Untitled Flashcards Set

Week 0

• The Fermi Paradox

  • Based on what we know from our planet and universe, it feels like there should be other life in the cosmos, but we don't have any clear evidence. 

  • Enrico Fermi: an Italian born American physicist, Nobel Prize winner, and member of the Manhattan project who designed the world's first nuclear reactor. 

  • Answers to the Fermi Paradox

    • #1: Were wrong - Earth, and the life it contains, is unique or at least very rare

      • “Rare Earth Hypothesis” - our planet is either so unique or so unusual that there just aren't many other planets out there suited for life. 

      • “Selection bias” (Anthropic Principle) - the universe is capable of supporting life because we are here, but just because we are here doesn't mean anyone else is. 

    • #2: Maybe Earth isn't so rare, and were actually not alone, but we just don't know it yet 

      • “Common earth” - this suggests that life in the universe is probably common; we just haven't found it yet. Evidence includes:

        • Our planet is 4.5 billion years old

        • It took a long time to create complex life

        • Simple life emerged very early on

        • Went from magma ball to a slime world in just 300 million years

      • Considering our own galaxy:

        • 130k light year in diameter

        • 200 billion stars

        • Most stars have planetary systems

        • 20-50 percent of stars have small, rocky planets

        • 40 billion of there are in the habitable zone

      • The Drake Equation: an attempt to calculate how many planets with or even actual extraterrestrial civilizations, should be out there

    • #3: The Great Filter - this is an idea that there must be some common obstacle, or set of obstacles, that hinder the evolution and persistence of technological life.

      • Possible filters:

        • Spacetime is too big

        • Life is rarer than we think

        • Simple life is common but complex life is rare

        • Were among the first civilizations

        • Interstellar travel is too hard

        • Were looking for the wrong signs

        • “Intelligent” civilization doesn't last very long 

          • May produce their own “existential threats” like nuclear war, geological hazards, biotechnology, AI, environmental destruction (climate, etc)

    • All lead to the same conclusion that we should probably do our best to preserve our planet

Week 1

• There are several different types of environmental issues and “crises”

  • Climate crisis 

  • Ecological crisis

  • Health crisis

  • Justice crisis

  • Inequality crisis

  • Political crisis

    • These crises are interconnected and there are many opportunities to take actions that can address a range of problems

• Four key points:

  • #1: They are called “crises” for a reason. If they were called "problems", it would be assumed that they are relatively contained and have specific, identifiable solutions. Calling them “crises” suggests that they are more complex and systemic. They are inherent to the social system that produced them, not unintended consequences of historical processes or social arrangements. 

  • #2: All the crises are interrelated and influence one another

    • This means that some social changes may help address multiple, complex issues

  • #3: These aren't the only crises we are facing. We are facing the crisis of imagination and creativity. 

    • Environmentalists have become very good at identifying problems but awful at imagining and articulating visions and solutions to those problems. 

• All scientific claims about the world must be based on some form or reasoning backed by evidence

  • Evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid

  • What counts as evidence depends on the field and the context

• Types of evidence in law

  • Relevance

  • Authentication

  • Witness

  • Hearsay and exceptions

• Types of evidence biomedical science (going from individual cases to generalizable insights)

  • Case resorts and case series

  • Case control status

  • Cohort studies

  • Randomised controlled trials

  • Systematic review

• Types of evidence in the behavioral sciences (going from theory to testing to practice)

  • Theoretical

  • Empirical

  • Applicable

  • Replicable

  • Impact

• An evidence building process in policy making

  • Going from theory to consensus to intervention and then validation

• Defining standards of evidence is challenging in ES because ES is an interdisciplinary field. Each field that contributes to ES has its own traditions and standards of evidence – its own definition of what counts as rigorous, valid, or even true.

  • Doesn't mean one approach, discipline, method, or type of data is inherently more superior to any other.

  • Different methods offer different potential insights. Some may be better suited than others to answering certain questions. 

