important factor in the rise
of genetic resistance among many disease-causing microbes.
Reduces the effectiveness of some antibiotics used to treat
infectious diseases in humans.
Promotes the development of new and aggressive disease
organisms that are resistant to all but a very few antibiotics
currently available.
Animal waste produced by U.S. meat is roughly 130 times that of its human
population.

III. IMPROVED FOOD SECURITY & SUSTAINABLE FOOD PRODUCTION

- Use government policies to improve food production and security
Agriculture is a financially risky business because farmers have a good or
bad year depending on factors over which they have little control: weather,
crop prices, crop pests and diseases, loan interest rates, and global markets.
Governments use two main approaches to influence food production:
Control prices.
Provide subsidies.
To improve food security, some analysts urge governments to establish
special programs focused on saving children from the harmful health effects
of poverty.
Immunizing more children against childhood diseases.
Preventing dehydration from diarrhea by giving infants a mixture of
sugar and salt in water.
Preventing blindness by giving children an inexpensive vitamin A
capsule twice a year.
- Reduce soil erosion
Soil conservation involves using a variety of ways to reduce soil erosion and
restore soil fertility, mostly by keeping the soil covered with vegetation.
Some of the methods farmers can use to reduce soil erosion:
Terracing and contour planting are ways to grow food on steep slopes
without depleting topsoil.
Strip cropping involves planting alternating strips of a row crop and
another crop that completely covers the soil, called a cover crop.
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 Alley cropping, or agroforestry involves one or more crops planted

together in strips or alleys between trees and shrubs, which provide
shade.
Farmers can establish windbreaks, or shelterbelts, of trees around crop
fields to reduce wind erosion.
Conservation tillage farming by using special tillers and planting
machines that drill seeds directly through crop residues into the
undisturbed soil.
Retire the estimated one-tenth of the worlds marginal cropland that is
highly erodible and accounts for the majority of the worlds topsoil
erosion.
Soil erosion in the United States.
A third of the countrys original topsoil is gone and much of the rest is
degraded.
In 1935, the United States passed the Soil Erosion Act, which
established the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) as part of the USDA.
Now called the Natural Resources Conservation Service
Farmers and ranchers were given technical assistance to set up soil
conservation programs.
U.S. farmers are sharply reducing some of their topsoil losses through a
combination of conservation-tillage farming and governmentsponsored soil conservation programs.
- Restore soil fertility
Topsoil conservation is the best way to maintain soil fertility, with restoring
some of the lost plant nutrients being the next option.
Organic fertilizer from plant and animal materials.
Animal manure: the waste of cattle, horses, poultry, and other farm
animals adding organic nitrogen, stimulating the growth of beneficial
soil bacteria and fungi.
Green manure: consists of freshly cut or growing green vegetation that
is plowed into the topsoil to increase the organic matter and humus
available to the next crop.
Compost is produced when microorganisms in soil break down organic
matter in the presence of oxygen.
Organic agriculture uses only organic fertilizers and crop rotation to
replenish the nutrients.
Synthetic inorganic fertilizers are usually inorganic compounds that contain
nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
Inorganic fertilizer use has grown more than 900% since 1950; now
about one-fourth of the worlds crops.
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 Fertilizer runoff can pollute nearby bodies of water and coastal

estuaries where rivers empty into the sea.
They do not replace organic matter. To completely restore nutrients to
topsoil, both inorganic and organic fertilizers should be used.
- Reduce soil salinization and desertification
One way to prevent and deal with soil salinization is to reduce the amount of
water that is put onto crop fields through use of modern efficient irrigation.
Drip, or trickle irrigation, also called microirrigation, is the most
efficient way to deliver small amounts of freshwater to crops precisely.
These systems drastically reduce freshwater waste because 9095% of
the water input reaches the crops.
By using less freshwater, they also reduce the amount of harmful salt
that irrigation water leaves in the soil.
Reducing desertification is not easy because we cant control the timing and
location of prolonged droughts caused by changes in weather patterns.
We can reduce population growth, overgrazing, deforestation, and
destructive forms of planting, irrigation, and mining, which have left much
land vulnerable to soil erosion and thus desertification.
Work to decrease the human contribution to projected climate change,
which is expected to increase severe and prolonged droughts in larger areas
of the world during this century.
Restoration via planting trees.
- Produce meat more efficiently and eat less meat
Meat production and consumption account for the largest contribution to the
ecological footprints of most individuals in affluent nations.
If everyone in the world today was on the average U.S. meat-based diet, the
current annual global grain harvest could sustainably feed only about onethird of the worlds current population.
More sustainable meat production and consumption involves shifting from
less grain-efficient forms of animal protein, (beef, carnivorous fish), to more
grain-efficient forms (poultry, herbivorous farmed fish).
Eating less meat by having one meatless day per week.
Healthier to eat less meat.
Replace meat with a balanced vegetarian diet.
- Shift to more sustainable food production
Industrialized agriculture produces large amounts of food at reasonable
prices, but is unsustainable because it:
Relies heavily on fossil fuels.
Reduces biodiversity and agrobiodiversity.
Reduces the recycling of plant nutrients back to topsoil.
More sustainable, low-input agriculture has a number of major components.
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 Organic farming.
Sharply reduces the harmful environmental effects of
industrialized farming and our exposure to pesticides.
Encourages more humane treatment of animals used for food and
is a more economically just system for farm workers and farmers.
Requires more human labor than industrial farming.
Yields can be lower but farmers do not have to pay for expensive
synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers; typically get
higher prices for their crops.
Organic polyculture.
A diversity of organic crops is grown on the same plot.
Use polyculture to grow perennial cropscrops that grow back
year after year on their own.
Helps to conserve and replenish topsoil, requires and wastes less
water, and reduces the need for fertilizers and pesticides.
Reduces the air and water pollution associated with conventional
industrialized agriculture.
Shift from using imported fossil fuel to relying more on solar energy for
food production.
Five major strategies to help farmers and consumers make the transition to
more sustainable agriculture:
1. Greatly increase research on more sustainable organic farming and
perennial polyculture, and on improving human nutrition.
2. Establish education and training programs in more sustainable
agriculture for students, farmers, and government agricultural officials.
3. Set up an international fund to give farmers in poor countries access to
various types of more sustainable agriculture.
4. Replace government subsidies for environmentally harmful forms of
industrialized agriculture with subsidies that encourage more
sustainable agriculture.
5. Mount a massive program to educate consumers about the true
environmental and health costs of the food they buy. This would help
them understand why the current system is unsustainable, and it
would help build political support for including the harmful costs of
food production in the market prices of food.
- Integrated pest management is a component of more sustainable
agriculture
Many pest control experts and farmers believe the best way to control crop
pests is a carefully designed integrated pest management (IPM)
program.
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Farmers develop a carefully designed control program that uses a

combination of cultivation, biological, and chemical tools and techniques.
The overall aim of IPM is to reduce crop damage to an economically
tolerable level.
Farmers first use biological methods (natural predators, parasites, and
disease organisms) and cultivation controls (such as rotating crops, altering
planting time, and using large machines to vacuum up harmful bugs).
They apply small amounts of insecticidesmostly based on those naturally
produced by plantsonly when insect or weed populations reach a threshold
where the potential cost of pest damage to crops outweighs the cost of
applying the pesticide.
Broad-spectrum, long-lived pesticides are not used, and different
chemicals are used alternately to slow the development of genetic
resistance and to avoid killing predators of pest species.
A well-designed IPM program can reduce synthetic pesticide use and pest
control costs by 5065%, without reducing crop yields and food quality.
IPM can also reduce inputs of fertilizer and irrigation water, and slow the
development of genetic resistance, because pests are attacked less often
and with lower doses of pesticides.
Disadvantages of IPM:
It requires expert knowledge about each pest situation and takes more
time than does using conventional pesticides.
Methods developed for a crop in one area might not apply to areas with
even slightly different growing conditions.
Initial costs may be higher, although long-term costs typically are lower
than those of using conventional pesticides.
Widespread use of IPM is hindered in the United States and a number
of other countries by government subsidies for using synthetic
chemical pesticides, as well as by opposition from pesticide
manufacturers, and a shortage of IPM experts.
The USDA could promote IPM three ways:
First, add a 2% sales tax on synthetic pesticides and use the revenue
to fund IPM research and education.
Second, set up a federally supported IPM demonstration project on at
least one farm in every county in the United States.
Third, train USDA field personnel and county farm agents in IPM so
they can help farmers use this alternative.
Because these measures would reduce its profits, the pesticide
industry has vigorously, and successfully, opposed them.
- Three big ideas

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About 925 million people have health problems because they do not get
enough to eat and 1.1 billion people face health problems from eating too
much.
Modern industrialized agriculture has a greater harmful impact on the
environment than any other human activity.
More sustainable forms of food production will greatly reduce the harmful
environmental impacts of industrialized food production systems while likely
increasing food security.

