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 communities interact 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.