1. Environmental problems, their causes, and sustainability
Chapter 1

2. Objectives
Recognize/explain that common resources need to be shared by all and resources need to be conserved.
Examine population and growth patterns.
Identify the key environmental problems and their causes.
Identify the difference between renewable, nonrenewable and perpetual resources and explain implications for continued use of each.
Explain the difference between point and nonpoint pollution and provide examples of each.

3. Living More
Sustainably

4. Living More Sustainably
Keeping Terminology Straight
Know the difference between:
Environment – everything that affects a living organism
Ecology – studies relationships between living organisms and their environment
Environmental science – collaboration of physical and social sciences to learn how the earth works, how we interact with the earth, & how to deal with environmental problems
Environmentalism – collaborative social movement dedicated to protecting the earth’s life support systems for us & other species

5. What keeps us alive?
Our lifestyle and economies depend on sun (solar capital) & earth (natural capital)
Capital – wealth used to sustain a business and generate more wealth
Example:
You invest $100,000 of your money (capital).
You will receive a 10% return on that capital.
This equals $10,000
You now have a total of $110,000
You used your own money to generate more money

6. What keeps us alive? We use solar capital to keep us alive
Solar capital – energy from the sun that we use to generate other types of energy
Two types:
Direct sunlight
Indirect sunlight
Wind power
Hydropower (energy from flowing water)
Biomass (solar energy converted to chemical energy that is stored; Example: wood)

7. What keeps us alive? We also use natural capital to keep us alive
Natural capital – goods and services from the natural environment which help sustain life
Consists of:
Natural resources
Examples: Air, water, soil, wildlife, forest, fishery, minerals
Ecological Services
Examples: Population control, nutrient recycling, pollution control
Biological income – Renewable supplies that can renew & sustain people as long as we don’t deplete them
Examples: Wood, grassland, underground water

8. What is an environmentally sustainable society?
Preserves natural capital and lives off its income
In other words, it will meet basic resource needs of its people indefinitely
Does not deplete or degrade natural capital
Does not compromise future generations
Example: If you win $1 million in the lottery. If you choose to spend the money, it will be gone in a matter of years. If you choose to invest the money, you can live off the interest WITHOUT touching the $1 million.
**Protect the capital and live off the income it provides.**
(to ensure a sustainable environment)

9. Population growth, economic growth, economic development and globalization

10. Population growth Example: In the year 2004…
The world’s population growth rate has slowed a bit, but is still increasing pretty rapidly
Exponentially at 1.25 % per year
Example: In the year 2004…
World’s population was 6.4 billion
Increase of 80 million people
219,000 people per day
9,100 people per hour!

11. Economic growth vs. development
Economic growth- An increase in the capacity of a country to provide people with goods and services
Requires population growth
Requires more production and/or consumption per person
Measured by the % change in GDP
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - Annual market value of all goods & services produced by all firms & organizations, foreign & domestic, operating within a country
Changes in a country’s standard of living is called per capita GDP
Per capita GDP = GDP/total population at midyear

12. Economic growth vs. development
Economic development – improvement of living standards by economic growth
Countries are classified by the United Nations as being either:
Developed country
Developing country

13. Economic growth vs. development
Developed vs. Developing Countries
Developed Country
Developing Country
Examples
U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, countries of Europe
Asia, Africa, South America
Degree of industrialization
High
Low
Per Capita GDP
Contributing to world’s population
1.2 billion
5.2 billion
Population growth
Slower
Faster

14. Pros & Cons to Economic Development
Life expectancy doubled since 1950
Life expectancy 11 yrs less in developing countries (when compared to developed countries)
Infant mortality cut in half since 1955
Infant mortality rate in developing countries 8+ times higher (when compared to developed countries)
Food production ahead of population growth since 1978
Harmful environmental effects of agriculture may limit future food production
Air and water pollution down in most developed countries since 1970
Air & water pollution levels in most developing countries too high
Number of people living in poverty has dropped 6% since 1990
Half of the world’s people are trying to live on less than $3 / day

15. Globalization
Globalization - the process of social, economic, and environmental global changes that lead to an increasingly interconnected world
Everyone is becoming interconnected through exchanges of:
People
Products
Services
Capital
Ideas
Rate of globalization is influenced by:
International trade / investments
Human mobility
Information / communication technologies

16. Resources

17. Resources
Resource – anything obtained from the environment to meet our needs and wants
Examples: food, water, shelter, manufactured news, transportation, communication, and recreation
Resources are either:
Direct resources - resources immediately ready for use
Ex: water, air, solar energy
Indirect resources– resources not directly available
Ex: Petroleum; need to extract / refine petroleum to make gasoline, heating oil, etc.

18. Resources Types of resources: 1) Perpetual – renewed constantly
Ex: solar energy
Expected to last at least 6 billion yrs
2) Renewable – can be replenished fairly rapidly (from hours to decades) through natural processes
Only works IF resources is not used up faster than its replaced
Ex: forests, grasslands, fertile soil
3) Nonrenewable – exist in a fixed quantity in the earth’s crust
Can be renewed but it takes a LONG time (millions to billions of yrs)
Are depleted faster than they are formed
Include:
Energy resources (Ex. Coal, oil, natural gas)
Metallic mineral resources (Ex. Iron, copper, aluminum)
Nonmetallic resources (Ex. Salt, clay, sand, phosphates)

19. Resources
What do we do?
1) Try to find more resources
2) Recycle / reuse existing supplies
(Except for nonrenewable energy—cannot be recycle)
3) Waste less
4) Use less
5) Try to develop a substitute (for the resources)
6) Wait millions of years for more to be produced
Recycling – collecting waste materials, processing them into new materials, and selling them
Reuse – using resources again & again in the same form (Ex. Glass bottles)

20. Resources
Sustainable yield – the highest rate at which we can use a resources indefinitely without reducing its available supply
Environmental degradation – exceeding a renewable resource’s natural replacement rate
Available supply begins to shrink
Ex: urbanization of productive land, excessive topsoil erosion, pollution, overgrazing, reduction of biodiversity
Caused by common-property or free-access resources
Nobody owns these resources
Available to users at little / no charge
Ex: air, open ocean & fish, wildlife, publicly owned land (national parks)

21. Resources Tragedy of the Commons – Garrett Hardin (1968)
Overuse of common-property or free access resources
“If I do not use this resource, someone else will. The little bit I use or pollute is not enough to matter, and such resources are renewable.”
Works IF there are only a few users
When many people use the resources, they will exhaust or ruin it
No one benefits = TRAGEDY

22. Resources
Solutions:
1) Use the free-access resources at or below their sustainable yield
Regulate access to it
Reduce the population
BOTH
2) Convert free-access resources into private ownership
Not practical for global common resources
Ex: Atmosphere, open ocean, most wildlife species

23. Ecological footprint (ECF)
Measures how much of the earth’s natural capital & biological income each person uses
Our ECF exceeds the earth’s biological capacity to replenish resources & absorb waste by 15%
USA – ECF is double what the country’s resources can handle
Per person, ECF exceeds what the earth can replenish naturally (by 15%)
If the ECF continues to increase, earth will NOT be able to sustain life indefinitely