LECTURE 4 - PART 2 :

NON-RENEWABLE MINERALS & ENERGY

I. NONRENEWABLE MINERALS
A. Mineral resources & Environmental effects of using them
- We use a variety of nonrenewable mineral resources
A mineral resource is a concentration of naturally occurring material from
the earths crust that can be extracted and processed into useful products
and raw materials at an affordable cost.
Found and extracted more than 100 minerals from the earths crust.
Examples are fossil fuels (such as coal), metallic minerals (such as
aluminum and gold), and nonmetallic minerals (such as sand and
limestone).
Minerals are classified as nonrenewable resources.
An ore is rock that contains a large enough concentration of a particular
mineraloften a metalto make it profitable for mining and processing.
High-grade ore contains a large concentration of the desired mineral.
Low-grade ore has a smaller concentration.
Aluminum (Al) is used for packaging and beverage cans and as a
structural material in motor vehicles, aircraft, and buildings.
Steel, an essential material used in buildings and motor vehicles, is a
mixture (alloy) of iron (Fe) and other elements that are added to give it
certain properties.
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 Copper (Cu), a good conductor of electricity, is used for electrical and

communications wiring.
Gold (Au) is used in electrical equipment, tooth fillings, jewelry, coins,
and some medical implants.
- Some environmental impacts of mineral use
Metals can be used to produce many products.
Life cycle of a metalmining, processing, and using ittakes enormous
amounts of energy and water and can disturb the land, erode soil, produce
solid waste, and pollute the air, water, and soil.
The more accessible and higher-grade ores are usually exploited first.
As they are depleted, mining lower-grade ores takes more money, energy,
water, and other materials, and increases land disruption, mining waste, and
pollution.
- There are several ways to remove mineral deposits
Shallow mineral deposits are removed by surface mining by:
Removing vegetation.
Removing the overburden or soil and rock overlying a useful mineral
deposit.
Placing waste material set aside in piles, called spoils.
Open-pit mining.
Strip mining is useful and economical for extracting mineral deposits that lie
in large horizontal beds close to the earths surface.
Area strip mining is used where the terrain is fairly flat; a gigantic
earthmover strips away the overburden, and a power shovel removes
the mineral deposit.
Contour strip mining is used mostly to mine coal on hilly or
mountainous terrain.
Mountaintop removal uses explosives, large power shovels, and huge
machines called draglines to remove the top of a mountain and expose
seams of coal.
Subsurface mining removes minerals from underground through tunnels and
shafts.
- Mining has harmful environmental effects
Scarring and disruption of the land surface.
Mountaintop removal destroys forests, buries mountain streams, and
increases flood hazards. Wastewater and toxic sludge, produced when
the coal is processed, are often stored behind dams in these valleys,
which can overflow or collapse and release toxic substances such as
arsenic and mercury.

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 In the United States, more than 500 mountaintops have been removed
to extract coal and the resulting spoils have buried more than 1,100
kilometers (700 miles) of stream.
Surface mining in tropical forests and other tropical areas destroys or
degrades vital biodiversity when forests are cleared and rivers are
polluted with mining wastes.
Produces toxic waste material such as lead dust, which can cause lead
poisoning and irreversible brain damage in children.
Subsurface mining disturbs less land than surface mining disturbs, and it
usually produces less waste material.
Creates hazards such as cave-ins, explosions, and fires.
Miners often get diseases such as black lung, caused by prolonged
inhalation of coal dust in subsurface mines.
Causes subsidencethe collapse of land above some underground
mines.
Mining operations produce large amounts of solid waste and cause major
water and air pollution.
Acid mine drainage occurs when rainwater that seeps through a mine
or a spoils pile carries sulfuric acid to nearby streams and groundwater.
Mining has polluted about 40% of western watersheds in the United
States, and it accounts for 50% of all the countrys emissions of toxic
chemicals into the atmosphere.
Much of this degradation comes from leaking storage ponds built to
hold a toxic sludge that is produced from the mining and processing of
metal ores.
- Removing metals from ores has harmful environmental effects
Ore mining typically has two components:
Ore mineral, containing the desired metal.
Waste material.
Removing the waste material from ores produces waste piles called tailings.
Heating ores to release metals is called smelting.
Without effective pollution control equipment, smelters emit enormous
quantities of air pollutants, including sulfur dioxide and suspended
particles.
Chemicals can be used to remove metals from their ores.
B. Supplies & sustainable use of nonrenewable resources
- Mineral resources are distributed unevenly
The earths crust contains fairly abundant deposits of iron and aluminum.
Manganese, chromium, cobalt, and platinum are relatively scarce.
The earths geologic processes have not distributed deposits of
nonrenewable mineral resources evenly among countries.
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Five nationsthe United States, Canada, Russia, South Africa, and Australia
supply most of the nonrenewable mineral resources used by modern
societies.
Experts are concerned about four strategic metal resourcesmanganese,
cobalt, chromium, and platinumwhich are essential for the countrys
economy and military strength. The United States has little or no reserves of
these metals.
- Supplies of nonrenewable mineral resources can be economically
depleted
The future supply of nonrenewable minerals depends on two factors:
The actual or potential supply of the mineral.
The rate at which we use it.
Minerals may become economically depleted when it costs more than
it is worth to find, extract, transport, and process the remaining
deposits. Options when this occurs are:
Recycle or reuse existing supplies.
Waste less or use less.
Find a substitute or do without.
- Market prices affect supplies of nonrenewable minerals
Geologic processes determine the quantity and location of a mineral
resource.
Economics determines what part of the known supply is extracted and used.
An increase in the price of a scarce mineral resource can lead to increased
supplies and encourage more efficient use.
Standard economic theory may not apply because most well-developed
countries often use subsidies, taxes, regulations, and import tariffs to control
the supply, demand, and price of minerals.
Most mineral prices are kept artificially low.
- Is mining lower-grade ores the answer?
Extraction of lower grades of ore is possible due to new earth-moving
equipment, improved techniques for removing impurities from ores, and
other technological advances in mineral extraction and processing.
Mining low-grade ores is limited by:
Increased cost of mining and processing larger volumes of ore.
Increasing shortages of freshwaterwhich is needed to mine and
process some mineralsespecially in arid and semiarid areas.
Environmental impacts of the increased land disruption, waste
material, and pollution produced during mining and processing.
Can use microorganisms that can break down rock material and extract
minerals in a process called in-place, or in-situ mining or biomining.
- Can we get more of our minerals from the oceans?

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Some ocean mineral resources are dissolved in seawater.

Low concentrations take more energy and money than they are worth.
Hydrothermal ore deposits are rich in minerals such as copper, lead, zinc,
silver, gold, and some of the rare earth metals.
Growing interest in deep-sea mining.
Manganese nodules cover large areas of ocean floor.
- We can find substitutes for some scarce mineral resources
Human ingenuity will find substitutes.
Current materials revolution in which silicon and other new materials,
particularly ceramics and plastics, are being used as replacements for
metals.
Finding substitutes for scarce minerals through nanotechnology.
- We can recycle and reuse valuable metals
A more sustainable way to use nonrenewable mineral resources (especially
valuable or scarce metals such as gold, copper, and aluminum) is to recycle
or reuse them.
Recycling has a much lower environmental impact than mining and
processing ores.
Cleaning up and reusing items instead of melting and reprocessing them has
an even lower environmental impact.
- We can use mineral resources more sustainably
Instead of asking how we can increase supplies of nonrenewable minerals,
we should be asking, how can we decrease our use and waste of such
resources?
Since 1990, a growing number of companies have adopted pollution and
waste prevention programs that have led to cleaner production.

II. ENERGY
A. Fossil fuel
- What are fossil fuels? Fossil fuels are the remains of ancient organisms
changed into solid (coal), liquid (oil) or gas (natural gas)
- Fossil fuels supply most of our commercial energy
The direct input of solar energy produces several other forms of renewable
energy resources that: wind, flowing water, and biomass.
Most commercial energy comes from extracting and burning nonrenewable
energy resources obtained from the earths crust.
87% from carbon-containing fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal).
6% from nuclear power.
8% from renewable energy resourcesbiomass, hydropower,
geothermal, wind, and solar energy.
- Fuels for different purposes
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Five main purposes for fuels

Cooking
Transportation
Manufacturing
Heating/cooling
Electricity
Some fuels better for some purposes
- We depend heavily on oil
Crude oil (petroleum), is a black, gooey liquid consisting of hundreds of
different combustible hydrocarbons along with small amounts of sulfur,
oxygen, and nitrogen impurities.
Also known as conventional oil and as light or sweet crude oil.
Oil, coal, and natural gas are called fossil fuels because they were
formed from the decaying remains (fossils) of organisms that lived
millions of years ago.
When the rate of crude oil production starts declining it is referred to as
peak production for the well.
Global peak production is the point in time when we reach the maximum
overall rate of crude oil production for the whole world.
After extraction, crude oil is transported to a refinery by pipeline, truck, or
ship (oil tanker).
Crude oil is heated to different boiling points in a complex process called
refining to separate it into different layers, such as petrochemicals.
- How long might supplies of conventional crude oil last?
Crude oil is now the single largest source of commercial energy in the world.
Proven oil reserves are identified deposits from which conventional crude oil
can be extracted profitably at current prices with current technology.
Geologists project that known and projected global reserves of conventional
crude oil will be 80% depleted sometime between 2050 and 2100. The
remaining 20% will likely be too costly to remove.
Options include:
look for more oil.
use less oil.
waste less oil.
use other energy resources.
- Advantages of Oil
Have a system to distribute and use it set up
High energy level
Used in many products
Relatively low cost
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- Disadvantages of Oil
Running Out (Nonrenewable)
Dependent of foreign sources
POLLUTION
Global Warming
International politics
- Natural gas
Mainly methane CH4
Also
Ethane C2H6
Propane C3H8
Butane C4H10
Formed like oil from buried animals and plants millions of years ago.
- Natural gas is a useful and clean-burning fossil fuel
Natural gas is a mixture of gases of which 50 - 90% is methane (CH 4).
Has high net energy.
Versatile fuel that can be burned to heat indoor space and water,
propel vehicles and produce electricity.
Lies above most reservoirs of crude oil.
When a natural gas field is tapped, propane and butane gases are
liquefied and removed as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
Cleanest-burning among the fossil fuels, releasing much less CO2 per
unit of energy than coal, crude oil, and synthetic crude oil from tar
sands and oil shale.
- Advantages of Gas
Cleaner burning than coal or oil.
Emits far fewer CO2 per energy units
More efficient energy producer and plants are cheaper to build
- Disadvantages of Natural Gas
Nonrenewable
Highly flammable
Air pollution
Global warming
Can be a challenge to transport
- Coal is a plentiful but dirty fuel
Coal is a solid fossil fuel formed from the remains of land plants that were
buried 300 400 million years ago and exposed to intense heat and
pressure over those millions of years.
Coal is burned in power plants to generate about 42% of the worlds
electricity, and burned in industrial plants to make steel, cement, and other
products.
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The three largest coal-burning countries are China, the U.S., and India.
Coal is plentiful and cheap.
Mining and burning coal have severe impacts on the earths air, water, land,
climate, and human health.
Coal-burning power and industrial plants are among the largest
emitters of the greenhouse gas CO2.
Coal burning emits trace amounts of toxic and radioactive materials.
Burning coal produces a highly toxic ash that must be safely stored,
essentially forever.
China uses three times as much coal as the U.S. and it has become the
worlds leading emitter of CO2 and of sulfur dioxide.
Coal is cheap but most of the harmful environmental and health costs
are not included in the price.
The clean coal campaign.
Powerful U.S. coal companies and utilities oppose measures.
Publicity campaign built around the misleading notion of clean
coal.
Burn coal more cleanly by adding costly air pollution control
devices.
There is no such thing as clean coal.
- Coal advantages
Most abundant fossil fuel.
Lots of energy
Relatively inexpensive.
U.S. has plenty of it for a while.
Power plants relatively cheap to build.
- Coal disadvantages
High environmental impact (air, water, land, acid rain)
Global warming, high CO2 emissions
Toxic mercury and radioactivity
Dangerous to mine
- Pollution, climate change, and public health
Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, which contributes to global
climate change.
When coal and oil burn, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are released,
which contribute to smog and acid deposition.
Oil spills, equipment ruptures, and oil in runoff pollute waterways, oceans,
and coastal areas.
Coal-fired power plants release mercury, which harms human health.
Crude oil contains trace amounts of lead and arsenic.