  • Valuing different approaches is called pluralism

• Some key concepts for thinking about evidence in ES

  • Direct vs. Indirect sources

    • Direct: measurement taken of a thing or process itself. 

      • This could include counting something, such as the number of birds in a wetland.

    • Indirect: measurements taken of one thing that are used to study together. These are sometimes called proxy sources.

      •  In some areas where tree growth is limited by the amount of water available, annual growth rings can be used as proxies to study past climate. 

      • Indicator species are another common indicator source of information. Because they are sensitive to change in their environments, they can serve as proxies of ecosystem health.

  • Quantitative vs. qualitative methods

    • Qualitative methods: Essential info about people or the past often comes in non-numerical form. Provides important narrative and contextual insights, but they do not lend themselves to statistical analysis.

      • A historical text written in prose is one example

    • Quantitative methods: Data captured or represented in numerical form

  • Cyclical vs. Directional changes

    • Cyclical: Research in environmental studies often attempts to document and explain change over time through repeated patterns.

      • These include the days, seasons, El Niño oscillations, and planetary orbital patterns. Populations of predators and their prey falling or raising over time is another example.

    • Directional: the change in a process or system that occurs in a specific path or trajectory. Some environmental changes do not repeat.

      • Species extinction only occurs once, so is directional change

  • Driving Forces vs. Proximate Causes

    • Driving forces: Large-scale processes that create the general conditions for change

      • An example would be the influence of climate cycles on the distribution of animal species

    • Proximate Causes: smaller-scale processes or events that cause change in a specific, tangible way. 

      • Animal species moving to new areas because it’s becoming too hot, too dry, too wet, because they’re being crowded out by newcomers, or because they’re following their prey

        • Each is a proximate cause, even though the driving force of climate change remains the same

  • Scale: the extent (area) and resolution (the smallest object or entity) included in a study. Scale is important because objects occur and processes play out differently at different scales.

  • Triangulation: using two or more methods to address the same question can often render a more robust and reliable result than any single method can alone. This is sometimes called “mixed methods” research.

  • Uncertainty: an unavoidable fact of all environmental knowledge. We can never eliminate it entirely. Uncertainty offers an opportunity for groups they want to exploit gaps in knowledge to advance their agenda

• Correlation - an apparent relationship between two variables

• Causation - an actual relationship between two variables, such that changes in the value of one affect the value of another. 

• Type 1 Error - a false positive occurs when you think you see a pattern or effect where no such pattern or effect really exists 

• Type 2 Error - a false negative occurs when you think there is no pattern or effect but one actually exists

Week 2

• Earth is a rocky planet formed about 4.5 billion years ago by gravity of rocky debris orbiting around the newly formed sun. It is located in the habitable zone, a comfy distance from its parent star, and has a combination of qualities that make it ideal for supporting life. 

• The only thing constant in our planets history is change

• Peak of last glacial period ~ 20,000 years ago

  • Sea level was 120 meters lower than today

• Peak of last interglacial period ~ 6,000 years ago

  • Sea level was 4 to 6 meters higher than today

• Milankovitch Cycles

  • These repeated ice ages were due to patterns in the earth's orbit around the sun, known as Milankovitch Cycles, which have the effect of varying the amount of incoming solar traditions absorbed and reradiated by earth.

  • The configuration of the continents is crucial for ice ages. As the continents drifted into their current configuration, the circulation of the oceans and atmosphere made it more likely that Milankovitch Cycles would produce cyclical glacial and interglacial phases. 

• Earth has gone through for major phases, or eons, over its 4.6 billion year history

  • The fourth, the Phanerozoic (544 MYA - present), began with the “Cambrian explosion” (~540-520 MYA) of complex animals, plants, animals, and fungi.

  • Life on earth has experienced five mass extinctions, and we are probably undergoing a sixth.

  • After the dinosaurs' extinction around 66 million years ago, mammals expanded and diversified into the many modern groups we see today. 

  • Anatomically modern humans appeared sometime around 300,000 years ago. One of the several closely related primate species, they (we) almost went extinct several times. 

