Environmental Science Notes

Environmental Science

Core Disciplines

  • Economics
  • Ethics
  • Ecology
  • Engineering
  • Biology
  • Chemistry
  • Political Science
  • Environmental Science
  • Atmospheric Science
  • History
  • Oceanography
  • Sociology
  • Geology
  • Health
  • Archaeology
  • Anthropology
  • Humanities

Environmental Philosophies

  • Deep Ecologists
  • Self-reliant Soft Ecologists
  • Environmental Managers
  • Cornucopians

What is Environmental Science?

  • Environmental science (ES) is the study of our surroundings and our interactions with them.
  • Includes living and nonliving components.
  • Focuses on how the world works, how the environment affects us, and how we affect it.
  • Aims to find ways to live more sustainably without degrading our life support system.
  • Requires the ability to understand environmental problems.

Interdisciplinary Nature

  • Knowledge is crucial for creating solutions to urgent environmental issues.
  • Everything is interconnected.
  • Integrates natural science with social science.
  • Highly interdisciplinary.

Earth's Life-Support System

  • Key components:
    • Air (atmosphere)
    • Life (biosphere)
    • Soil and rocks (lithosphere)
    • Water (hydrosphere)
    • Human Culturesphere
      • Politics
      • Population Size
      • Worldviews and ethics
      • Economics

Types of Resources and Services

  • Resources: Anything from the environment that meets human needs and wants.

    • Perpetual Resources: Continuous on a human timescale (e.g., wind energy, sunlight).
    • Renewable Resources: Can be replenished rapidly (hours to decades) (e.g., timber, soil, fresh water, animal populations).
    • Nonrenewable Resources: Fixed supply on a human timescale (e.g., minerals, fossil fuels).

  • Services: Processes provided by the environment.

  • Categories:

    • Natural Resources/Services
    • Human Resources/Services
    • Manufactured Resources/Services

Natural Resources and Services

  • Natural Resources:
    • Renewable
    • Nonrenewable
  • Natural Services:
    • Air purification
    • Water purification
    • Water storage
    • Soil renewal
    • Nutrient recycling
    • Food production
    • Conservation of biodiversity
    • Wildlife habitat
    • Grassland and forest renewal
    • Waste treatment
    • Climate control
    • Population control (species interactions)
    • Pest control
  • Economies depend on ecological life-support systems, making their value infinite.

Types of Resources (cont'd)

  • Natural Resources:
    • Air
    • Water
    • Soil
    • Land
    • Nonrenewable minerals (iron, sand)
    • Life (Biodiversity)
    • Renewable energy (sun, wind, water flows)
    • Nonrenewable energy (fossil fuels, nuclear power)
  • Human Resources:
    • People's physical and mental talents
    • Labor, innovation, culture, and organization
  • Human Services:
    • Labor, jobs
  • Manufactured Resources:
    • Machinery, equipment, and factories
  • Manufactured Services:
    • Function (of machinery, etc.)

Anthropogenic Impact

  • Anthropogenic: Man-caused
  • Every human action affects the environment.
  • Meeting needs alters our surroundings (e.g., food production, housing, manufacturing, transportation).

Globalization

  • Globalization: Increasing interconnectedness of human activities, ideas, and cultures.

    • Migration
    • Trade
    • Exchange of ideas

  • Intensity, speed, extent, and impact of this connectedness are rapidly changing human enterprises.

  • Examples:

    • High yield farms vs. increased pesticide use
    • Increased public health practice vs. new diseases

Sustainability

  • Sustainability: A system that continues indefinitely without depleting material or energy resources.
  • Example: Sustainable harvesting of biological species at a rate that allows population stability.
  • Unsustainable practices involve harvesting at rates exceeding the population's capacity to reproduce and grow.
  • Resource consumption creates social and environmental pressures.
  • Ecological footprint: Area of land and water needed to provide resources and absorb waste.
  • Overshoot: Using more renewable resources than are sustainably available.
    • Estimated that we are using 64% more than is sustainably available.
    • 2019 Earth Overshoot Day: July 29.

Achieving Sustainability

  • Sustainability: Ability of Earth’s systems to survive and adapt indefinitely.
  • Steps to sustainability must be supported by sound science.

