Nature and People and Their Relationship

• Nature is not only an object but a reflection of philosophies, belief systems and ideologies

• Society is the sum of the invitations, institutions, and relationships created and reproduced by humans across particular places and times

The Way we View Nature

• Views of nature are dominated by the Western(Christian) tradition that understands human to be superior to nature

Nature is Seen as Something to be Tamed or Dominated

• Including the environmental philosophies that became popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the more radical political views of nature that gained prominence in the late twentieth century

Climate Change

• Scientific evidence of climate change is both extensive and widely accepted and includes rising temperatures, sea level rising, melting glaciers, species migration and persistent drought

• Climate change and its effects are being felt widely with an increase in tropical storms and storm surges as well as ecosystem degradation

• Impacts include coastal land submersion and as a result forced migration

Globalization’s Effect

• Industrialization and urbanization have had the biggest impact on the natural world

• The combustion of fossil fuels, destruction of forest resources, damming of watercourses and the massive changes in land-use patters contribute to environmental problems

• Geographers use the term global change to describe the combination of political, economic, social, historical, and environmental problems we must contend with how human settlement accelerated nature transformations

• Europe initiated expansion that changed the global political map and launched dramatic environmental change. Europeans were running out of land and explorers were dispatched to conquer new territories, enlarge empires, and collect tax revenues from new subjects

• Their people, ideologies, technologies, plant species, pathogens and animals changed the environments they were were introduced to

• European colonization ultimately helped to stimulate rapid industrialization and urbanization

Global Economic Development and Environmental Transformation

• Sustainable development involves employing ecological, economic and social measures to prevent environmental degradation while promoting economic growth and social equality

• Economic growth and change should occur only when the impacts on the environment are benign or manageable and the impacts (costs and benefits) are fairly distributed across class and region. Ie. finding less-polluting technologies that use resources efficiently and managing renewable resources