Ch. 1 Outline: Environmental Problems, their Causes and Sustainability
Living in the Environment, Miller/Spoolman 2015, 18th Edition
ISBN10:1-133-94013-7 ISBN13:978-1-133-94013-5
I.
Core Case Study
A. Sustainability: The capacity of the earth's natural systems and human culture systems to
survive.
1-1 What Are Some Principles of Sustainability
I.
Environmental Science Is a Study of Connections in Nature
A. Environment: Everything around us. Including living (biotic) and nonliving (abiotic) things
which interact in a complex web of relationships that connect us to one another and the
world we live in.
1. What make up the planet's life support system?
B. Environmental Science: An interdisciplinary study of how humans interact with the living
and nonliving parts of their environment.
1. What are the 3 goals of environmental science?
C. Ecology: The biological science that studies how organisms interact with one another in
their environment.
D. Organisms: Living things
E. Species: A group of organisms that has a unique set of characteristics that distinguish it
from other groups of organisms.
F. Ecosystems: A set of organisms within a defined area or volume that interact with one
another and with their environment of nonliving matter and energy.
1. Provide 2 examples of an ecosystem.
G. Environmentalism: A social movement dedicated to trying to protect the earth's lifesupport systems to for all forms of life.
1. Where is environmentalism practiced?
II. Three Scientific Principles of Sustainability
A. What are the 3 Scientific Principles of Sustainability? Summarize each principle using
key vocabulary terms from their descriptions.
III. Sustainability Has Certain Key Components
A. Natural Capital: The natural resources and natural services that keep us and other
species alive and support human economies.
1. Ex: The Sun
a) Our lives and economies depend on the sun for energy
B. Natural Resources: Material and Energy in nature that are essential or useful to humans.
1. What are examples inexhaustible, renewable, and nonrenewable/depletable
resources and why are each example given that label?
C. Natural Services/Ecosystem Services: Processes provided by healthy ecosystems.
1. Chemical/Nutrient Cycling is a vital natural resource.
a) Ex: Topsoil
(1) Provides humans & animals with food
(2) Without nutrient cycling in topsoil life couldn't exist
D. Human activity can degrade natural capital
1. Using natural capital faster than nature can restore it.
a) Ex: Clear cutting down trees faster than they can grow
b) Ex: Emitting pollutants into the air faster than air and water systems can cleanse
themselves
E. Solutions
1. What are examples of scientific and political solutions?
2. Solutions often involve conflict
a) What is an example of a conflict and what is an example of a trade-off?
b) Subsidy: Financial support from governments to COMPANIES to meet costs of;
for example, planting trees
c) Why do individuals matter?
IV. Other Principles of Sustainability Come from the Social Sciences
A. What are the 3 Social Science Principles of Sustainability and provide a brief description.
V. Some Resources Are Renewable Some Are Not
A. Resource: Anything that we can obtain from the environment to meet our needs and
wants.
1. Provide 2 examples of directly available 2 that require effort and technological
ingenuity.
B. Sustainable Yield: The highest rate at which we can use a renewable resource
indefinitely without reducing its available supply.
C. What are the priorities for sustainable use of nonrenewable resources?
D. What nonrenewable resources can we not reuse or recycle?
VI. Countries Differ in their Resource Use and Environmental Impacts
A. What distinguishes more-developed countries from less developed countries? How do
the populations compare?
Summarize the information from section 1-1
1-2 How Are Ecological Footprints Affecting the Earth?
I. We Are Living Unsustainably
A. Environmental/Natural Capital Degradation: The process which the earth's natural
capital is wasting, depleting, and degrading at an unsustainable rate.
B. What is the evidence that our planet is living unsustainably?
C. What UN study examined the degradation of the earth's natural capital? What did the
study conclude?
II. Pollution Comes from a Number of Sources
A. Pollution: The contamination of the environment by a chemical or other agent.
1. What are examples of pollution?
2. What are examples of natural and manmade pollutants?
B. What are the two types of sources which pollutants are produced? Create a Venn
Diagram comparing the two.