  • Humans emerged from Africa at least 70,000 years ago, reaching SE Asia by 50 KYA, Australia and Europe by 40 KYA, and the Americas by at least 15 KYA – and perhaps longer. 

    • This great migration probably initiated the first wave of a 6th mass extinction beginning around 50 KYA.

• Humans have always altered their environment in which they live, starting with paleolithic hunter gatherers that acquired the use of fire, engaged in horticulture, and hunted wild game. 

• All of organized human history, including the first cities and farms, emerged during the current interglacial phase beginning around 12 KYA. known as the Holocene, this period of time saw human social organization explode, with the emergence of diverse new cultures. 

• Anthropocene: the period in earth history when humans have come to dominate global geological, ecological, and climatological processes

  • Some argue it began at the dawn of agriculture 6 KYA, others say it began in 1945 at the time of the first nuclear explosion at the beginning of the Great Acceleration

• The Great Acceleration refers to the period from World War II to the present, during which human population and economic activities grew at a much greater rate than ever before.

  • Almost every major aspect of human activity on this planet—population and economic growth, extraction of natural resources, land use and land cover change, biodiversity loss—has grown spectacularly in the brief period of one human lifetime since 1945

• Logical fallacies - common errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic of an argument

  • Cherry picking - pointing to limited info that seems to confirm a particular position while ignoring related information

  • False dilemma or dichotomy - your with us or against us. Presents limited options typically focusing on two extremes. 

  • Ad hominem - attack on someone's character or qualities rather than their opinions or arguments. 

• Shifting Baseline Syndrome - phenomenon where each generation has a different perception of what constitutes as a normal or healthy environment

• Theophrastus - biographer and gardener of Aristotle, was concerned about the impacts of human activities on the climate

• Christopher Columbus: concluded that human activities had affected the climate

• For most of human history, people understood nature as cyclical. Cycles of seasons, the heavens, growth, aging, and death. View is sometimes referred to as the “eternal return”

  • When bad things happened (flood, drought, plague), it meant the gods, heavens, or ancestors were angry

• Great chain of being - a hierarchical model of gods' plan for life on earth. He sits on his throne above angels, humans, and non-human animals/plants. Hell is the lowest rung. 

  • Example of balance of nature

• Carl Linnaeus: great naturalist, father of binomial taxonomic system, argued for a divinely ordered nature. “There are only as many species as the Infinite Being produced diverse forms in the beginning. 

• The Peaceable Kingdom, by Edwards Hicks, is an example of the balance of nature idea. 

• Beginning around 1800 till present, research on geology, evolution, climate, ecology, and other fields show that directional – not just cyclical – environmental change is inherent and universal

Week 3

• Universe is 13.8 billion years old

• 2nd law of thermodynamics states that total entropy, or disorder, will increase in a closed system

• Geology

  • Uniformitarisms: the slow processes that have always shaped life on earth continue to do so today (Charles Lyell)

  • Catastrophism: earth history is shaped by rare, unpredictable, transformative events (Georges Cuvier)

• Alfred Russell Wallace: Coauthor, along with Charles Darwin, of the first paper that introduced the theory of evolution by natural selection. 

• Evolution

  • Phyletic gradualism: Darwin believed that large changes occurred though the accumulation of many smaller changes over long periods of time

  • Punctuated Equilibrium: in the 20th century, scholars such as Stephen J Gould pointed out that rare events may lead to rapid and drastic changes after long periods of relative calm. 

    • These two models depict different rates and patterns of change; they also imply different underlying processes and causes

• Climate

  • Gaia Hypothesis: negative feedbacks tend toward convergence and equilibrium. 