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- Damage caused by extracting fuels

Mining:
Humans risk lives and respiratory health.
Ecosystems are damaged by habitat destruction, extensive erosion,
acid drainage, and heavy metal contamination downslope
of mines.
Oil and gas extraction:
Roads and structures built to support drilling break up habitats and
harm ecosystems.
The longterm consequences of accidents can be uncertain or
unpredictable
- Dependence on foreign sources
Fossil fuels are not evenly distributed over the globe, so some countries
must import fuel sources.
Nations that import fuel may be vulnerable to changes in fuel prices set by
suppliers.
Nations can import less fuel by developing domestic oil sources and
renewable energy sources.
B. Renewable energy resources
- We can heat buildings and water with solar energy
Passive solar heating system absorbs and stores heat from the sun directly.
Active solar heating system uses energy from the sun by pumping a heatabsorbing fluid through special collectors usually mounted on a roof or on
special racks to face the sun.
- We can cool buildings naturally
Open windows to take advantage of breezes and use fans to keep the air
moving.
A living roof can make a huge difference in keeping a building cool.
Install superinsulation and high-efficiency windows.
Block the high summer sun with window overhangs or awnings.
Use a light-colored roof to reflect as much as 80% of the suns heat.
Use geothermal heat pumps for heating and cooling.
- We can concentrate sunlight to produce high-temperature heat and
electricity
Solar thermal systems use different methods to collect and concentrate
solar energy in order to boil water and produce steam for generating
electricity
The net energy yield for solar thermal systems is only about 3%, which
means that they need large government subsidies or tax breaks in order to
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compete in the marketplace with alternatives that have higher net energy
yields.
Inexpensive solar cookers focus and concentrate sunlight for cooking food
and sterilizing water.
- We can use sunlight directly to produce electricity
Solar energy can be converted directly into electrical energy by photovoltaic
cells, commonly called solar cells.
Solar cells have no moving parts, are safe and quiet, and produce no
pollution or greenhouse gases during operation.
The material used in solar cells can be made into paper-thin rigid or flexible
sheets that can be incorporated into roofing materials and attached to a
variety of surfaces such as walls, windows, and clothing.
Generating electricity with solar cells could become nearly as efficient as
using coal-burning power plants without producing the air pollutants and
climate-changing CO2 emitted by those plants.
- We can produce electricity from falling and flowing water
Hydropower uses the kinetic energy of flowing and falling water to produce
electricity.
Indirect form of solar energy because it is based on the evaporation of
water, which is part of the earths solar-powered water cycle.
Most common approach to harnessing hydropower is to build a high dam
across a large river to create a reservoir.
Hydropower is the worlds leading renewable energy source for the
production of electricity. In order, the worlds top six producers of
hydropower are China, Canada, Brazil, the U.S., Russia, and Norway.
Some analysts expect that use of large-scale hydropower plants will fall
slowly over the next several decades as many existing reservoirs fill with silt
and become useless faster than new systems are built.
Microhydropower generators are small floating turbines that use the power
of flowing water to turn rotor blades, which spin a turbine to produce electric
current. They provide electricity at a low cost with a very low environmental
impact.
Ocean tides and waves contain energy. Dams have been built across the
mouths of some bays and estuaries to capture the energy in ocean water
movement.
- Using wind to produce electricity is an important step toward
sustainability
Wind turbines have been erected in large numbers at favorable sites to
create wind farms
Since 1990, wind power has been the worlds second fastest-growing source
of energy after solar cells.
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Wind turbines can be interconnected in arrays of tens to hundreds. These

wind farms or wind parks can be located on land or offshore.
In 2009, a Harvard University study estimated that wind power has the
potential to produce 40 times the worlds current use of electricity.
Benefits:
Wind is widely distributed and inexhaustible
Wind power is mostly carbon-free and pollution-free.
A wind farm can be built within 9 to 12 months and expanded as
needed.
Homeowners can also use small and quiet wind turbines to produce
their own electricity.
Wind power has a moderate-to-high net energy ratio.
Areas with the greatest wind power potential are often far from cities so may
require controversial upgrading and expansion of electrical grid systems.
Winds can die down and thus require a backup source of power, such as
natural gas, for generating electricity.
Some people in populated areas oppose wind farms as being unsightly and
noisy.
In windy parts of the U.S. Midwest and in Canada, farmers and ranchers are
paid royalties for each wind turbine located their land and can still grow
crops or graze cattle.
- We can produce energy by burning solid biomass
Biomass consists of plant materials (such as wood and agricultural waste)
and animal wastes that can be burned directly as a solid fuel or converted
into gaseous or liquid biofuels.
Solid biomass is burned mostly for heating and cooking, but also for
industrial processes and for generating electricity.
Wood, wood wastes, charcoal (made from wood), animal manure.
In agricultural areas, crop residues (such as sugarcane stalks, rice
husks, and corn cobs) and animal manure are collected and burned.
About 2.7 billion people in 77 less-developed countries face a fuelwood
crisis and are often forced to meet their fuel needs by harvesting wood
faster than it can be replenished.
Plant fast-growing trees, shrubs, and perennial grasses in biomass
plantations, but this can deplete soil nutrients and deplete or degrade
biodiversity.
- We can convert plants and plant wastes to liquid biofuels
Liquid biofuels such as biodiesel (produced from vegetable oils) and ethanol
(ethyl alcohol produced from plants and plant wastes) are being used in
place of petroleum-based diesel fuel and gasoline.

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Advantages of biofuels:
While oil resources are concentrated in a small number of countries,
biofuel crops can be grown almost anywhere, and thus they help
countries to reduce their dependence on imported oil.
If these crops are not used faster than they are replenished by new
plant growth, there is no net increase in CO2 emissions, unless existing
grasslands or forests are cleared to plant biofuel crops.
Biofuels are easy to store and transport through existing fuel networks
and can be used in motor vehicles at little or no additional cost.
The two most water-intensive ways to produce a unit of energy are irrigating
soybean crops to produce biodiesel fuel and irrigating corn to produce
ethanol.
An alternative to corn ethanol is cellulosic ethanol, which is produced from
inedible cellulose that makes up most of the biomass of plants.
In this process, enzymes are used to help convert the cellulose from
widely available inedible cellulose materials such as leaves, stalks, and
wood chips to sugars that are processed to produce ethanol.
A plant that could be used for cellulosic ethanol production is
switchgrass, a tall perennial grass native to North American prairies
that grows faster than corn.
Affordable chemical processes for converting cellulosic material to
ethanol are still being developed and are possibly years away.
- Net energy
Net energy = Total amount of energy available from the resources the
amount of energy
used
Net energy ratio = Energy produced/Energy used
- Energy conservation
Practice of reducing energy use to make fossil fuels last and to prevent
environmental damage
Transportation: Gas-efficient cars and higher gas prices could help
conserve energy in the U.S.
Personal choices: Individuals can save energy by turning off lights,
taking public transit, and buying energy-efficient appliances.
- Six big ideas
Dynamic forces that move matter within the earth and on its surface recycle
the earths rocks, form deposits of mineral resources, and cause volcanic
eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis.
The available supply of a mineral resource depends on how much of it is in
the earths crust, how fast we use it, the mining technology used to obtain it,

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its market prices, and the harmful environmental effects of removing and
using it.
We can use mineral resources more sustainably by trying to find substitutes
for scarce resources, reducing resource waste, and reusing and recycling
nonrenewable minerals.