Sustainable Practices

  • Agriculture:
    • Reduce meat consumption.
    • Buy locally grown and produced food.
    • Buy more organic food and grow your own.
    • Avoid pesticides.
  • Transportation:
    • Use energy-efficient vehicles.
    • Walk, bike, carpool, or use mass transit.
    • Work at home or live near work.
  • Home Energy Use:
    • Fix leaks, add insulation, use energy-efficient appliances.
    • Use solar, wind, flowing water, biomass for home energy.
  • Water Use:
    • Use water-saving showers and toilets, drip irrigation, natural landscaping.
  • Resource Consumption:
    • Reduce consumption and waste by at least 10%: Refuse and Reuse.

Scientific Principles of Sustainability

  • How Nature Works:
    • Runs on renewable solar energy.
    • Recycles nutrients and wastes.
    • Uses biodiversity to maintain itself and adapt.
    • Controls population size and resource use through interactions.
  • Lessons for Us:
    • Rely on renewable solar energy.
    • Prevent pollution and recycle resources.
    • Preserve biodiversity.
    • Reduce births and wasteful resource use.
  • Current Emphasis:
    • Pollution cleanup
    • Waste disposal (bury or burn)
    • Protecting species
    • Environmental degradation
    • Increased resource use
    • Population growth
    • Depleting natural resources
  • Sustainability Emphasis:
    • Pollution prevention
    • Waste prevention and reduction
    • Habitat protection
    • Environmental restoration
    • Efficient resource use
    • Population stabilization
    • Protecting natural capital

Sustainable Solutions

  • Energy-efficient fuel-cell cars
  • Forest conservation
  • Underground CO2CO_2 storage using abandoned oil wells
  • No-till cultivation
  • High-speed trains
  • Deep-sea CO2CO_2 storage
  • Solar-cell fields
  • Bicycling
  • Cluster housing development
  • Wind farms
  • Passive solar homes
  • Landfill Recycling plant
  • Water conservation
  • Recycling, reuse, & composting

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

  • UN-funded assessment reported in 2005 that natural resources are being used unsustainably.

    • 60% of world ecosystems have been degraded.
    • 25% of Earth’s land surface is cultivated.
    • 40-50% of surface freshwater is used.
    • Water withdrawals from underground sources have doubled in the past 40 years.
    • Over 25% of fish stocks are overharvested.
    • 20% of corals have been lost in the past 20 years, and 20% degraded.

  • Recommendations:

    • Remove subsidies to agriculture, fisheries, and energy that harm the environment.
    • Encourage landowners to manage property to enhance ecosystems.
    • Protect more areas from development.

The Commons

  • Commons: Resources available freely to everyone.
    • Examples: Federal Grassland, Open ocean fisheries, Groundwater / Aquifers, Forests harvested for fuel in developing countries, Atmosphere (Air).

Tragedy of the Commons

  • Garret Hardin's theory (1968): Unregulated exploitation of open resources leads to depletion.
  • Population growth is a root cause of many environmental problems.

Protecting the Commons

  • Regulations
  • Fines / Penalties
  • Restrictions
  • Quota System
  • Privatization - ownership

Stewardship and Ethics

  • Stewardship/Ethics: Ethical and moral framework guiding public and private actions.
  • Responsible planning and management of resources.
  • Actions benefiting the natural world and other people.
  • Culture and worldview influence our perception of the environment.
  • Actions include recycling, buying hybrid cars, supporting organizations, and voting for environmentally conscious candidates.

Environmental Worldviews and Values

  • Environmental worldview: How you think the world works, your environmental role, and your beliefs about right and wrong environmental behavior.
  • Subjectivity: Assessments and choices involve judgments and personal opinions.

Environmental Ethics

  • Ecocentrism: System-centered, valuing the ecosystem as a whole.
  • Biocentrism: Life-centered, asserting that humans and other species have the right to exist.
  • Anthropocentrism: Human-centered, considering nature as instrumentally valuable for providing resources.

Gaia Hypothesis

  • The Gaia hypothesis posits that organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are integrated to form a self-regulating complex system that maintains conditions for life.