    • Earths atmosphere and biosphere comprise a stable, self regulating system that has endured for millions of years (James Lovelock)

  •  Chaos Theory: positive feedbacks tend towards divergence and change

    • Future outcomes depend on conditions today; the climate is prone to unpredictable changes (Edwards Lorenz)

• Ecology

  • Succession: disturbed ecosystems pass through predictable states, reaching a final “climax” state determined by climate and soils (Frederick Clements)

  • Disturbance: the norm in most ecosystems, and can result in unpredictable, even irreversible shifts at certain tipping points

• Earth System Science (ESS): field that was founded in the 1990s, studies our planet as complex, dynamic, and non-linear “system of systems”

• Forces of anthropogenic environmental change

  • Migration, agriculture, urbanization, industrialization, resource extraction, pollution, domestication, interaction with wild species

• I = PAT

  • Impact (environment)

  • Population (births-deaths + immigration-emigration)

  • Affluence (wealth)

  • Technology

• The Maltusians

  • population growth will outpace food production and resource availability

  • Lead to conflict, disease, hunger, and other negative checks

  • Tech and affluence can alter rate of change, but not affect the outcome

  • Got it wrong because he was looking backward instead of forward

• Carrying capacity: total population or amount of a thing that can be sustained in a given area

  • Fails to consider cultural adaptation, technological change, globalization and trade, institutional arrangements, resource allocation, gender equity

• IPAT says that environmental impact increases with more wealth and consumption but some economic models say no and increases in wealth lead to reductions in environmental damage.

• Environmental Kuznets curve: argues that, following an initial period of increased impacts, total environmental impacts decrease with increasing affluence. Predicts that pollution follows a bell shaped curve over time for countries at low, medium, and high levels of economic development.

• Affluence 

  • No simple of straightforward environmental result

  • Can increase or reduce impact

  • Multiple theories 

• Technology as a force of environmental change

  • Tech in general is seen as a driving force of environmental change

    • Exploitation of fossil fuels

  • No simple or straightforward relationship

  • Can increase or reduce impact

  • Consequences depend on both content and use

• Climate change sciences

  • Energy from the sun comes in a spectrum of wavelengths. Some is reelected into space by the atmosphere; of the energy that reaches the earth's surface, some is reelected while some is absorbed then reradiated as heat

  • Some molecules in our atmosphere like CO2 and CH4 (methane) allow light to pass through but then trap infrared radiation (heat) emitted from the earth's surface. These are known as greenhouse gasses. 

  • Retention of heat energy emitted from the earth is called the greenhouse effect

  • Keeling Curve: graph that tracks the rise of global CO2 (1950-present)

    • Period from 2022-2024 has seen largest two year jump in atmospheric CO2 concentration ever recorded (33.33% increase)

  • About half of human caused carbon emission has ended in the atmosphere. The other half is in forests, grasslands, soils, oceans (carbon sinks).

  • Different GHGs have different capacities to retain heat and remain in the atmosphere for different amounts of time. 

  • Not spread evenly across the planet. The Arctic is most affected.

  • North America and Europe have contributed the most emissions

• Physics of greenhouse gases were discovered in 19th century 

• In 1992, countries joined an international treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change

  • 197 parties

• Kyoto Protocol: legally binding nations to specific emission targets 

  • 1972 parties 

• In 2015, 195 United Nations member countries signed the Paris Agreement

  • Aims to keep temps less that +1.5-2 C

• Positive feedbacks: a process whose results lead to more of that same result

• 3 options for dealing with climate change

  • Mitigation, adaptation, suffering

• After the discovery of stratospheric ozone depletion in the 1970s and the Antarctic “ozone hole” in 1985, nations came together to sign the Montreal Protocol in 1987 which aimed to phase out ozone depleting chemicals. 

• A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that's difficult to solve because of its complex and interconnected nature. 

Week 4

• Environmental health threats, including disease, were uncommon throughout history because people were too dispersed to be affected. Urbanization and trade changed this, creating the conditions for disease transmission

• As cities and trade networks grew, a series of epidemic terrorized Europe and asia. 

• The proximate cause of plague is Yersinia Pestis, a bacteria transmitted from fleas and carried by rodents. The driving force was the increased interchange between people separated by great distances but also densely packed into small areas. 

