● 1: Principles of Sustainability ○ Environmental Science Is a Study of Connections in Nature ■ The environment includes everything around you including all living and nonliving things ■ We rely on the planet for support ■ Environmental science integrates ideas from all fields of science and humanities ■ Ecology: A branch of biology that studies how living organisms interact with the living and nonliving parts of their environment ■ Ecosystem: A group of organisms that live within a defined area and interact with one another and their environment ○ Learning from the Earth: Three Scientific Principles of Sustainability ■ Humans have expanded into and taken over almost all of earth’s ecosystems ■ We grow food on 40% of the earth’s land ■ We control 75% of the world’s freshwater and ocean waters ■ Pollution kills about 9 million people a year ■ There are three scientific principles of sustainability ● Solar energy: The planet uses the sun’s energy for energy for plants to create nutrients ● Biodiversity: The variety of genes, species, ecosystems, and ecosystem processes. This allows species to adapt to the environmental conditions ● Chemical cycling: The circulation of chemicals and nutrients needed for organisms through the environment (soil and water) through the organisms and back to the environment. In the environment waste = useful resources ○ Key Components of Sustainability ■ Natural Capital: Natural resources and ecosystem services that keep humans and other species alive while also supporting the human economy ■ Natural resources: materials and energy provided by nature that are essential and useful to humans. They fall into three categories: ● Inexhaustible resources: A resource that we will not run out of (ex:solar energy that will last until the death of the sun) ● Renewable resources: A resource that can be used indefinitely because it is replenished through natural processes (ex: forests, fish, clean air, and freshwater)
○ Maximum sustainable yield: The highest rate at which people can use a renewable resource without reducing its available supply ● Nonrenewable or Exhaustible Resources: Resources that exist in a fixed amount and can take millions of years to renew (ex: fossil fuels, coal, metals) ● Ecosystem Services: The natural services provided by health ecosystems which support life and human economies (ex: forests for purifying air and water, reducing soil erosion, and recycling nutrients ○ Nutrient cycling is one ■ Human activities can degrade natural capital by using renewable resources faster than nature can restore them ■ Sustainability involves people finding solutions to environmental problems ■ Conflicts can happen when environmental protection can come at the cost of certain industries ○ Three Additional Principles of Sustainability ■ Full-cost pricing: Including the harmful environmental and health costs of producing and using goods in their market prices ■ Win-win solutions: Finding solutions to environmental problems that involves compromise which will benefit the largest number of people as well as the environment ■ Responsibility to future generations: ○ Countries Differ in Their Economic Development and Resource Use ■ The UN classified countries economically as more developed or less developed based on the average income per person ■ More developed countries: Industrialized nations with high average income per person (ex: USA, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and most European countries) ● These countries are 17% of the world’s population and use 70% of the earth’s natural resources ● The USA has 4% of the world’s population and uses 30% of the world’s resources ■ Less developed countries: Most of them are in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Some are middle-income, moderately developed countires (ex: China, India, Brazil, Thailand, and Mexico). Others are low income, least-developed countries (ex: Nigeria, Bangladesh, Congo, and Haiti). ● The less developed countries have 83% of the world’s population and use 30% of the world’s natural resources
■ Ecological footprint: a measure of the environmental impacts of individuals, countries, cities, on the earth’s natural resources, natural capital, and life-support system ■ Per capita ecological footprint: the average ecological footprint of an individual in a given population or defined area ■ The human ecological footprint has had an effect on 83% of the earth’s surface ■ Biocapacity: the ability of an area’s ecosystem to regenerate the renewable resource which is used by the population, city, region, country, or the world and to absorb the relating waste and pollution ■ Ecological deficit: When the total ecological footprint is larger than its biocapacity ■ Humanity is using the earth’s renewable resources 1 times faster than the earth can replenish them ● We would need 1 earths to sustain the amount of renewable energy we are currently using ● We would need 3 planet earths by 2050 if we continue to use the same amount of renewable resources we are currently using ○ IPAT Is Another Environmental Impact Model ■ The environmental impact (I) of human activities is the product of three factors: population size (P), affluence (A), or resource consumption per person and the beneficial and harmful environmental effects of technologies (T)