  • The scientific investigation of the Gaia hypothesis focuses on how the biosphere and the evolution of life forms contribute to the stability of global temperature, ocean salinity, oxygen in the atmosphere, and other factors of habitability in a preferred homeostasis or negative feedback mechanisms

  • Hypothesis arguments:

    • Temperature at Earth’s surface is constant
    • Composition of atmosphere is constant (79%N79\%N, 21%O21\%O, 0.03%CO20.03\%CO_2)
    • Oceans’ salinity is constant at 3.4%3.4\%

Economics and Environmental Science

  • Economics: Social science dealing with production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
  • Studies how people use scarce resources to provide goods and services.
  • The goal of an environmentally sustainable economy is to provide for the sustainable well being of people without depleting or degrading the Earth’s natural services.

Market Economic Systems

  • Pure Free Market and Capitalistic Models: Supply, demand, and market equilibrium (Figure 24-3).

Environmental Problems as Economic Problems

  • Environmental problems are economic problems intensified by population and per capita resource consumption.
  • Conventional economists often ignore the environment, driving policy decisions.
  • Economic growth is measured by GDP (Gross Domestic Product), the annual market value of all goods and services produced within a country.

Poverty and Environmental Issues

  • Poverty is a major cause of environmental problems.

    • 1.1 billion people survive on less than $$1 a day.
    • The rural poor depend heavily on the environment.
    • They often live unsustainably to meet immediate needs.

  • Poverty statistics:

    • Lack of adequate sanitation impacts 2.4 billion (37% of world's population)
    • Lack of clean drinking water impacts 1.1 billion (17%)
    • 1 of 3 children suffer from severe malnutrition.

World Trade Organization (WTO)

  • WTO created in 1993 to build on global trade by reducing tariffs and trade rules and giving subsidies to industries.

  • Responsible for implementing and enforcing rules, with penalties for violators.

  • Faces challenges with:

    • Free trade issues
    • Human rights
    • Environmental resource concerns
    • Negotiation breakdowns
    • Mass protests
    • Country to country debt

World Bank

  • Provides assistance to developing countries to reduce poverty and promote growth.

  • Focuses on:

    • Educating and strengthening governments
    • Creating infrastructure
    • Developing financial systems
    • Combating corruption

Eco-Labeling

  • Certifying and labeling environmentally beneficial goods can help consumers make informed choices.
  • Encourages “BUYING GREEN”.

Green Taxes/Incentives

  • Advantages:

    • Decreases resource depletion and degradation
    • Improves environmental quality through full-cost pricing
    • Encourages pollution prevention and waste reduction
    • Stimulates creativity in solving environmental problems
    • Rewards recycling and reuse
    • Relies on the marketplace rather than regulation
    • Provides jobs
    • Stimulates sustainable economic development
    • Allows cuts in income, payroll, and sales taxes

Policy and Politics

  • Human decisions that determine what happens in the natural world.

  • Political processes that lead to those decisions.

    • United Nations
    • Democrats vs Republicans
    • Endangered Species Act
    • Kyoto Protocol
    • Local social problems

Environmental Policy

  • Policies are formal plans and principles to address problems and guide decision-making.
  • Involves prevention/reduction of pollution and management of natural resources.

Principles for Environmental Policy Decisions

  • Several guiding principles:

    • The humanity principle.
    • The reversibility principle.
    • The precautionary principle.
    • The polluter pays principle.
    • The integrative principle.
    • The public participation principle.
    • The human rights principle.
    • The environmental justice principle.

Special Interest Groups

  • Advocate for favorable laws, subsidies, tax breaks, and regulations.
  • Exert pressure on government officials.

Government Agencies Involved

  • White House Office
  • Office of Management and Budget
  • Council on Environmental Quality
  • Various departments (Health & Human Services, Environmental Protection Agency, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Defense, etc.)
  • Nuclear Regulatory Commission
  • Department of State
  • Department of Commerce
  • Department of Labor
  • Department of Housing and Urban Development
  • Department of Transportation
  • Tennessee Valley Authority
  • Department of Energy
  • President

Developing Environmental Policy

  • Involves identifying a problem, finding solutions, implementing them, and monitoring their effectiveness.
  • Most initiatives result from events, not prevention.
  • Importance of GDP and GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator).

Costs and Externalities

  • Costs include environmental degradation, health impacts, economic burdens, and social consequences.
  • External costs: Costs not reflected in the price of a product or event.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

  • Compares costs and benefits of environmental actions.