LECTURE 5 - PART 1 :

WATER RESOURCES AND WATER POLLUTION

I. WATER RESOURCES & ITS ISSUES

Importance of water
Freshwater is relatively pure and contains few dissolved salts.
Earth has a precious layer of watermost of it saltwatercovering about
71% of the earths surface.
Water is an irreplaceable chemical with unique properties that keep us and
other forms of life alive.
Water helps to sculpt the earths surface, moderate climate, and remove and
dilute wastes and pollutants.
Access to freshwater is a global health issue. Every day an average of 3,900
children younger than age 5 die from waterborne infectious diseases.
An economic issue vital for reducing poverty and producing food and
energy.
A womens and childrens issue in developing countries because poor
women and girls often are responsible for finding and carrying daily supplies
of water.
A national and global security issue because of increasing tensions within
and between nations over access to limited water resources that they share.
An environmental issue because excessive withdrawal of water from rivers
and aquifers results in dropping water tables, lower river flows, shrinking
lakes, and losses of wetlands.
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- Where is water found?

71% of earth is covered in water
97% of that is in oceans
Most of the remaining 3% fresh, mainly in ice caps and glaciers
- Water availability
About 0.024% is readily available to us as liquid freshwater in accessible
groundwater deposits and in lakes, rivers, and streams.
The rest is in the salty oceans, in frozen polar ice caps and glaciers, or in
deep underground and inaccessible locations.
Comparison of population sizes and shares of the worlds freshwater among
the continents.
- Water sources
The worlds freshwater supply is continually collected, purified, recycled, and
distributed in the earths hydrologic cycle, except when:
Overloaded with pollutants.
We withdraw water from underground and surface water supplies
faster than it is replenished.
We alter long-term precipitation rates and distribution patterns of
freshwater through our influence on projected climate change.
- Surface water
Surface water is the freshwater from precipitation and snowmelt that flows
across the earths land surface and into lakes, wetlands, streams, rivers,
estuaries, and ultimately to the oceans.
Precipitation that does not infiltrate the ground or return to the
atmosphere by evaporation is called surface runoff.
The land from which surface water drains into a particular river, lake,
wetland, or other body of water is called its watershed, or drainage
basin.
- Ground water
Groundwater: Some precipitation infiltrates the ground and percolates
downward through spaces in soil, gravel, and rock until an impenetrable
layer of rock stops this groundwaterone of our most important sources of
freshwater.
The zone of saturation is where the spaces are completely filled with
water.
The top of this groundwater zone is the water table.
- Aquifers
Aquifers: underground caverns and porous layers of sand, gravel, or
bedrock through which groundwater flowstypically moving only a meter or
so (about 3 feet) per year and rarely more than 0.3 meter (1 foot) per day.
Worldwide, about 70% of the water we withdraw each year comes from
rivers, lakes, and aquifers to irrigate cropland, industry uses another 20%,
and residences 10%.
- Too little water

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The main factors that cause water scarcity in any particular area are a dry
climate, drought, too many people using a water supply more quickly than it
can be replenished, and wasteful use of water.
More than 30 countriesmainly in the Middle East and Africanow face
water scarcity.
By 2050, 60 countries, many of them in Asia, with three-fourths of the
worlds population, are likely to be suffering from water stress.
- Too much water: Floods
Some areas sometimes have too much water because of natural flooding by
streams, caused mostly by heavy rain or rapidly melting snow.
Removal of water-absorbing vegetation, especially on hillsides, which can
increase flooding and pollution in local streams, as well as landslides and
mudflows.
Draining and building on wetlands, which naturally absorb floodwaters.
Natural events: heavy rainfall, melting snow are major causes of flooding.
Floodplain: the natural area around a river where flooding normally occurs.
- We can reduce flood risks
Floods provide several benefits.
Create the worlds most productive farmland by depositing nutrientrich silt on floodplains.
Recharge groundwater and help to refill wetlands, thereby supporting
biodiversity and aquatic ecological services.
To improve flood control, we can rely less on engineering devices such as
dams and levees and more on natures systems such as wetlands and
natural vegetation in watersheds.
Levees or floodwalls along the sides of streams contain and speed up stream
flow, but they increase the waters capacity for doing damage downstream.
Dams can reduce the threat of flooding by storing water in a reservoir and
releasing it gradually, but they also have a number of disadvantages.
II. INCREASED WATER SUPPLIES & SUSTAINABLE WATER USE
- How can we increase water supplies?
Aquifers provide drinking water for nearly half of the worlds people.
Water tables are falling in many areas of the world because the rate of
pumping water from aquifers (mostly to irrigate crops) exceeds the rate of
natural recharge from rainfall and snowmelt.
Withdrawing large amounts of groundwater causes the sand and rock
in aquifers to collapse.
Groundwater overdrafts near coastal areas can pull saltwater into
freshwater aquifers. The resulting contaminated groundwater is
undrinkable and unusable for irrigation.
Groundwater overpumping can cause land to sink, and contaminate
freshwater aquifers near coastal areas with saltwater.
- Large dams and reservoirs have advantages and disadvantages
Dams are structures built across rivers to block some of the flow of water.
Dammed water usually creates a reservoir, a store of water collected behind
the dam.
- Water transfers can be wasteful and environmentally harmful

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In many cases, water has been transferred into various dry regions of the
world for growing crops and for other uses.
Such water transfers have benefited many people, but they have also
wasted a lot of water and they have degraded ecosystems from which the
water was taken.
Such water waste is part of the reason why many products include large
amounts of virtual water.
- Removing salt from seawater is costly, kills marine organisms, and
produces briny wastewater
Desalination involves removing dissolved salts from ocean water or from
brackish water in aquifers or lakes for domestic use.
Distillation involves heating saltwater until it evaporates (leaving
behind salts in solid form) and condenses as freshwater.
Reverse osmosis (or microfiltration) uses high pressure to force
saltwater through a membrane filter with pores small enough to
remove the salt.
There are three major problems with the widespread use of desalination
The high cost
Pumping large volumes of seawater kills many marine organisms and
also requires large inputs of energy to run the pumps.
Desalination produces huge quantities of salty wastewater that must
go somewhere.
- Worldwide water use
Agriculture: 70%
Industry: 20%
Domestic use: 10%
- How can we use freshwater more sustainably?
Reduce freshwater waste
An estimated 66% of the freshwater used in the world is unnecessarily
wasted.
It is economically and technically feasible to reduce such water losses
to 15%, thereby meeting most of the worlds water needs for the
foreseeable future.
Cut freshwater waste in irrigation
About 60% of the irrigation water worldwide does not reach the
targeted crops.
Cut freshwater waste in industry & homes
Producers of chemicals, paper, oil, coal, primary metals, and processed
food consume almost 90% of the water used by industry in the United
States.
Flushing toilets with freshwater is the largest use of domestic water in
the US.
Studies show that 3060% of the freshwater supplied in nearly all of
the worlds major cities in less-developed countries is lost, primarily
through leakage in water mains, pipes, pumps, and valves.
- We need to use water more sustainably

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Each of us can help bring about such a blue revolution by using and
wasting less water to reduce our water footprints.
III. WATER POLLUTION
- Water pollution comes from point and nonpoint sources
Water pollution is any change in water quality that harms humans or other
living organisms or makes water unsuitable for human uses such as
drinking, irrigation, and recreation.
Point sources discharge pollutants at specific locations through drain
pipes, ditches, or sewer lines into bodies of surface water.
Because point sources are located at specific places, they are fairly
easy to identify, monitor, and regulate.
Nonpoint sources are broad, diffuse areas, rather than points, from which
pollutants enter bodies of surface water or air.
Difficult and expensive to identify and control discharges from many
diffuse sources.
Agricultural activities are the leading cause of water pollution, including
sediment from erosion, fertilizers and pesticides, bacteria from livestock and
food-processing wastes, and excess salts from soils of irrigated cropland.
Industrial facilities, which emit a variety of harmful inorganic and organic
chemicals, are a second major source of water pollution.
Mining is the third biggest source of water pollution. Surface mining
disturbs the land by creating major erosion of sediments and runoff of toxic
chemicals.
- Stream and river pollution
In most less-developed countries, stream pollution from discharges of
untreated sewage, industrial wastes, and discarded trash is a serious and
growing problem.
Flowing rivers and streams can recover rapidly from moderate levels of
degradable, oxygen-demanding wastes through a combination of dilution
and biodegradation of such wastes by bacteria.
Laws enacted in the 1970s to control water pollution have greatly increased
the number and quality of plants that treat wastewaterwater that contains
sewage and other wastes from homes and industriesin the United States
and in most other more-developed countries.
- Lake and reservoir pollution
Lakes and reservoirs are generally less effective at diluting pollutants than
streams.
Lakes and reservoirs are more vulnerable than streams to contamination by
runoff or discharge of plant nutrients, oil, pesticides, and nondegradable
toxic substances such as lead, mercury, and arsenic.
Many toxic chemicals and acids also enter lakes and reservoirs from the
atmosphere.
Eutrophication refers to the natural nutrient enrichment of a shallow lake,
estuary, or slow-moving stream usually caused by runoff of plant nutrients
such as nitrates and phosphates from surrounding land.
An oligotrophic lake is low in nutrients and its water is clear.