• Miasma theory - the concept that airborne vapors caused most diseases

• Germ theory - specific living microorganisms cause specific diseases

• During 19th century, field of public health underwent major advances, including identifying new diseases, sourcing outbreak, treating patients, and proposing collective solutions

• John snow traced an 1854 cholera outbreak in London to a Broad Street

• In late 19th and early 20th centuries, advances in public health helped launch the “sanitary cities” movement in North America, Europe, and elsewhere

  • An effort to build better infrastructure and clean up dirty cities 

  • One environmental consequence was cities started to build reservoirs and aqueducts to import clean water from more distant sources

• By early 20th century, medicine began to separate from public health

• Reductionism: a powerful philosophy of knowledge that explains complex processes by breaking them down into their constituent parts

• Emergent properties: which are characteristics of a system that can only be seen or understood when the system is viewed in its context and as a whole

• Three major problems with health, medicine, and the environment

  • #1: since the reductionistic medial model deals mainly with individual bodies, it does not typically account for socioeconomic inequalities in access, exposure, and risk\

  • #2: The reductionistic medical model does not usually account for other social forces, beyond but often related to socioeconomic inequality, that affect or are affected by public health. These may include gender, education, institutional capacity, politics, the social safety net, vulnerability to misinformation, etc

  • #3: The reductionistic medical model does not generally consider environmental issues that affect health. These include direct factors, like those of concern to 19th century public health researchers, as well as indirect factors, such as the role of climate change in exacerbating health risks.

• Zoonosis: refers to disease that can be transmitted between animals and humans.

• Vector-borne diseases account for more than 17% of all infectious diseases, causing more than 700k deaths annually. 

  • Caused by parasites, bacteria, or viruses

• Hostswitching (spillover) of a zoonotic disease into people was thought to be uncommon. Now epidemiologists think its very common, just not commonly successful.

• Humans share 132 or 75% of diseases with other animals

  • Zoonoses are twice as likely to be “emerging” than non-zoonotic diseases.

• Dilution: decrease in disease → infection prevalence decreases and species diversity decreases

• Amplification: increase in disease → inflection prevalence goes up and species diversity increases 

 Week 5

• Biodiversity: the total diversity of all life on earth. Includes all levels of biological organization

  • Gene (DNA), species, population, ecosystem, biome

  • Biodiversity tends to be greatest in tropics and lowest towards the poles

    • Tropics are stable in temperature but valuable in precipitation

      • Tropical rainforests = 6% of world land area and 50% of terrestrial plant and animal species

      • Make their own weather

    • Biomes mostly determined by temperature and water

  • For some specific groups, there are more species extinct, than the ones that exist today.

• Biodiversity importance:

  • Ecosystem services

  • Resilience to change

  • Sources of resources

  • Cultural and aesthetic value

• Biodiversity hotspots: 34 regions are considered “hot spots” due to their density (.5% or 1500) of endemic species that occur nowhere else. 

• Species richness: the total number of species in an area

• Species richness importance

  • Functional redundancy: roles such as pollination, decomposition, nutrient cycling

  • Diverse responses to disturbance: while some species are affected by disturbances, others might thrive, helping the ecosystem recover faster

  • Increased productivity and stability: diverse ecosystems tend to be more productive and therefore more stable and less susceptible to sudden changes

  • Interconnected relationships: predators-prey dynamics. With high diversity of organisms, in the lack of primary prey, predators can switch.

• Currently in sixth mass extinction: current extinction event began with the disappearance of the Pleistocene megafauna beginning around 50,000 years ago.

• Global living planet index is decreasing (-73% since 1970)

• Red list index is slightly decreasing but somewhat flat since 1975

• Biodiversity intactness index is decreasing

• Rate of extinction is increased dramatically since 1500 (specifically 1800-present)

• Dominant drivers of change

  • Habitat loss/degradation

  • Overexploitation

  • Climate change

  • Pollution

  • Invasive species/genes

  • Disease 

• Appendix of extinction based of trade

  • Appendix 1 (3%) - species threatened with extinction. International trade is generally prohibited

    • 15% of animal species and 85% of plant species

  • Appendix II (97%) - species not necessarily threatened by extinction but may become so unless trade is regulated

    • 65% of animal species, 35% of plant species

  • Appendix III (1%) - species subject to trade

    • 95% of animal species, 5% of plant species

• Climate and biodiversity are linked: conserving nature is essential for addressing climate change and addressing climate change is essential for conserving nature

• Nature based climate change solutions

  • They are essential: provide up to 40 percent of emissions reductions needed by 2030 to keep global average temps increases under 2 degrees

  • Relatively cheap

  • Multiple benefits: water filtration, flood buffering, improved soil health, habitat protection, enhanced resilience.