■ Between 1950 and 2018 the world’s population (P) almost tripled from 2. billion to 7 billion and could reach 9 billion by 2050 ■ The increase in population has greatly increased the resources used per person (A) ■ Some factors of technologies (T) raise the T factor and raise our environmental impact (ex: polluting factories, gas guzzling vehicles, and coal-burning power plants) while some reduce the the T factor and reduce our environmental impact (ex: pollution control, fuel efficient cars, and wind turbines) ○ Cultural Changes Can Increase or Shrink Our Ecological Footprints
■ When we were hunter-gatherers we used few resources and took what was needed to survive ■ Since then three major cultural changes have occurred ● Agricultural revolution: When humans learned to grow and breed plants and animals for food and began living in stationary villages. They had more reliable sources of food, lived longer, and had more children who survived until adulthood ● Industrial-medical revolution: People invented machines for large scale production of goods and people moved to cities for work. This is when we began getting energy from fossil fuels (oil and coal) and began to grow larger quantities of food. There were medical advances which allowed people to have longer and healthier lives ● Information-globalization revolution: We developed new technologies to gain quick access to information and resources ■ These cultural changes resulted in more energy and new technologies, expansion of the human population, greater resource use, pollution, and environmental degradation, as well as the ability to expand our ecological footprints ■ Some technological advances have given us the ability to shrink our ecological footprints by reducing our use of energy and matter resources and lowering our production of wastes and pollution ■ This is thought to be evidence of a fourth major cultural change ● Sustainability revolution: We would learn to live more sustainably and begin to avoid degradation of the natural capital and restore the natural capital which we have degraded ● Causes of Environmental Problems ○ Major Environmental Problems ■ There are six major environmental problems that we face ● Climate change ● Loss of species and habitats (biodiversity loss) ● Ocean acidification ● Diminishing access to freshwater ● Resource waste ● Hazardous pollutants ○ Basic Causes of Environmental Problems ■ The major causes of today’s environmental problems are: ● Population growth ● Wasteful and unsustainable resource use
■ Nature deficit disorder: People with this disorder suffer from stress, anxiety, depression, and other problems. People who are separated from nature cannot understand their utter dependence on the earth ○ Differing Environmental Views ■ People disagree about the nature and seriousness of the environmental problems and their solutions ■ Environmental Worldview: Your set of assumptions and values of how the natural world works and how we should interact with the environment which in turn affects how you interact with your environment and respond to environmental problems ■ Environmental Ethics: What you believe and what is right and what is wrong with your behavior toward the environment ■ There are three different types of environmental worldviews ● Human-centered: sees the natural world as a support system for human life. Humans should therefore manage the earth as a benefit for humans. We have the responsibility to manage the planet for current and future generations ● Life centered: all species have value in fulfilling their ecological roles. We should avoid quickening the extinction of species because each species has a unique role in the biosphere and sustaining life ● Earth-centered: We are part of and live within nature. We are dependent on nature and the earth's natural resources are for all species, not just humans. We must learn from how the earth has survived for billions of years and implement these lessons into the ways we think and act ○ The Rise of Environmental Conservation and Protection in the United States ■ The first European Colonists in North America in the 1600s saw the land as having inexhaustible resources that should be for human use ■ George Perkins Marsh was the first person to ask the question of whether America’s resources were truly inexhaustible and saw that the rise and fall of other civilizations was tied to their use and misuse of resources ■ The conservation movement moved into two groups who had different views on how to use public lands ● Preservationist view: They wanted wilderness areas to be left untouched so that they could be preserved ● Conservationist view: They wanted public lands to be managed scientifically and used to provide resources for people ■ Between 1940 and 1970 there was rapid economic growth and industrialization in the US
● This increased air and water pollution ■ The problems became so intense that the American public began to demand government actions ■ The 1970s became known as the decade of the environment ■ There is backlash against environmental laws as they lower economic growth and threaten private property rights and jobs ● 1: Environmentally Sustainable Societies ○ Protecting Natural Capital and Living on Its Income ■ To live sustainably you must not reduce the environment’s ability to support the earth’s current and future life ■ Environmentally sustainable society: a society which protects national capital and lives on its income ■ Protect your capital and live on the income it provides ○ We Can Live More Sustainably ■ Learning to live within the limits imposed by the earth
