AP Environmental Science Study Guide
I.
Chapter 1: Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and Sustainability
a. 1-1: What are Some Principals of Sustainability?
i. Sustainability - the capacity of the natural Earth’s systems and human cultural systems to
survive, flourish, and adapt to changing environmental conditions into the very long-term
future.
ii. Environment – everything around us
1. We are utterly dependent on the earth for clean air and water, food, shelter,
energy, fertile soil, and everything else in the planet’s life-support system
2. Environmental Science – an interdisciplinary study of how humans interact with
the living and nonliving parts of their environment.
a. Integrates: natural sciences (Biology, Geology, and Chemistry), social
sciences (Geography, Economics, and Political Science), humanities (ethics)
b. 3 goals:
i. To learn how life on the Earth has survived and thrived
ii. To understand how we interact with the environment
iii. To find ways to deal with environmental problems and live more
sustainably
iii. Ecology – the biological science that studies how living things interact with one another
and with their environment
1. Organisms – living things
a. Each organisms belongs to a species, a group of organisms that has a unique
set of characteristics that distinguish it from other groups of organisms
2. Ecosystem – a set of organisms within a defined area or volume that interact with
one another and with their environment of nonliving matter and energy.
3. Environmentalism – a social movement dedicated to trying to protect the Earth’s
life-support system for all forms of life.
iv. Scientific Principals of Sustainability: lessons from nature, lead to from science based
research there are 3 major natural factors that have played key roles in the long-term
sustainability of life on this planet.
1. Dependence on Solar Energy – use to produce nutrients or the chemicals necessary
for their own life processes along with those of most other animals including
humans; solar energy
2. Biodiversity – the variety of genes, organisms, species, and ecosystems in which
organism exist and interact
3. Chemical Cycling (Nutrient Cycling): the circulation of chemicals necessary for life
from the environment (mostly from soil and water) through organisms and back o
the environment.
a. This means there is little waste in nature, other than the human world
v. Natural Capital – the natural resources and natural services that keep us and other
species alive and support human economics.
vi. Natural Resources – materials and energy in nature that are essential or useful to humans
1. Resources – anything that we can obtain from the environment to meet our needs
and wants
a. Sustainable Yield – the highest rate at which we can use a renewable
resource indefinitely without reducing its available supply
b. Refuse (don’t use), Reduce (use less), Reuse, and Recycle
2. Classified as: inexhaustible resources (continuous supply is expected to last for last
for at least 6 billion years), renewable resources (can be replenished by natural
processes within hours to centuries, as long as we do not use it up faster than
natural processes can renew it), nonrenewable/depletable resources (exist in fixed
quantities)
vii. Natural Services/Ecosystem Services – processes provided by healthy ecosystems
1. One vital natural service is chemical/nutrient cycling
a. Important component: topsoil – a vital natural resource that provides us
and most other land-dwelling species with food
2. Degrade natural capital – using renewable resources faster than they can be
replaced.
3. Solutions - Sustainability begins with actions at personal and local levels
viii. Social Science Principals of Sustainability:
1. Full Cost Pricing – include the harmful environmental and health cost of producing
and using goods and services in the market price
2. Win-Win Solutions – “I win, you win, and the Earth wins”
3. A responsibility to future generations
ix. Development of Countries –
1. More-developed countries – industrialized nations with high average income
a. 17% of the world’s population
2. Less-developed countries – a mix between middle-income, moderately developed
countries, and low-income, least developed countries
a. 83% of the world’s population
b. 1-2: How Are Our Ecological Footprints Affecting the Earth?
i. Environmental Footprint – the amount of land and water needed to supply a person or an
area with renewable resources such as food and water, and that are needed to absorb and
recycle the wastes and pollution produced by such a resource use.
ii. Environmental Degradation – we are living unsustainably by wasting, depleting, and
degrading the Earth’s natural capital at an accelerating rate.
1. AKA – Natural Capital Degradation
iii. Pollution – which is a contamination of the environment by a chemical or other agent
1. Point Source – single, identifiable sources
2. Nonpoint Source – dispersed and often difficult to identify
3. Pollution Cleanup – involves cleaning up or diluting pollutants after we have
produced them
4. Pollution Prevention – Efforts focused on greatly reducing or eliminating the
production of pollutants
iv. Tragedy of the Commons: the degradation of a shared or open-access resource occurs
because each user of the resources reasons: “If I do not use this resource, someone else
will. The little bit that I use or pollute is not enough to matter, and anyway, it’s a
renewable resource.”
1. 2 major ways to deal with this difficult problem:
a. Use a shared or open-access renewable resource at a rate well below its
estimated sustainable yield by using less of the resource
b. Convert shared renewable resources to private ownership
Per Capita Ecological Footprint – the average ecological footprint of an
individual in a given country or area
v. Per Capita Ecological Footprint: the average ecological footprint of an individual in a given
country or area.
