1. Environmental and Sustainability

Environment and Sustainability

• Environmental sustainability is maintaining ecological balance and conserving resources for current and future generations.

Principles of Sustainability

• Environment includes everything affecting an organism's lifetime.

• Organisms interact with living and non-living things.

• Environment includes energy, living/non-living things, human advances, and essential resources (sunlight, air, water, food).

Major Environmental Problems

• Climate change

• Loss of species and habitats

• Hazardous pollutants

• Population growth

Environmental Science

• Study of life connections in the natural environment.

• Interdisciplinary study of:

  • How the Earth works and thrives.

  • How humans interact with the environment.

  • How humans can live sustainably.

Ecology

• A key component of environmental science is Ecology.

• Focuses on interactions between living organisms and their environment.

• Abiotic factors: Air, water, sunlight

• Biotic factors: Insects, plants, birds, microorganisms, mammals, reptiles

Ecosystem

• Biological community interacting with each other and with nonliving factors.

• Example: Forest ecosystem (plants, animals, organisms, chemicals).

Key Components of Ecosystems

• Solar energy: Warms the planet, provides energy for plant nutrients.

• Biodiversity: Variety of genes, species, ecosystems; provides ecosystem services and adaptation.

• Chemical cycling or Nutrient cycling: Circulation of nutrients through organisms and back to the environment.

3 Additional Principles of Sustainability

• Full cost pricing: Include market prices for harmful environmental and health costs of producing and using goods and services.

• Win-win solution: Cooperation and compromise for mutual benefit.

• Responsibility to future generation: Leave the planet in good condition.

Environmental Worldviews

• Differing assumptions and values on environmental problems and solutions.

• Determined by environmental ethics.

Three Major Categories of Environmental Worldviews

• Human-centered: Humans manage Earth for their benefit.

  • Planetary management: Humans are in charge and can find substitutes for degraded resources.

  • Stewardship: Humans have a responsibility to care for the planet.

• Life-centered: All species have value.

  • Avoid causing extinction through human activities.

• Earth-centered: Humans are part of nature; Earth's resources are for all species.