C. Construct a Venn Diagram comparing the two methods to deal with pollution.
III. Tragedy of the Commons: Degrading Community Shared Natural Resources
A. Open-Access Renewable Resources: Used by almost anyone. Ex: The atmosphere, the
ocean and its fish
B. Shared Resources: Less open resources. Ex: Grasslands, forests.
C. What is the Tragedy of the Commons?
D. What are the two major ways to deal with the Tragedy of the Commons?
IV. Ecological Footprints: Our Environment Impacts
A. Poor people in less developed countries have low environmental impact individually
1. Large populations of such people can have a large total impact
B. Individuals in more developed countries enjoy affluence
1. Wealth allows people to consume large amounts of resources far beyond their basic
needs
2. Their impact is about their rate of resource consumption
C. Ecological Footprint: The amount of land and water needed to supply a person or area
with renewable resources such as food and water, and that are needed to absorb and
recycle the wastes and pollution produced by such resource use.
D. Per Capita Ecological Footprint: Average ecological footprint of an individual in a given
country or area.
E. Ecological Footprint > Biological Capacity = Ecological Deficit
1. Name 5 countries who Biological Deficit is greater than 50%
V. IPAT is Another Environmental Impact Model
A. Impact (I)= Population (P) x Affluence (A) x Technology (T)
B. Technology
1. Technologies that increase impact: Polluting factories, gas guzzling vehicles, coal
burning power plants
2. Technologies that decrease impact: Pollution control and prevention technologies,
fuel efficient cars, and wind turbines and solar cells that generate electricity with low
environmental impacts
C. Population
1. Population size is typically the key environmental factor in most less developed
countries.
D. Affluence
1. This is the key factor in more-developed countries which can result in high rates of
per capita resource use.
2. A key factor in less-developed countries whose economies and populations are
growing.
VI. Case Study: China's Growing Number of Affluent Consumers
A. World's largest population and second largest economy
B. World's leading consumer of wheat, rice, meat, coal, fertilizer, steel, cement, and oil.
C. World's leading producer of goods such as televisions, cell phones, and refrigerators.
D. Produces more wind turbines than any other country and will soon become the largest
producer of solar cells and fuel-efficient cars.
E. Contains 2/3 of the world's most polluted cities
F. If China's population continues their growth rate they will need 2/3 of the world's current
grain harvest, twice the amount of paper the world consumes, and more than all the oil
produced in the world.
VII. Cultural Changes Can Grow or Shrink Our Ecological Footprint
A. What are the three major cultural changes? Provide a summary of each change.
B. Sustainability Revolution: The emerging fourth major cultural change in which we learn
to live more sustainably with smaller ecological footprints.
Summarize the information from section 1-2
1-3 Why Do We Have Environmental Problems?
I. Experts Have Identified Several Causes of Environmental Problems
A. What are the major causes of environmental problems we face?
II. The Human Population is Growing at a Rapid Rate
A. Exponential Growth: Occurs when a quantity such as the human population increases at
a fixed percentage per unit of time, such as 1% or 2% per year.
1. Starts off slowly, but after a few doublings it grows to enormous numbers because
each doubling is twice the total of all earlier growth.
2. Human population is exponentially growing
a) 84 million people are added each year
b) Possibly 9.6 billion people on earth by 2050
3. The Rule of 70
a) Doubling time of human population equation: time (years) = 70/annual growth
rate (%)
b) Ex. At an annual growth rate of 1.2% the population will double in 58.3 years
c) 70/1.2% = 58.3 years
4. How many people can Earth support?
a) Nobody knows how many people the Earth can support.
b) Our increasing population and per capita footprints are warning signs
c) We could slow population to 8 billion per as suggested in the opening case study.
Reducing poverty, promoting family planning and elevating the status of women
could lead to this.
III. Affluence Has Harmful and Beneficial Effects
A. Affluence: An abundance of property or wealth
B. How does growing affluence result in environmental degradation, waste and pollution?
C. How can affluence result in an improvement in environmental quality?
IV. Poverty has Harmful Environmental and Health Effects.
A. Poverty: A condition in which people are unable to fulfill their basic needs for food, water,
shelter, health care and education.
B. Those who live in extreme poverty on our planet is almost 3X the number of total people
in the US. This means surviving on the equal to or less than $1.25 per day.