1. Affluence – wealth
2. IPAT Equation: Impact (I) = Population (P) X Affluence (A) X Technology (T)
a. Most less-developed countries, the key factor in total environmental impact
is usually population size (P) as a growing number of poor people struggle
to stay alive
b. More-developed countries, the key factor is overall environmental impact is
affluence (A), which can result in high rates of per capita resources use,
pollution, and resource depletion
3. Cultural Changes can Affect/Effect our Ecological Footprint:
a. Hunter-Gatherers – who obtained food by hunting wild animals or
scavenging their remains, and gathering wild plants
b. 3 major cultural changes have occurred: Each change gave us more energy
and new technologies with which to alter and control more of the planet’s
resources to meet our basic needs and increasing wants. Results are greater
resources use, pollution, and environmental degradation as they allowed us
to dominate the planet and expand our ecological footprints
i. Agricultural Revolution
ii. Industrial-Medical Revolution
iii. Information-Globalization Revolution
c. Fourth Major Change: Sustainability Revolution
i. Which we could learn to live more sustainability with smaller
ecological footprints, during this century
c. 1-3: Why Do We Have Environmental Problems?
i. Several Causes of Environmental Problems:
1. Population growth
2. Wasteful and unsustainable resource use
3. Poverty
4. Failure to include the harmful environmental costs of goods and services in their
market prices
5. Increasing isolation from nature
ii. Exponential Growth: occurs when a quantity such as the human population increases at a
fixed percentage per unit of time --- Starts of slowly
1. Slow the population growth – ways to do this include:
a. Reducing poverty through economic development
b. Promoting family planning
c. Elevating the status of women
2. The lifestyles of many consumers in more-developed and less-developed countries
are built on growing affluence, which results in high levels of consumption and the
resulting environmental degradation, wastes, and pollution.
a. Downside: Higher levels of consumption expand a person’s ecological
footprint.
b. Downside: wealth allows affluent consumes to obtain their resources from
almost anywhere in the world without seeing the harmful environmental
and health impacts of their higher consumption lifestyles.
iii. Poverty – a condition in which people are unable to fulfill their basic needs for adequate
food, water, shelter, health care, and education.
1. Causes a number of harmful environmental and health effects
2. Poorest people focus daily lives on:
a. Getting enough food and water
b. Getting cooking and heating fuel to survive
3. By doing this individuals collectively:
a. Degrade forest
b. Topsoil
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c. Grasslands
d. Fisheries
e. Wildlife
4. Some of the world’s poorest people have learned how to take care of their
environment as a part of their long-term survival strategy
5. Pollution and environmental degradation can worsen the poverty of people:
a. Malnutrition – caused by a lack of protein and other nutrients needed for
good health
b. Limited access to adequate sanitation facilities and clean drinking water
c. Severe respiratory disease that people get from breathing the smoke of
open fires or poorly vented stoves used for heating and cooking inside their
dwellings
Companies using resources to provide goods for consumers generally are not required to
pay for most of the harmful environmental and health cost for supplying such goods.
1. Example: Timber companies pay the cost of clear-cutting the forest but do NOT pay
for the resulting environmental degradation and loss of wildlife habitat.
2. Because the prices of goods and services do not include most of the harmful
environmental and human health cost, consumers have no effective way to
evaluate the harmful effects, on their own health an on the Earth’s life-support
systems, of producing and using these goods and services.
a. Example: Producing and using gasoline results in air pollution and other
problems that damage the environment and people’s health. Estimated real
cost of gasoline in the U.S. should be about $3.18 per liter ($12 per gallon).
Subsidies – tax breaks and payments given to companies, from the government (tax
payers), to assist the company with using resources to run their business.
1. Helps to create jobs and stimulate economics, but environmentally harmful
subsidies encourage the depletion and degradation of natural capital.
Isolation from nature is increasing:
1. Our artificial urban environments, increasing use of cell phones, computers, and
other technological devices isolate us from the natural world
a. Many people do not know the full story of where their food, water, and
other goods come from
b. Many people are unaware of the amounts of wastes and pollutants they
produce, where they go, and how the wastes and pollutants affect the
environment
2. We are suffering from natural deficit disorder
Environmental Worldview - Your set of assumptions and values reflecting how you think
the world works and what you think your role in the world should be
Environmental Ethics – the study of our various beliefs about what is right and wrong
with how we treat the environment, provides important ways to examine our worldviews
Planetary Management Worldview - holds that we are separate from and in charge of
nature, that nature exists mainly to meet our daily needs and increasing wants, and that
we an use our ingenuity and technology to manage the earth’s life-support systems –
mostly our benefit into the distant future.
Stewardship Worldview – holds that we can and should manage the earth for our benefit,
but that we have an ethical responsibility to be caring and responsible managers, or
stewards of the earth.
Environmental Wisdom Worldview – holds that we are part of, and dependent on, nature
and that the earth’s life-support system exists for all species, not just for us.
d. 1-4: What is an Environmentally Sustainable Society?
i. Environmentally Sustainable Society – should be our ultimate goal, one meets the current
and future basic resources needs of its people in a just and equitable manner without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their basic needs
1. Lesson: Protect your capital and live on the income it provides. Deplete or waste
your capital and you will move from a sustainable to an unsustainable lifestyle.
2. Natural Income – living sustainable, the renewable resources such as plants,
animals, soil, clean air, and clean water, provided by the Earth’s natural capital