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Near urban or agricultural areas, human activities can greatly accelerate the
input of plant nutrients to a lake (cultural eutrophication).
Too many nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous) in the water causes algal
blooms and decreased oxygen in water
Little or no oxygen
Causes dead zones in water
- Groundwater pollution
Groundwater pollution is a serious threat to human health.
Common pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides, gasoline, and organic
solvents can seep into groundwater from numerous sources.
When groundwater becomes contaminated, it cannot cleanse itself of
degradable wastes as quickly as flowing surface water does.
Little is known about groundwater pollution because it is expensive to
locate, track, and test aquifers.
- Pollution prevention is the only effective way to protect groundwater
Find substitutes for toxic chemicals.
Keep toxic chemicals out of the environment.
Install monitoring wells near landfills and underground tanks.
Require leak detectors on underground tanks.
Ban hazardous waste disposal in landfills and injection wells.
Store harmful liquids in aboveground tanks with leak detection and
collection systems.
- There are many ways to purify drinking water
More-developed countries usually store surface water in a reservoir to
increasing dissolved oxygen content and allow suspended matter to settle,
then pumped water to a purification plant and treat it to meet government
drinking water standards.
We have the technology to convert sewer water into pure drinking water. But
reclaiming wastewater is expensive and it faces opposition from citizens and
from some health officials who are unaware of the advances in this
technology
Simple measures can be used to purify drinking water:
Exposing a clear plastic bottle filled with contaminated water to
intense sunlight can kill infectious microbes in as little as three hours.
The Life Straw is an inexpensive portable water filter that eliminates
many viruses and parasites from water drawn into it.
- Ocean pollution is a growing and poorly understood problem
80-90% of municipal sewage from most coastal areas of less-developed
countries, and in some coastal areas of more-developed countries, is
dumped into oceans without treatment.
Some U.S. coastal waters have found vast colonies of viruses thriving in raw
sewage and in effluents from sewage treatment plants and leaking septic
tanks.
Scientists also point to the underreported problem of pollution from cruise
ships.
Harmful algal blooms can result from the runoff of sewage and agricultural
water.

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Every year, because of harmful algal blooms, at least 400 oxygen-depleted

zones form in coastal waters around the world.
- Residential areas, factories, and farms all contribute to the pollution of
coastal waters
- Ocean Pollution from Oil
Crude and refined petroleum reach the ocean from a number of sources and
become highly disruptive pollutants.
Visible sources are tanker accidents and blowouts at offshore oil drilling
rigs.
The largest source of ocean oil pollution is urban and industrial runoff
from land, much of it from leaks in pipelines and oil-handling facilities.
At least 37% of the oil reaching the oceans is waste oil, dumped,
spilled, or leaked onto the land or into sewers by cities and industries,
as well as by people changing their own motor oil.
- Reducing ocean water pollution
The key to protecting the oceans is to reduce the flow of pollution from land
and air and from streams emptying into these waters.
IV. SOLUTIONS FOR WATER POLLUTION
- Reducing surface water pollution from nonpoint sources
There are a number of ways to reduce nonpoint-source water pollution, most
of which comes from agriculture.
Reduce soil erosion by keeping cropland covered with vegetation.
Reduce the amount of fertilizer that runs off into surface waters and
leaches into aquifers by using slow-release fertilizer, using no fertilizer
on steeply sloped land, and planting buffer zones of vegetation
between cultivated fields and nearby surface waters.
Organic farming can also help prevent water pollution caused by
nutrient overload.
Control runoff and infiltration of manure from animal feedlots by
planting buffers and locating feedlots and animal waste sites away
from steeply sloped land, surface water, and flood zones.
- Laws can help to reduce water pollution from point sources
Set standards for allowed levels of key water pollutants and require polluters
to get permits limiting how much of various pollutants they can discharge
into aquatic systems.
Shifting the focus of the law to water pollution prevention instead of focusing
mostly on end-of-pipe removal of specific pollutants.
Greatly increased monitoring for violations of the law.
Much larger mandatory fines for violators.
Regulating irrigation water quality.
Expand the rights of citizens to bring lawsuits to ensure that water pollution
laws are enforced.
- Sewage treatment reduces water pollution
In urban areas most waterborne wastes flow through a network of sewer
pipes to wastewater or sewage treatment plants.
- There are sustainable ways to reduce and prevent water pollution

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Most developed countries have enacted laws and regulations that have
significantly reduced point-source water pollution as a result of bottom-up
political pressure on elected officials by individuals and groups.
To environmental and health scientists, the next step is to increase efforts to
reduce and prevent water pollution in both more- and less-developed
countries, beginning with the question: How can we avoid producing water
pollutants in the first place?
This shift will require that citizens put political pressure on elected officials
and also take actions to reduce their own daily contributions to water
pollution.
- Three big ideas
One of the major global environmental problems is the growing shortage of
freshwater in many parts of the world.
We can use water more sustainably by cutting water waste, raising water
prices, and protecting aquifers, forests and other ecosystems that store and
release water.
Reducing water pollution requires preventing it, working with nature to treat
sewage, cutting resource use and waste, reducing poverty, and slowing
population growth.

LECTURE 5 - PART 2 :
AIR POLLUTION - CLIMATE CHANGE &
OZONE DEPLETION
I. AIR POLLUTION
1. Major air pollution problems
- The atmosphere consists of several layers
A thin envelope of gases surrounding the earth is called the atmosphere.
The troposphere is the atmospheric layer closest to the earths
surface extending only about 17 kilometers (11 miles) above sea level
at the equator and 8 kilometers (5 miles) over the poles. Clouds, rain,
snow and all precipitation occur here.
The atmospheres second layer is the stratosphere, which extends
from about 17 to about 48 kilometers (from 11 to 30 miles) above the
earths surface.
Ozone (O3) is concentrated in a portion of the stratosphere called the ozone
layer, found roughly 1730 kilometers (1119 miles) above sea level.
Stratospheric ozone is produced when some of the oxygen molecules
there interact with ultraviolet (UV) radiation emitted by the sun.
This global sunscreen of ozone in the stratosphere keeps out about
95% of the suns harmful UV radiation from reaching the earths
surface.
- Air pollution comes from natural and human sources
Air pollution is the presence of chemicals in the atmosphere in
concentrations high enough to harm organisms, ecosystems, or human
made materials, or to alter climate.
Natural sources include dust blown by wind, pollutants from wildfires
and volcanic eruptions, and volatile organic chemicals released by
some plants.
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 Most human inputs of outdoor air pollutants come from the burning of
fossil fuels in power plants and industrial facilities (stationary sources)
and in motor vehicles (mobile sources).
Scientists classify outdoor air pollutants into two categories.
Primary pollutants are harmful chemicals emitted directly into the
air from natural processes and human activities.
Secondary pollutants react with one another and with other normal
components of air to form new harmful chemicals, called secondary
pollutants.
Outdoor air pollution is a global problem, largely due to the sheer volume of
pollutants produced by human activities
- What are the major outdoor air pollutants?
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless, odorless, and highly toxic gas that
forms from motor vehicle exhaust, burning of forests and grasslands,
tobacco smoke, and open fires and inefficient stoves used for cooking.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a colorless, odorless gas.
About 93% of the CO2 in the atmosphere is the result of the natural
carbon cycle.
The rest comes from human activities, primarily the burning of fossil
fuels and the clearing of CO2-absorbing forests and grasslands.
Nitrogen oxides (NO & NO2)and nitric acid.
Nitric oxide (NO) is a colorless gas that forms when nitrogen and
oxygen gas in air react at the high-combustion temperatures in
automobile engines and coal-burning power and industrial plants.
In the air, NO reacts with oxygen to form nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a
reddish-brown gas.
Some of the NO2 reacts with water vapor in the air to form nitric acid
(HNO3) and nitrate salts (NO3)components of harmful acid
deposition.
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a greenhouse gas.
Sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid.
Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is a colorless gas with an irritating odor.
About one third of the SO2 in the atmosphere comes from natural
sources as part of the sulfur cycle.
Human sources include combustion of sulfur-containing coal in electric
power and industrial plants and oil refining and smelting of sulfide
ores.
In the atmosphere, SO2 can be converted to aerosols, which consist of
microscopic suspended droplets of sulfuric acid (H2SO4) and
suspended particles of sulfate (SO42) salts that return to the earth
as a component of acid deposition.
Particulates.
Suspended particulate matter (SPM) consists of a variety of solid
particles and liquid droplets small and light enough to remain
suspended in the air for long periods.
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 EPA classifies particles as fine, or PM-10 (with diameters less than 10

micrometers), and ultrafine, or PM-2.5 (with diameters less than 2.5
micrometers).
38% comes from human sources such as coal-burning power and
industrial plants, motor vehicles, road construction, and tobacco
smoke.
Ozone.
Ozone (O3), a colorless and highly reactive gas, is a major ingredient of
photochemical smog.
Ozone in the troposphere near ground level is often referred to as
bad ozone, while ozone in the stratosphere as good ozone.
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Organic compounds that exist as gases in the atmosphere or that
evaporate into the atmosphere are called volatile organic
compounds (VOCs).
Global methane emissions come from natural sources, mostly
plants, wetlands, and termites, while human sources include
primarily rice paddies, landfills, oil and natural gas wells, and
cows.
Benzene and other liquids used as industrial solvents, drycleaning fluids, and components of gasoline, plastics, and other
products.
- Burning coal produces industrial smog
Sixty years ago, cities such as London, England, and the U.S. cities of
Chicago, IL, and Pittsburgh, PA, burned large amounts of coal in power plants
and factories and for heating homes and often for cooking food.
People in such cities, especially during winter, were exposed to industrial
smog consisting mostly of an unhealthy mix of sulfur dioxide, suspended
droplets of sulfuric acid, and a variety of suspended solid particles in outside
air. Those burning coal inside their homes were exposed to dangerous levels
of indoor air pollutants.
Today, urban industrial smog is rarely a problem in most more-developed
countries using pollution controls.
In industrialized urban areas of China, India, Ukraine, and some eastern
European countries, large quantities of coal are still burned in houses, power
plants, and factories with inadequate pollution controls.
Because of its heavy reliance on coal, China has some of the worlds
highest levels of industrial smog and 16 of the worlds 20 most
polluted cities.
- Sunlight plus cars equals photochemical smog
A photochemical reaction is any chemical reaction activated by light.
Photochemical smog is a mixture of primary and secondary pollutants
formed under the influence of UV radiation from the sun.
The formation of photochemical smog begins when exhaust from morning
commuter traffic releases large amounts of NO and VOCs into the air over a
city.
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The NO is converted to reddish-brown NO 2, which leads to the name brownair smog.

