APES Study Material - Chapter 0

Environmental Science - Studies connections in nature - The interdisciplinary study of

  1.  how earth functions and sustains itself
  2. How humans interact with the environment
  3. Ways to live sustainably

TL;DR how humans interact with other organisms and the nonliving physical environment.

Ecology - branch of environmental science that sees how living organisms interact with the rest of their environments

Species - a group of organisms with a unique set of characteristics that set it apart from other groups

Ecosystem - A set of organisms within a defined area of land and water that interact with each other, and the nonliving environment around them, and also energy.

Biosphere - The part of earth where life is found.

Ideologies

  1. Utilitarian Conservation - Preserving resources for the benefit of the most people; It aims to sustain existing resources while still allowing human uses and interactions with them (i.e. to the point of even cutting down trees in national parks as long as its within certain limits)

  2. Figures include Teddy Roosevelt

  3. Preservation - Nature should be left alone the way it is; humans didn’t create it, so they have no right to interfere with it. Other than observing it, humans should not change nature in any way. Aims to keep nature in its original state.

  4. Figures include John Muir

  5. Transcendentalism - God exists more in nature than in any written works, and nature should be protected because it is a physical embodiment of God himself.

  6. Figures include Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau

Sustainability (emphasis of APES) - The ability of the environment to function indefinitely without going into a decline from the stresses imposed by human society on natural resources that maintain life on Earth.  It is the result of a 3 factor combo:

  • Society
  • Economy
  • Environment

4 primary unsustainable behaviors

  • Overconsumption of nonrenewable resources

  • Fossil fuels, greenhouse gasses, etc

  • Overconsumption of renewable resources

  • Water, food, etc; Humans are harvesting/collecting/catching these resources at a rate much higher than how fast they can replenish themselves, leading to a shortage of them that slowly increases until they can’t be replenished.

  • Overpollution

  • Humans once believed that by dumping all our waste and toxins into the ocean, the vastness of the ocean would simply dilute it and solve the problem; this was not the case and dumping all our waste into the oceans lead to large amounts of bioaccumulation that have wrecked our oceans and the life within them.

  • Overpopulation and Overconsumption

  • Earth simply has too many people, and the amount of resources we use is much more than the amount that Earth has to provide.

Globalization - The transformation of local or regional markets or societies into global ones - migration of people and the spread of trade, information, and technology.

  • Pro’s

  • Spreading ideas

  • Promoting culture exchange, exposure, and awareness

  • Less market regulation

  • Gives opportunities to developing countries to grow and expand

  • Con

  • Spread of invasive species

  • Makes world a lot more interreliant - any significant economic issues within one country will affect the globe

  • Unsustainable due to overpopulation and resource depletion

  • Exploitation of resources for profit

  • Loss of local cultural identity

4 main organizations tied to globalization

  • World bank, which gives financial and technical aid to developing countries.
  • IMF - Gives financial assistance to members in order to promote global stability and development.
  • UN: Promotes global peace and stability by giving members a platform to discuss issues
  • World Trade Organization: Makes global trade efficient

Tragedy of the commons:

  • When people prioritize themselves for short-term benefits, and end up hurting everyone in the long term.

  • Individuals aren’t aware of the consequences until its too late due to how the impacts are usually spread out over a larger population.

  • Coined by William Foster Lloyd in 1833 while discussing overgrazing cattle in village commons.

  • Used again by ecologist Garret Hardin to describe the exploitation of finite resources.

  • Examples include the overuse of antibiotics (leading to increased antibiotic resistant bacteria), coal plants and the release of fossil fuels, and littering, among a variety of others.

  • Solvency - Unity; Humans have proven they’re capable through the creation of social contracts and global-led initiatives, we just need to employ that ability.

  • A specific solution is setting quotas below the sustainable yield

Sustainable Yield

  • A set amount of how much of a species you can harvest while ensuring sustainability; usually set by the UN

  • These are largely not met due to a lack of monitoring, conflicting policies on a country by country basis, and global demand for resources         

  • Primary example: Overfishing!

Ecological Footprint:

  • The amount of land and water we need to produce the resources we use and to absorb our waste.
  • An accounting tool to see how much we’re spending and using regarding natural capital (resources).
  • Measured on multiple scales, from global to individual.
  • Per capita = average ecological footprint of an individual in a given country or region

Biocapacity

  • The amount of biologically productive area available to produce our resources and absorb our waste.

A country’s balance

  • Biocapacity minus its ecological footprint.

Three principles of sustainability

  • Dependence on solar energy

  • Biodiversity - the variety of organisms, ecosystems, ecosystem processes, etc.

  • Chemical or nutrient cycling - The circulation of chemicals and nutrients from the environment through organisms and back to the environment (i.e. nitrogen and phosphorus cycle).

  • Additional Three:

  • Full-cost pricing: finding a way to include environmental and health costs in market price of products

  • Win-Win solutions: benefiting the environment as well as the most amount of people

  • Responsibility to future generations: It is our responsibility to maintain or improve the planet’s life-support systems for future generations.

Natural Capital

  • The natural resources and ecosystem services that keep humans and other species alive and that support human economies

Natural resources - Materials and energy nature provides that humans need or use.

  • Inexhaustible/Perpetual Resources - self explanatory, i.e. the sun

  • Renewable Resources - replenish after a certain amount of time from hours to decades.

  • Sustainable Yield: Highest amount of a resource indefinitely  we can use that doesn’t reduce its available supply.