  • Can divert attention

• Biomagnification: : If a predator consumes prey that has accumulated a toxic substance, the predator also accumulates the substance. As this process repeats at each level of the food chain, the concentration of the chemical can increase significantly

• Large carnivores significance

  • Conservation status: most large carnivore species are declining in population due to habitat loss and persecution by people. This has allowed them to become main sinkecy pf major conservation efforts

  • Cultural histories

  • Ecological roles: keystone species, playing crucial ecological roles by consuming herbivores, whose numbers and behaviors shape the vegetation, soil, and the entire ecosystem's landscape. 

 Week 6

• Real economic growth began in the 18th century in places like Britain, where innovations, trade, urbanization, and industrialization – including the first large scale burning of fossil fuels – enabled development

• This gave rise to new ideas and new thinkers, as well as new inventions, manufacturing processes, and political economies. 

  • Thomas Malthus - wrote an essay on the principles of population

  • Adam Smith - the wealth of nations

  • Jeremy Bentham - various works on utilitarianism

  • Karl Marx - various works on capitalism

  • Charles Dickens - British author and social critic

• During 19th century, many European observers reacted with horror at inequality and deprivation resulting from industrialization

  • Led to a series of reform movements, known as the Progressive era in the US. 

  • Resulted in new labor laws and economic regulations, as well as womens suffrage, infrastructure, education, and conservation

  • After WWII, these reforms continued in many places creating systmes in dozens of countries that involved a combination of market economies, democratic governments, and some kinds of social safety net. 

  • Communism governments proved more effective in theory than in practice

    • Some environmental scholars previously saw capitalism as driving force of environmental degradation

• Tragedy of the commons - UCSB professor Garrett Hardin argued that a situation in a shred resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resources through their collective actions.

  • Top down solutions: state, supported privatization, laws, regulation, taxes

• Governing of the commons - in contrast, Dr Elinor Ostrom used international case studies that serve as examples of how common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by coercive state. 

  • Bottom up solution

    • Define clear group boundaries

    • Match rules governing use of common good to local needs and conditions

    • Ensure those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules

    • Assure rule making rights of community members are respected by authorities

• Environmental economics - a set of approaches that uses traditional economic theories, concepts, and tools to study environmental issues

• A negative externality occurs when the undesirable byproduct of an economic transaction is dumped on a third party.

• Maximum sustainable yield - an attempt to use mathematical data and modeling to figure out how much of a resource can be harvested without draining down that resource over time. Obtaining the maximum possible benefits

• Degrowth - The idea that because capitalist-driven growth is not indefinitely sustainable on a finite planet, we should be thinking hard about what a society could look like that allows people to thrive while not relying on growth.

• Just transition: This is the idea that a transition to a more sustainable, low- or no-carbon society will require changes that could disproportionately harm some groups. A just transition means finding ways to help people make this shift while accounting for past damages and without imposing additional suffering

• Reparations: money reimbursed to people and nations that suffer the most from climate change related damaged 

• Renewable energy

  • Today only about 20% of global energy is renewable

  • Increased a lot in recent years

  • 60% in california

  • Cost of solar has dropped 400x

    • As supply of new panels has gone up, price has gone down

  • Barriers to the renewable energy transition

    • Obstacles to construction

    • Lack of effective and reliable economic incentives

    • High installation cost

    • Insufficient transmission infrastructure

    • Power of the fossil fuel industry

    • Power of energy utilities

 Week 7

• Environmental justice

  • Includes race, class, gender, nationality, citizenship, language, etc.