When exposed to ultraviolet radiation from the sun, some of the NO 2 reacts
in complex ways with VOCs released by certain trees, motor vehicles, and
businesses.
The resulting mixture of pollutants, dominated by ground-level ozone,
usually builds up to peak levels by late morning, irritating peoples eyes and
respiratory tracts.
Some of its pollutants, known as photochemical oxidants, can damage lung
tissue.
All modern cities have some photochemical smog, but it is much more
common in cities with sunny, warm, and dry climates, and a great number of
motor vehicles.
- Summary of major outdoor pollutants
Carbon oxides (CO and CO2)
Sulfur oxides (SO2)
Nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2)
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs CFCs)
Suspended particulate matter (soot, dust, asbestos, lead etc.)
Photochemical oxidants (ozone O3)
Radioactive substances (Radon)
Hazardous air pollutants (carcinogens, etc.)
- Several factors can decrease or increase outdoor air pollution
Five natural factors help reduce outdoor air pollution.
Particles heavier than air settle out as a result of gravitational
attraction to the earth.
Rain and snow help cleanse the air of pollutants.
Salty sea spray from the oceans washes out many pollutants from air
that flows from land over the oceans.
Winds sweep pollutants away and mixes them with cleaner air.
Some pollutants are removed by chemical reactions.
Six other factors can increase outdoor air pollution.
Urban buildings slow wind speed and reduce dilution and removal of
pollutants.
Hills and mountains reduce the flow of air in valleys below them and
allow pollutant levels to build up at ground level.
High temperatures promote the chemical reactions leading to
formation of photochemical smog.
VOCs emissions from certain trees and plants in heavily wooded urban
areas can play a large role in the formation of photochemical smog.
Grasshopper effectoccurs when air pollutants are transported by
evaporation and winds from tropical and temperate areas through the
atmosphere to the earths polar areas, where they are deposited.
Temperature inversions occurs when a layer of warm air can
temporarily lie atop a layer of cooler air nearer the ground.
- Acid deposition is a serious regional air pollution problem

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Most coal-burning power plants, ore smelters, and other industrial facilities
in more-developed countries use tall smokestacks, which reduce local air
pollution, but can increase regional air pollution downwind.
Prevailing winds may transport the primary pollutants SO 2 and NOx as far as
1,000 kilometers (600 miles), forming secondary pollutants such as droplets
of sulfuric acid, nitric acid vapor, and particles of acid-forming sulfate and
nitrate salts.
Descend to the earths surface in two forms:
Wet deposition consisting of acidic rain, snow, fog, and cloud vapor,
and dry deposition resulting in a mixture called acid deposition, or acid
rain.
Dry acid deposition (sulfur dioxide gas and particles of sulfate and
nitrate salts).
Mixture of wet and dry is called acid depositionsometimes called acid rain.
- Acid deposition has a number of harmful effects
Damages statues and buildings, contributes to human respiratory diseases,
and can leach toxic metals (such as lead and mercury) from soils and rocks
into lakes used as sources of drinking water.
Toxic metals can accumulate in the tissues of fish which are eaten by people
and other animals.
45 U.S. states have issued warnings telling people to avoid eating fish
caught from waters that are contaminated with toxic mercury.
Harms aquatic ecosystems, and can leave lakes with few if any fish.
Indirectly kills trees by leaching essential plant nutrients such as calcium
and magnesium from soils and releasing ions of aluminum, lead, cadmium,
and mercury, which are toxic to the trees, leaving them vulnerable to
stresses.
- We know how to reduce acid deposition
The best solutions are prevention approaches that reduce or eliminate
emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulates.
Implementing these solutions is politically difficult.
- Indoor air pollution is a serious problem
In less-developed countries, the indoor burning of wood, charcoal, dung,
crop residues, coal, and other cooking and heating fuels in open fires or in
unvented or poorly vented stoves exposes people to dangerous levels of
particulate air pollution.
Indoor air pollution is a serious problem in developed areas of all countries,
mostly because of chemicals used in building materials and products.
EPA studies have revealed some alarming facts about indoor air pollution.
Levels of 11 common pollutants generally are two to five times higher
inside U.S. homes and commercial buildings than they are outdoors.
Pollution levels inside cars in traffic-clogged urban areas can be up to
18 times higher than outside levels.
The health risks from exposure to such chemicals are magnified
because most people in developed urban areas spend 7098% of their
time indoors or inside vehicles.

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The four most dangerous indoor air pollutants in more-developed countries

are:
tobacco smoke
formaldehyde emitted from many building materials and various
household products
radioactive radon-222 gas, which can seep into houses from
underground rock deposits
very small (ultrafine) particles of various substances in emissions from
motor vehicles, coal-burning facilities, wood burning, and forest and
grass fires
- Air pollution is a big killer
Your respiratory system helps protect you from air pollution.
Prolonged or acute exposure to air pollutants, can overload or break down
these natural defenses.
Fine and ultrafine particulates get lodged deep in the lungs, contributing to
lung cancer, asthma, heart attack, and stroke.
Years of inhaling smoke polluted air can lead to other lung ailments such as
chronic bronchitis and emphysema, leading to acute shortness of breath.
At least 2.4 million people worldwide die prematurely each year from the
effects of air pollution.
2. Solutions for air pollution
- Laws and regulations can reduce outdoor air pollution
The United States provides an excellent example of how a regulatory
approach can reduce air pollution.
The U.S. Congress passed the Clean Air Acts in 1970, 1977, and 1990.
The federal government established air pollution regulations for key
pollutants that are enforced by states and major cities.
Six major outdoor pollutants regulated:
Carbon monoxide
Nitrogen dioxide
Sulfur dioxide
Suspended particulate matter
Ozone
Lead
- We can emphasize pollution prevention
Greater emphasis on preventing air pollution.
Will not take place unless individual citizens and groups put political
pressure on elected officials to enact and enforce appropriate regulations.
Citizens can, through their purchases, put economic pressure on companies
to get them to manufacture and sell products and services that do not add
to pollution problems.
II. CLIMATE CHANGE
1. What is climate change?
- Weather and climate are not the same

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Weather consists of short-term changes in atmospheric variables, such as

the temperature and precipitation in a given area over a period of hours
or days.
Climate is determined by the average weather conditions of the earth or of
a particular area, especially temperature and precipitation, over periods of
at least three decades to thousands of years.
One or two warmer or colder years or decades can result simply from
changes in the weather; dont necessarily tell us that the earths climate is
warming or cooling.
Climate scientists look at data on normally changing weather conditions to
see if there has been a general rise or fall in any measurements such as
average temperature or precipitation over a period of at least 30 years.
- Human activities emit large quantities of greenhouse gases
A natural process called the greenhouse effect occurs when some of the
solar energy absorbed by the earth radiates into the atmosphere as infrared
radiation (heat).
Four greenhouse gases absorb the heat which warms the lower atmosphere
and the earths surface, helping to create a livable climate.
Water vapor (H2O).
Carbon dioxide (CO2).
Methane (CH4).
Nitrous oxide (N2O).
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1700s, human
actionsmainly the burning of fossil fuelshave led to significant increases
in the levels of greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere.
- CO2 emissions play an important role
Never 390 ppm in last 420,000 years (possibly 20 million)
Continue to rise rapidly
Most CO2 in atmosphere is coming from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and
natural gas
42% coal power plants
24% transportation
20% industrial processes
14% residential and commercial usages
Major climate models indicate a need to prevent CO 2 levels from exceeding
450 ppman estimated threshold, or irreversible tipping point, that could
set into motion large-scale climate changes for hundreds to thousands of
years.
2. Possible effects of warmer atmosphere
- Severe drought is likely to increase
Severe and prolonged drought affects at least 30% of the earths land
(excluding Antarctica).
By 2059 up to 45% of the worlds land area could experience extreme
drought.
Effects of increased drought could include:
The growth of trees and other plants declines.
Wildfires increase in frequency.

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Declining stream flows and less available surface water

Falling water tables with more evaporation, worsened by farmers
irrigating more to make up for drier conditions.
Shrinking lakes, reservoirs, and inland seas.
Dwindling rivers.
Water shortages for 13 billion people.
Declining biodiversity.
More ice and snow are likely to melt
The overall projected long-term trend is for the average summer ice
coverage to decrease.
During the past 25 years, many of the worlds mountain glaciers have been
melting and shrinking at accelerating rates.
Mountain glaciers are sources of water for drinking, irrigation, and
hydropower.
Water, food, and power shortages could threaten billions of people in
Asia and South America as these glaciers slowly melt over the next
century or two.
Sea levels are rising
A 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report concluded that the worlds average sea
level will most likely rise 0.82 meters (36.5 feet) by the end of this century
and probably keep rising for centuries.
Rising sea levels are due to the expansion of seawater as it warms, and to
the melting of land-based ice.
degrade or destroy at least one-third of the worlds coastal estuaries,
wetlands, and coral reefs
disrupt many of the worlds coastal fisheries
cause flooding and erosion of low-lying barrier islands and gently
sloping coastlines, especially in U.S. coastal states
Extreme weather is likely to increase in some areas
Atmospheric warming will increase the incidence and intensity of extreme
weather events.
Kill large numbers of people.
Reduce crop production
Expand deserts
A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, so other areas will
experience increased flooding from heavy and prolonged precipitation.
The consensus view of the effect of atmospheric warming on tropical storms
and hurricanes is that projected atmospheric warming is likely lead to fewer
but stronger hurricanes that could cause more damage.
Climate disruption is a threat change will threaten biodiversity
Approximately 30% of the land-based plant and animal species assessed so
far could disappear if the average global temperature change exceeds 1.5
2.5C (2.74.5F).
The hardest hit will be:
Plant and animal species in colder climates
Species at higher elevations
Plant and animal species with limited ranges
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 Those with limited tolerance for temperature change.