C. Calculate how much money it takes for you to live every day.
D. Describe the harmful environmental and health effects caused by poverty.
E. What connects poverty and population growth?
F. Poverty can have an impact on environmental degradation, AND environmental
degradation can have an impact on the poor.
1. People die from preventable health problems
a) Malnutrition
b) Limited access to sanitation facilities and clean drinking water
c) Respiratory disease
2. In 2010, WHO estimated 7 million children under 5 died from one or more of these
factors
G. What factor do you think is more important? Rapid population growth in less developed
countries or high resource capital in more developed countries? Explain.
V. Prices of Goods and Services Do Not Include Harmful Environmental Costs
A. Companies do not include the cost of environmental degradation in the products they
make.
B. Companies work to maximize profit; government regulations and taxes would need to be
imposed on all businesses to pay for environmental and health costs.
C. Consumers have no way of knowing the costs of production on the environment. For
example, it is estimated that producing gasoline and including the costs of environmental
and health effects would result in a price of about $12 per gallon.
D. Why do you think many people do not understand the importance of natural resources
and natural services that make up the earth’s natural capital?
E. Subsidies: Tax breaks and payments to assist with suing resources to run a business.
(see Guest Essay by Norman Myers)
F. Implementing full service pricing could be a way to apply one the three social science
principles of sustainability.
VI. We are Increasingly Isolated From Nature
A. The shift from rural to urban living is continuing at a rapid pace.
1. ¾ in developed and ½ worldwide live in urban areas.
2. Artificial environments (urban living) and the use of electronics isolate us from the
natural world and our connection to the actual food, water and shelter supplies and
the raw materials that are used to make them.
3. People are unaware of the effects of producing these items and the amount of waste
produced.
4. People are unaware that life on earth, (and many of these items) are made naturally
recycled through earth’s processes.
B. Nature deficit disorder: not having enough contacts with nature can cause stress, have
unwanted health problems, show unwarranted irritability or aggression, and be less
adaptive to change.
C. “How will we shrink our ecological footprints and live more sustainably if we do not
experience and understand our utter dependence on the earth’s natural systems and the
natural capita they provide for us?”
VII. People have different views About Environmental Problems and Their Solutions
A. Environmental worldview: Set of assumptions or values that reflect how you think the
world works and what you think your role in the world should be.
B. Environmental ethics: Study of our various beliefs about what is right and wrong with
how we treat the environment, and the ways to examine out worldviews.
C. What are some important ethical questions relating to the environment? State 6 and
compare your answer with classmates.
D. Different answers can be due to different assumptions and moral, ethical or religious
beliefs.
E. Compare planetary management worldview, stewardship worldview, and environmental
wisdom worldview. Are any worldviews more important than others? Explain.
Summarize the information from section 1-3
1-4 What is an Environmentally Sustainable Society?
I. The More Environmentally Sustainable Societies Protect Natural Capita and Live Off Its
Income
A. Environmentally sustainable society: Meets the current and future basic resource needs
of its people in a just and equitable manner without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their basic needs. (Core case study)
B. If you win the lottery of $1 million dollars and invest it (your capita). You earn 10%
interest a year, which gives you a $100,000 of a sustainable annual income. This means
you can spend $100,000 to live every year and still have your $1 million dollars. What
will happen if you spend $200,000 a year? How long will it take to deplete your
winnings? How does this relate to natural income (plants, animals, soil, water, air)
provided by the earth’s natural capita and living sustainably?
C. Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability
1. First comprehensive degree granting program in sustainability in the US.
2. Focused on finding practical solutions to environmental problems while considering
important economic and social factors.
II. A More Sustainable Future is Possible
A. Will require an attitude that combines wisdom with compassion
B. Will involve tough challenges
A. It takes only 5-10% of a population in a community, country or world to being about
major social change.
B. Research shows that major social change can happen faster than most people think.
C. Evidence shows that we have 50 years and no more than 100 years to shift culturally to
a more sustainable living.
Summarize the information in 1-4
What are the 3 Big Ideas of Chapter 1? Write each and highlight in a different color.
Reread your outline and highlight at least 2 pieces of information that support the big
ideas in the correlating highlight color.