  • Focuses on environmental inequalities of exposure, risk, access, political power, etc.

  • Began with focus on African Americans in the south in 1980s

  • By the 1990s, concern expanded to diverse groups and regions

  • By 2000s, expanded to other areas of the world

• Coastal areas see lots of preexisting risk, disasters, long term trends (sea level rise), socio-economic inequality, political arrangements that protect some kinds of people and property over others, and the difficulty of adapting.

  • Face many issues

    • Population growth

    • Sea level rise

    • Infrastructure decline and exposure

    • Withdrawal of insurance

    • Difficulty relocating

    • Extreme wealth disparities 

  • 40% of US and global population live in coastal areas

• Managed retreat: buffering communities from coastal threats, if done is a orderly and planned way

  • Can be costly and controversial

• Risk: the statistical probability of a harmful effect to human health or ecological systems resulting from exposure to an environmental stressor. Stressors—which may be physical, chemical, or biological—may adversely affect specific natural resources or entire ecosystems and communities.

  • Depends on three general factors: 

    • the amount of the stressor present

    • How exposed someone or something is to the stressor 

    • How the stressor affects people and things

  • Risk = probability of hazard x degree of vulnerability

  • Risk acceptance: an informed decision to accept the possible consequences and

likelihood of a particular risk.

• Avoidance: an informed decision to avoid involvement in activities leading to

risk realization.

• Reduction: refers to the application of appropriate techniques to reduce the

likelihood of risk occurrence and its consequences.

• Transfer: involves shifting of the burden of risk to another party. One of the most common forms of risk transfer is Insurance.

• Vulnerability: the characteristics and circumstances of a person or community that expose it to a hazard

  • 4 types of vulnerability

    • Physical: How the built environment exposes or shields people

    • Social: How people and communities to withstand adverse events and impacts based on their community ties, cultural traditions, and institutions

    • Economic: How people buffer themselves from hazards depends to a significant degree on their wealth, though this can get very complicated 

    • Environmental: How the physical and biological environment exposes people to hazards, but also how environmental damage worsens these threats

• Resilience: The capacity of a community or ecosystem to to respond to a disturbance by resisting damage or recovering quickly. 

  • Three aspects of resilience

    • Resistance: how easy is it to change a system?

    • Elasticity: how much can a system change before it break?

    • Tipping points: How close the system is to a threshold of major change?

• Some systems change gradually and continuously. Others remain stable for extended periods, but can rapidly shift into entirely new states when pushed beyond key transitions. Another term for these transitions is “tipping points.”

 Week 8

• The statistical science of determining the likelihood that climate change influenced or exacerbated a weather event— and if so, how much

• Environmental policy

  • An evidence building process in policy making. Going from theory to consensus to intervention and then validation

• Constitutional bases for federal environmental laws

  • Commerce clause

  • Treaty power

  • Property power

• Around half of California is public land. More than 90% of the public land in CA is administered by the federal government, not the state government.

• Organic act (1916) - The service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments, and reservations hereinafter specified by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental purpose of the said parks, monuments, and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life (sic) therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.

• Two forms of environmental governance

  • Administration: efforts to manage lands, water, or other natural resources for desired goals

  • Regulation: legal rules that seek to limit, control, or mitigate unwanted effects or by products of certain economic activities

• Approaches to environmental regulation

  • Command and control: gov sets strict rules for environmental limits

  • Technology or design standards: species exact technology to reduce pollution

  • Performance based standards: sets goals but lets companies decide how to achieve them

  • Marker oriented approaches: uses economic tools like taxes or permits to reduce pollution

  • Voluntary approaches: companies adopt eco-friendly practices on their own

• Cap and trade: set mandatory limits on overall pollution, but enable firms and agencies flexibility in complying with those limits

  • In 1995 the EPA set up cap and trade system for nitrogen and sulfur oxide (NOx &

SOx) emissions, which are a major cause of acid rain.