The warmer climate would increase populations of insects and fungi that
damage trees.
Agriculture could face an overall decline
Climate change models predict a decline in agricultural productivity in
tropical and subtropical regions.
Flooding of river deltas due to rising sea levels could reduce crop production
in these areas and fish production in nearby coastal aquaculture ponds.
Food production could also decrease in farm regions that are dependent on
rivers fed by snow and glacial melt, and in any arid and semiarid areas
where droughts become more prolonged.
A warmer world is likely to threaten the health of many people
More frequent and prolonged heat waves in some areas will increase
numbers of deaths and illnesses, especially among older people, people in
poor health, and the urban poor who cannot afford air conditioning.
Hunger and malnutrition will increase in areas where agricultural production
drops.
A warmer, CO2-rich world will favor rapidly multiplying insects, microbes,
toxic molds, and fungi that make us sick, and plants that produce pollens
that cause allergies and asthma attacks.
What are our options?
Calling for urgent action at the national and international levels to curb
greenhouse gas emissions by regulating and taxing such emissions will not
work.
Four major strategies to prevent & reduce greenhouse gas emission
Improve energy efficiency to reduce fossil fuel use, especially the use
of coal.
Shift from nonrenewable carbon-based fossil fuels to a mix of lowcarbon renewable energy resources based on local and regional
availability.
Stop cutting down tropical forests and plant trees to help remove more
CO2 from the atmosphere.
Shift to more sustainable and climate-friendly agriculture.
Governments can help to reduce the threat of climate disruption
Governments can use six major methods to promote the solutions.
In December 1997, delegates from 161 nations met in Kyoto, Japan, to
negotiate a treaty to slow global warming and its projected climate
disruption.
The Kyoto Protocol went into effect in 2005 with 187 of the worlds 194
countries (not including the U.S.) ratifying the agreement by late 2009.
Costa Rica aims to be the first country to become carbon neutral by cutting
its net carbon emissions to zero by 2030.
China has one of the worlds most intensive energy efficiency programs.
Individual choices make a difference
Each of us plays a part in the projected acceleration of atmospheric warming
and climate disruption during this century. Whenever we use energy
generated by fossil fuels, for example, we add a certain amount of CO 2 to

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the atmosphere. Each use of energy adds to an individuals carbon footprint,

the amount of carbon dioxide generated by ones lifestyle.
III. OZONE DEPLETION
- Our use of certain chemicals threatens the ozone layer
A layer of ozone in the lower stratosphere keeps about 95% of the suns
harmful ultraviolet (UV-A and UV-B) radiation from reaching the earths
surface.
Measurements show considerable seasonal depletion (thinning) of ozone
concentrations in the stratosphere above Antarctica and the Arctic and a
lower overall ozone thinning everywhere except over the tropics.
Ozone depletion in the stratosphere poses a serious threat to humans, other
animals, and some primary producers (mostly plants) that use sunlight to
support the earths food webs.
Problem began with the discovery of the first chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) in
1930 and later Freon.
Popular non-toxic, inexpensive coolants in air conditioners and
refrigerators, propellants in aerosol spray cans, cleaners for electronic
parts such as computer chips, fumigants for granaries and ship cargo
holds, and gases used to make insulation and packaging.
CFCs are persistent chemicals that destroy the ozone layer.
- CFCs
Used for decades
Each CFC molecule can destroy 100,000 ozone molecules over decades
- Why should we worry about ozone depletion?
More biologically damaging UV-A and UV-B radiation will reach the earths
surface.
Causes problems with human health, crop yields, forest productivity, climate
change, wildlife populations, air pollution, and degradation of outdoor
materials.
Human health problems:
Damage to skin cells (including skin cancers)
Damage to eyes
UV Light damages DNA
- We can reverse stratospheric ozone depletion
The problem of ozone depletion has been tackled quite impressively.
In 2008, the area of ozone thinning was still near its record high of 29 million
square kilometers (11 million square miles), set in 2006.
Models indicate that even with immediate and sustained action.
About 60 years for the earths ozone layer to recover the levels of
ozone it had in 1980.
About 100 years for recovery to pre-1950 levels.
In 1987, representatives of 36 nations met in Montreal, Canada, and
developed the Montreal Protocol to cut emissions of CFCs.
In 1992, adopted the Copenhagen Protocol, an amendment that
accelerated the phase-out of key ozone-depleting chemicals signed by 195
countries.
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The ozone protocols set an important precedent by using prevention to solve

a serious environmental problem.
- Three big ideas
All countries need to step up efforts to control and prevent outdoor and
indoor air pollution.
Reducing the projected harmful effects of rapid climate disruption during this
century requires emergency action to increase energy efficiency, sharply
reduce greenhouse gas emissions, rely more on renewable energy
resources, and slow population growth.
We need to continue phasing out the use of chemicals that have reduced
ozone levels in the stratosphere and allowed more harmful ultraviolet
radiation to reach the earths surface.

LECTURE 6 :

ECONOMICS & ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

I. ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS
- What is economics?
Economics is a social science that deals with the production, distribution,
and consumption of goods and services to satisfy peoples needs and wants.
Market-based economic systembuyers and sellers interact in markets to
make economic decisions about how goods and services are produced,
distributed, and consumed.
In a free-market economic system, all economic decisions are
governed solely by the competitive interactions of supply, demand,
and price.
Three types of capital, or resources, are used to produce goods and services.
Natural capital includes resources and services produced by the
earths natural processes, which support all economies and all life.
Human capital, or human resources, includes peoples physical and
mental talents that provide labor, innovation, culture, and organization.
Manufactured capital, or manufactured resources, are items such as
machinery, equipment, and factories made from natural resources with
the help of human resources.
- Most economic systems use three types of resources to produce goods
and services
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- Economists disagree over the importance of natural capital and the

sustainability of economic growth
Economic growth for a city, state, country, or company is an increase in its
capacity to provide goods and services to people.
Economic development is the improvement of human living standards
made possible by economic growth.
High-throughput economies attempt to boost economic growth by increasing
the flow of natural matter and energy resources through their economic
systems to produce more goods and services.
- The high-throughput economies of most of the worlds more-developed
countries rely on continually increasing the flow of energy and matter
resources to increase economic growth
- Economists disagree over the importance of natural capital and the
sustainability of economic growth
Neoclassical economists, following the ideas of Alfred Marshall (1842
1924) and Milton Friedman (19122006) view the earths natural capital as a
subset, or part, of a human economic system and assume that the potential
for economic growth is essentially unlimited and is necessary for providing
businesses with profits and workers with jobs.
Ecological economists believe that:
There are no substitutes for many vital natural resources such as air,
water, and biodiversity, or for natures free ecological services such as
climate control, pest control, and nutrient recycling.
Economic systems are subsystems of the biosphere that depend
heavily on the earths irreplaceable natural resources and services.
Conventional economic growth eventually will become unsustainable
because it can deplete or degrade various irreplaceable forms of
natural capital, and because it will exceed the capacity of the
environment to handle the pollutants and wastes we produce.
The models of ecological economists are built on three major assumptions.
Resources are limited and should not be wasted; there are no
substitutes for most types of natural capital.
We should encourage environmentally beneficial and sustainable
forms of economic development, and discourage environmentally
harmful and unsustainable forms of economic growth.
The harmful environmental and health effects of producing and using
economic goods and services should be included in their market prices
(full-cost pricing), so that consumers will have more accurate
information about these effects.
Many environmental economists argue that some forms of economic growth
are not sustainable and should be discouraged through fine-tuning existing
economic systems and tools.
- Ecological economists see all human economies as subsystems of the
biosphere that depend on natural resources and services provided by
the sun and earth
- Most things cost more than we might think
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The market price, or direct price, that we pay for something does not include
most of the indirect, or external, costs of harm to the environment and
human health associated with its production and use.
Hidden costs are the indirect or external costs that can have short- and
long-term harmful effects on other people, on future generations, and on the
earths life-support systems.
Phase in shift to full-cost pricing so that environmentally harmful businesses
would have time to transform themselves and consumers have time to
adjust their buying habits.
Resistance to full-cost pricing.
Opposition from producers of harmful and wasteful products and
services who would have to charge more for them and might go out of
business.
Difficulty estimating environmental and health costs and how they
might change in the future.
- Environmental economic indicators could help us reduce our
environmental impact
Gross domestic product (GDP) is the annual market value of all goods and
services produced by all firms and organizations, foreign and domestic,
operating within a country.
The per capita GDP is the GDP divided by the countrys total population at
midyear.
GDP provides a standardized, useful method for measuring and comparing
the economic outputs of nations, and does not distinguish between goods
and services that are environmentally or socially beneficial and those that
are harmful.
Environmental and ecological economists and environmental scientists call
for new indicators help monitor environmental quality and human wellbeing.
Genuine progress indicator (GPI) is the GDP plus the estimated
value of beneficial transactions that meet basic needs, but in which no
money changes hands, minus the estimated harmful environmental,
health, and social costs of all transactions.
In the U.S., between 1950 and 2004 the per capita GDP rose sharply
and the per capita GPI stayed nearly flat and even declined slightly,
which shows that even if a nations economy is growing, its people are
not necessarily better off.
- We can reward environmentally sustainable businesses
Governments could phase in environmentally beneficial subsidies and tax
breaks for:
Pollution prevention.
Ecocity development.
Sustainable forestry, agriculture.
Sustainable water use.
Energy efficiency and renewable energy use.
Actions to slow projected climate change.