  • Nonrenewable Resources - Resources that have a finite supply and take millions of years to form

Ecosystem services

  • Natural services provided by healthy ecosystems that support life and human economies for free (i.e. how forests purify air and water, regulate climate, recycle nutrients, etc)

  • Big one is nutrient cycling

Connection between resource use and economic inequality

  • Due to wealth disparities, developed countries (with 17% of the world’s total population) use up 70% of Earth’s natural resources. The US which only has 3.4% of the world population uses up 30% alone. Less developed countries that have 83% of the world’s population use up only 30% of the total natural resources available.

IPAT

  • Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology

  • Affluence refers to how much resources the average person consumes and technology refers to the environmental effects of technology

Cultural Changes

  • Cultural changes have a massive effect on our ecological footprint, for better or worse

  • There have been three major global cultural changes

  • Agricultural revolution - approx 10k years ago - when humans learned to plant their own crops and raise animals

  • Industrial revolution about 300 years ago - humans create machine to mass produce products

  • Information-globalization - approx 50 years ago - developing new technologies that allowed us to rapidly access information and resources on a global scale

  • They give us more control over our resources and needs, but also fuel our ever growing desire for more, leading to the overexploitation and degradation of resources around the world.

  • There has also been the invention of green technology, so cultural changes have pros and cons.

Causes of Environmental Problems:

  • Overpopulation

  • Exponential growth of human population - world could reach 9.9 billion by 2050 - rate of growth is approx 1.2%.

  • Population doubling time formula/rule of 70

  • 70/average annual natural increase

  • Annual natural increase = births per 1000 people - deaths per 1000 people over 1000, and then multiplied by 100.

  • Wasteful consumption of resources

  • Poverty - 1 in every 3 people struggled to live on less than 3.10$ a day in 2015 - due to their immediate need for resources, they end up being forced into carrying out unsustainable practices, usually by employers who try to use cheap labor and the exploitation of resources to maximize profits.

  • Impacts of environmental degradation on the impoverished

  • Malnutrition

  • Sanitation

  • Clean water

  • 7 million children die prematurely every year as a result of these factors

  • Lack of full-cost pricing

  • Consumers have no idea how much harm has been done in the process of creating the product they want to buy

  • If prices were to factor in environmental costs (take gas for example), the price of gas would rise by 3.18$ per liter -> in the us, the average gallon costs 2$ while the cost including environmental harms is approximately 14$.

  • Isolation from nature

  • Half the world’s population lives in urban areas, reliant on new technologies -> leads to nature deficit disorder

  • Experiencing nature has a variety of health benefits, along with fostering a deeper sense of care and connection with nature.

  • Competing worldviews

  • People have different views when it comes to the nature and impact of the world’s environmental problems, leading to no sense of community when it comes to ultimately solving them

  • Planetary Management - We can use nature to meet our needs and wants

  • Stewardship - Ethical responsibility to take care of Earth

  • Environmental Wisdom - We are dependent on nature and should use the resources we have wisely

Economics:

  • Science of the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services to satisfy the demand of people. It involves three major type of capital:

  • Natural capital - natural resources and natural services

  • Human capital - physical and mental talents of people

  • Manufactured capital - stuff like machinery materials and factories

  • Economic growth - Increased capacity of a region of any scale (nation, state, city, etc) to provide goods and services for people.

  • Typically, today's economies function as high throughput economies to most efficiently gain profit; they use a large supply of high quality materials to make valuable goods but simultaneously turn that material into waste pollution and heat.

  • Sustainable solution to high throughput economies would be a low waste economy that focused on reusing and recycling resources, adhering to a sustainable yield, reducing waste, consumption, and ultimately promoting the prevention and reduction of pollution.

  • Solvency

  • The government gives people subsidies (tax breaks and payments) to help stimulate the production of businesses, but some of these are harmful (i.e. subsidizing the extraction of fossil fuels or cutting timber). Shifting to environmentally friendly subsidies could help.

  • Taxing people who unnecessarily harm the environment

Gross domestic product: total value of all products produced domestically

  • Per capita gdp = gdp/population
  • GDP doesn’t take into account environmental costs

Environmental Legislation:

  • Governments have a major role in dealing with environmental issues as the people in charge of legislation

  • Environmental Policy Making

  • 1970s - Due to pollution and rapid environmental degradation, the US public started protesting leading to environmental legislation being put in place. Multiple agencies were put in place, including:

  • Environmental Protection Agency

  • THe Department of Energy

  • THe US Fish and Wilderness Service

  • THe National Marine Fisheries Service

  • THe Occupational Safety and Health Administration

  • 1980s - Modern Environmental Movement was a strong campaign, and to this day, it only gains more and more momentum.

Global Environmental Security should be one of, if not the top priority of governments - without the resources we depend on for our very existence, nothing else matters.

Environmentally sustainable society = Protects natural capital and lives on its income

Natural income = Renewable resources provided by earth’s natural capital

Biomimicry

  • Biologist Janine Benyus coined this term, and it essentially describes the use of mimicry (imitating and analyzing nature) and how it has sustained life for so long to solve real world, human problems.

Figures

  • Aldo Leopold: Wrote 1949 book called A Sand County Almanac, arguing that humans had an obligation to protect nature not conquer it.
  • Janine Benyus: Forefront of the concept of biomimicry, and using this technique, has found solutions and findings that prove to be of major importance when it comes to solving human problems.