  • Involves determining affected parties, projecting outcomes, evaluating alternatives, and assessing benefits and harms.

  • Triple bottom line:

    • Economic (development)
    • Environmental (protection)
    • Social (justice; equity)

Consequences of Poor Environmental Management

  • Water pollution and scarcity
  • Air pollution
  • Solid and hazardous wastes
  • Soil degradation
  • Deforestation
  • Loss of biodiversity
  • Atmospheric changes

The Birth of the Environmental Era

  • John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892.
  • Theodore Roosevelt (President from 1901-1909) contributed to the establishment of the first National Park in 1872.
  • 1970 marks the dawn of the modern day era of environmental policy.

Key Developments in the Environmental Era

  • 1st Earth Day in 1970
  • NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act): Required environmental impact statements for major federal actions.
    • Does not prohibit environmental harmful gov. projects but it requires them to take into account consequences in their decisions
  • EPA (Environmental Protection Agency): Responsible for research, monitoring, setting standards, assisting states, and public education.

Major Environmental Laws in the U.S.

  • Set pollution standards, screen for toxic substances, evaluate environmental impacts, encourage resource conservation, and protect ecosystems and species.
  • Many have been amended since 1969.

Impact of Environmental Policy on the Economy

  • Environmental policy transfers wealth from polluters to pollution controllers.
  • The environmental protection industry creates jobs and profits.
  • Results in a healthier and more enjoyable environment.

Environmental Groups and Their Influence

  • Monitor activities, advocate for laws, and collaborate with corporations.
  • Over 100,000 Nonprofit groups (NGOs – Nongovernmental Organization).
  • From grassroots to mainline groups (WWF, Sierra Club, National Wildlife Fund, Audubon Society, Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited).

Environmental Leadership

  • Lead by example.
  • Work within systems to bring about improvement.
  • Propose better solutions.

Industry Collaboration

  • Some industries and groups work together to find solutions.

    • Environmental Defense Fund and McDonalds
    • Rainforest Alliance and Chiquita Banana

Sustainable Solutions

  • Socially desirable
  • Economically feasible
  • Ecologically viable

Achieving A Sustainable Future

  • Environmental protection, economic welfare, social equality.
    *Strategic Themes
    *Sustainability
    *Stewardship
    *Science
    *Integrative Themes
    *Ecosystem Capital
    *Policy and Politics
    *Globalization
    *Goal
    *Sustainable Future

Principles for Shifting to More Environmentally Sustainable Economies

  • Reward (subsidize) earth-sustaining behavior
  • Penalize (tax and do not subsidize) earth-degrading behavior
  • Shift taxes from wages and profits to pollution and waste
  • Use full-cost pricing
  • Sell more services instead of more things
  • Do not deplete or degrade natural capital
  • Live off income from natural capital
  • Reduce resource use and waste by refusing, reducing, reusing, and recycling
  • Improve energy efficiency
  • Rely more on renewable solar and geothermal energy
  • Shift from a carbon-based (fossil fuel) economy to a renewable fuel-based economy
  • Reduce poverty
  • Use environmental indicators to measure progress
  • Certify sustainable practices and products
  • Use eco-labels on products
  • Mimic nature
  • Preserve biodiversity
  • Repair ecological damage
  • Stabilize population by reducing fertility

U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

  • Devised 2015; projected target date 2030

    • End poverty
    • End hunger
    • Ensure quality education
    • Ensure water and sanitation
    • Ensure access to affordable reliable and sustainable energy
    • Conserve marine resources

Environmentally Sustainable Businesses and Careers

  • Aquaculture
  • Environmental law
  • Biodiversity protection
  • Environmental nanotechnology
  • Biofuels
  • Fuel cell technology
  • Climate change research
  • Geographic information systems (GIS)
  • Conservation biology
  • Geothermal geologist
  • Eco-industrial design
  • Hydrogen energy
  • Marine science
  • Ecotourism management
  • Pollution prevention
  • Energy efficient product design
  • Reconciliation ecology
  • Selling services in place of products
  • Environmental chemistry
  • Solar cell technology
  • Environmental design
  • Sustainable agriculture
  • Environmental economics
  • Sustainable forestry
  • Environmental education
  • Waste reduction
  • Watershed hydrologist
  • Environmental engineering
  • Water conservation
  • Environmental health
  • Wind energy