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- Tax pollution and wastes instead of wages and profits

Use green taxes, or ecotaxes, to help include many of the harmful
environmental and health costs of production and consumption in market
prices.
Three requirements for successful implementation of green taxes.
Phased in over 1020 years to allow businesses to plan for the future.
Income, payroll, or other taxes would have to be reduced or replaced
so that there is no net increase in taxes.
The poor and middle class would need a safety net to help provide
them with essentials such as fuel and food.
Using green taxes to help reduce pollution and resource waste has
advantages and disadvantages
- Environmental laws and regulations can discourage or encourage
innovation
Environmental regulation is a form of government intervention in the
marketplace that is widely used to help control or prevent pollution and to
reduce resource waste and environmental degradation.
Laws that:
Set pollution standards.
Regulate harmful activities such as the release of toxic chemicals into
the environment.
Protect certain irreplaceable or slowly replenished resources such as
public forests.
Currently most environmental laws enforced through a command-andcontrol approach (government sets rules and punishes for violations);
often concentrating on cleanup instead of prevention.
Incentive-based environmental regulations use the economic forces of
the marketplace to encourage businesses to be innovative in reducing
pollution and resource waste.
Innovation-friendly environmental regulation sets goals and frees
industries to meet them in any way that works, and allows enough time for
innovation.
- Using the marketplace to reduce pollution and resource waste
One incentive-based regulation system allows the government to set
acceptable pollution/use limits or caps and gives or sells companies a
certain number of tradable pollution or resource-use permits.
The U.S. has used this cap-and-trade approach to reduce the emissions of
sulfur dioxide and several other air pollutants.
Effectiveness depends on how high or low the initial cap is set and on the
rate at which the cap is reduced to encourage further innovation.
Using tradable permits to reduce pollution and resource waste has
advantages and disadvantages
- Reducing pollution and resource waste by selling services instead of
things
A proposed new economic model would provide profits while greatly
reducing resource use, pollution, and waste for a number of goods by
shifting from the current material-flow economy to a service-flow one.
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 Customers rent/lease services that goods provide.

A manufacturer or service provider makes more money if its product
uses the minimum amount of materials, lasts as long as possible, is
energy efficient, produces as little pollution as possible in its
production and use, and is easy to maintain, repair, reuse, or recycle
Since 1992, Xerox has been leasing most of its copy machines as part
of its mission to provide document services instead of selling
photocopiers.
- Reducing poverty can help us deal with environmental problems
Ways to reduce poverty and its harmful effects:
Mount a massive global effort to combat malnutrition and the
infectious diseases that kill millions of people prematurely.
Provide primary school education for all children and for the worlds
nearly 800 million illiterate adults.
Stabilize population growth.
Sharply reduce the total and per capita ecological footprints.
Large investments in small-scale infrastructure and sustainable
agriculture projects.
Encourage lending agencies to make small loans to poor people who
want to increase their income.
- The Millennium Development Goals present challenges
Millennium Development Goals included sharply reducing hunger and
poverty, improving health care, achieving universal primary education,
empowering women, and moving toward environmental sustainability by
2015.
More-developed countries agreed to devote 0.7% of their annual national
income toward achieving the goals.
By 2009, only five countriesDenmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, and
the Netherlandshad donated what they had promised; the U.S.the
worlds richest countrygives only 0.16% of its national income to help poor
countries.
- We can use lessons from nature to shift to more environmentally
sustainable economies
There is a sharp contrast between the beliefs of neoclassical economists and
ecological economists.
The best long-term solution to our environmental and resource problems is
to shift from a high-throughput (high-waste) to a more sustainable lowthroughput (low-waste) economy.

Learning and applying lessons from nature can help us to design and
manage more sustainable low-throughput economies
Make this transition by:
reusing and recycling most nonrenewable matter resources
using renewable resources no faster than natural processes can
replenish them
reducing resource waste by using matter and energy resources more
efficiently
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 reducing environmentally harmful forms of consumption

emphasizing pollution prevention and waste reduction
slowing population growth to keep the number of matter and energy
consumers growing slowly.
II. ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
- Certain principles can guide us in making environmental policy
Several principles designed to minimize environmental harm:
The reversibility principle: Try not to make a decision that cannot be
reversed later if ends up wrong.
The net energy principle: Do not encourage the widespread use of
energy alternatives or technologies with low net energy yields.
The precautionary principle: When substantial evidence indicates that
an activity threatens human health or the environment, take
precautionary measures to prevent or reduce such harm.
The prevention principle: Whenever possible, make decisions that help
to prevent a problem from occurring or becoming worse.
The polluter-pays principle: Develop regulations and use economic
tools such as green taxes to ensure that polluters bear the costs of
dealing with the pollutants and wastes they produce (full-cost pricing).
The environmental justice principle: Establish environmental policy so
that no group of people bears an unfair share of the burden created by
pollution,
environmental
degradation,
or
the
execution
of
environmental laws.
- Individuals can influence environmental policy
History shows that significant change usually comes from the bottom up,
when individuals join together to bring about change.
At a fundamental level, all politics is local; what we do to improve
environmental quality in our own neighborhoods, schools, and work places
has national and global implications.
Think globally; act locally.
- Citizen environmental groups play important roles
The spearheads of the global conservation, environmental, and
environmental justice movements are the tens of thousands of nonprofit
NGOs working at the international, national, state, and local levels.
Grassroots groups with just a few members.
Mainline organizations like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a 5million-member global conservation organization, which operates in
100 countries.
Groups with large memberships include Greenpeace, the Nature
Conservancy, Conservation International, and the Grameen
Bank.
Students
and
educational
institutions
can
play
important
environmental roles
Since the mid-1980s, there has been a boom in environmental awareness on
U.S. college campuses and in public and private schools across the U.S..
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Students, faculty, and administration work together to make environmental

improvements.
Environmental audits of campuses or schools gather data on practices
affecting the environment and are used it to propose changes.
Environmentally sustainable practices usually save money in the
process.
- Environmental security is as important as military and economic
security
Ecologists and many economists point out that all economies are supported
by the earths natural capital.
Serious new threats to global and national military and economic security
are the potential for rapid climate change, increasing hunger and
malnutrition, spreading water shortages, and environmental degradation.
There is an increase in the number of failing states where governments can
no longer provide security and basic services such as education, health care,
and safe supplies of water for their citizens.
The United Nations houses a large family of influential organizations
including:
the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).
the World Health Organization (WHO).
the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP).
the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Other organizations that make or influence environmental decisions include
the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the World
Conservation Union (IUCN).
These and other international organizations have played important roles in:
Expanding global understanding of environmental issues;
Gathering and evaluating environmental data.
Developing and monitoring international environmental treaties.
Providing grants and loans for sustainable economic development and
reducing poverty.
Helping more than 100 nations to develop environmental laws and
institutions.
III. MORE SUSTAINABLE LIVING
- We can become more environmentally literate
Increase literacy by understanding three important ideas:
Natural capital matters because it supports the earths life and our
economies.
Our ecological footprints are immense and are expanding rapidly.
Ecological and climate change tipping points are irreversible and
should never be crossed.
- We can learn from the earth
Appreciation for ecological, aesthetic, and spiritual value of nature.
Not simply a lack of environmental literacy but also many people lack
intimate contact with nature and have a limited understanding of how it
sustains us.

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Humans have more power than ever before to disrupt nature.

Direct experiences with nature reveal parts of the complex web of life that
cannot be built with technology or in a chemical lab, bought with money, or
reproduced with genetic engineering.
The healing of the earth and the healing of the human spirit are one and the
same.
- We can live more simply and lightly on the earth
Sustainability is about sustaining the entire web of life.
Ethical guidelines for achieving more sustainable and compassionate
societies by converting environmental concerns, literacy, and wisdom into
environmentally responsible actions:
Use the three principles of sustainability to mimic the ways in which
nature sustains itself.
Do not deplete or degrade the earths natural capital.
Do not waste matter and energy resources.
Protect biodiversity.
Repair ecological damage that we have caused.
Leave the earth in as good a condition as we found it, or better.
People who have a habit of consuming excessively should to learn how to
live more simply and sustainably.
Seeking happiness through the pursuit of material things is considered
folly by almost every major religion and philosophy.
Modern advertising persistently encourages people to buy more and
more things to fill a growing list of wants as a way to achieve
happiness.
Mark Twain put it: Civilization is the limitless multiplication of
unnecessary necessities.
A growing number of people really want is more community, greater and
more fulfilling interactions with family, friends, and neighbors, and a greater
opportunity to express their creativity and to have more fun.
Some affluent people are adopting a lifestyle of voluntary simplicity, in
which they seek to learn how to live with much less than they are
accustomed to having.
A life based mostly on what one owns is not fulfilling.
Living with fewer material possessions and using products and services
that have a smaller environmental impact
Instead of working longer to pay for bigger vehicles and houses, they
are spending more time with their loved ones, friends, and neighbors.
Shifting from a culture of faster, bigger, and more to one of slower,
smaller, and less.
- We can bring about a sustainability revolution during your lifetime
Time for an environmental or sustainability revolution.
Three social science principles of sustainability:
Full-cost pricing (from economics): in working toward this goal, we
would find ways to include in market prices the harmful environmental
and health costs of producing and using goods and services.

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 Win-win solutions (from political science): by focusing on solutions that

will benefit the largest possible number of people, as well as the
environment, we might learn to work together consistently in dealing
with environmental problems.
A responsibility to future generations (from ethics): through this
principle, we would accept our responsibility to leave the planets lifesupport systems in at least as good a shape as what we now enjoy, for
all future generations.
- Three big ideas
A more sustainable economic system would include the harmful
environmental and health costs of producing and using goods and services
in their market prices, subsidize environmentally beneficial goods and
services, tax pollution and waste instead of wages and profits, and reduce
poverty.
Individuals can work together to become part of the political processes that
influence how environmental policies are made and implemented.
Living more sustainably means becoming environmentally literate, learning
from nature, living more simply, and becoming active environmental
citizens.

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