Chapter 1
Core Case Study: Living in an Exponential Age: Life in the Fast Lane
 Exponential growth: in which a quantity increases at a fixed percentage per unit
time
 Starts off slowly, but after only a few doublings, it grows to enormous
numbers
 Biodiversity: the variety of life forms and the places or habitats where they live
 In various parts of the world everything is continuing to disappear or become
degraded as the human ecological footprint gets larger and spreads exponentially
across the globe
Living More Sustainably
What is Environmental Science? (Science)
 Environmental Science is a study of how the earth works, how we interact with
the earth, and how to deal with environmental problems
 Environment: is the sum total of all living and nonliving things that affect any
living organism
 Environmental Science: an interdisciplinary study that integrates information
and ideas from the natural sciences that study natural world and the social
sciences that study how humans and their institutions interact with the natural
world
 The goals of environmental science are to learn how nature works, how the
environment affects us, how we affect the environment, and how we can live
more sustainably without degrading our life-support system
 Ecology: a biological science that studies the relationships between living
organisms and their environment
 Environmentalism: a social movement dedicated to protecting the earth’s lifesupporting systems for us and other species
o Involves activities such as working to pass and enforce environmental
laws, promoting solutions to environmental problems, and protesting
harmful environmental actions
Sustainability: The Integrative Theme of This Book (Science and Politics)
 Sustainability is built on the subthemes of natural capital, natural capital
degradation , solutions, trade-offs, and how individuals matter
 Sustainability/durability: the ability of earth’s various systems, including human
cultural systems and economics, to survive and adapt to changing environmental
conditions indefinitely
 Step 1: understand—Natural Capital: the natural resources and natural services
that keep us and other species alive and support our economies
 Solar Capital: energy from the sun that warms the planet and supports
photosynthesis,
o This direct input also produces indirect forms of renewable solar energy
such as wind, flowing water, and fuels from plants to plant residues
(biofuels)
 Natural Capital is not fixed
 Step 2: is to recognize that many human activities degrade natural capital by using
normally renewable recourses such as forests faster than nature can renew them
o Rate at which we are transforming parts of the earth to meet our needs and
wants
 Step 3: workable solutions to these and other environmental problems
o To search for solutions often involves conflicts, and resolving these
conflicts requires us to make trade-offs or compromises
 Step 4: Trade-offs or compromises come from resolving conflicts that come up
during deciding a solution
 Step 5: Individuals matter whether they are working alone or in groups
 All these steps must be supported by sound science—the concepts and ideas that
are widely accepted by experts in a particular fields of natural or social sciences
 Natural Capital= Natural resources + Natural Services
Environmental Sustainable Societies: Protecting Natural Capital and Living off Its
Income (Science)
 An environmentally sustainable society meets the basic resource needs of its
people in a just and equitable manner without degrading or depleting the natural
capital that supplies these resources
 Ultimate goal is environmentally sustainable society: one that meets the current
and future needs of its people for basic resources in a just and equitable manner
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs
 Living sustainably means living off natural income replenished by soils, plants,
air, and water and not depleting or degrading the earth’s natural capital that
supplies this income
 Protect you capital and live off the income it provides
o Deplete, waste or squander you capital and you will move from a suitable
too an unsustainable capital
 We are living unsustainably by wasting depleting, and degrading the earth’s
natural capital at an exponential accelerating rate
Population Growth, Economic Growth, and Economic Development
Human Population Growth: Slowing but Still Rapid
 The rate at which the world’s population is growing has slowed, but the
population is still increasing rapidly, and its unequally distributed between rich
and poor communities
 This can be dangerous and reduce the time we have to find solutions to the
environmental problems and challenges we face
Economic Growth and Economic Development (Economics)
 Economic growth provides people with more goods and services, and economic
development uses economic growth to improve living standards
 Economic Growth: is an increase in the capacity of a country to provide people
with goods and services
o Accomplishing this increase requires population growth , more production
and consumption per person or both
 Economic growth is usually measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP): the
annual market value of all goods and services produced by all firms and
organizations, foreign and domestic, operating within a country
 Changes in a country’s economic growth per person is measured by per capita
GDP: the GDP divided by the total population at midyear

Economic Development: the improvement of human living standards by
economic growth
 Developed countries: are highly industrialized and have high average per capita
GDP
 Developing countries: middle-income, moderately developed countries and
others are low-income countries
 Economically, there is a widening income gap between the world’s poor and rich
 Socially, there is a wide gap between education and health care in developed and
developing countries
 Environmentally sustainable economic development: its goal is to use political
and economic systems to encourage environmentally beneficial and more
sustainable forms of economic development and discourage environmentally
harmful and unsustainable forms of economic growth
Doubling Time and Exponential Growth: The Rate of 70 (Science)
 A quick way to calculate doubling times is the use the rule of 70: 70/percentage
growth rate = doubling time in years
Resources
What is a Resource? (Science)
 We obtain resources from the environment to meet our needs and wants
 Resource: is anything obtained from the environment to meet our needs and
wants
 We classify the material resources we get from the environment as perpetual,
renewable, or nonrenewable
 Some resources are directly available for use and some are not
 Resources are obtained by an interaction between natural capital and human
capital
Perpetual and Renewable Resources (Science)
 Recourses renewed by natural processes are sustainable if we do not use them
faster than they are replenished
 Perpetual resources: a resource that is continuously renewed
 Renewable resource: can be replenished fairly rapidly (hours to several decades)
through natural processes as long as it is not use dup faster than it is replaced
o These resources can be depleted or degraded
o Sustainable yield: the highest rate at which a renewable resource can be
used indefinitely without reducing its available supply
 Environmental degradation: when we exceed a resource’s natural replacement
rate, the available supply begins to shrink
The Tragedy of the Commons (Economics and Politics)
 Renewable resources that are freely available to everyone can be degraded
 One cause of the environmental degradation of renewable resources is the overuse
of common-property or free-access resources
o Individuals do not own theses resources, and they are available to users at
little or no charge
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
Tragedy of the Commons: the degradation of renewable free-access resources
Eventually the cumulative effect of many people trying to exploit a free-access
resource exhausts or ruins its
o Then no one can benefit from it—and that is the tragedy
 One solution is the use free-access resources at rates well below their estimated
sustainable yields by reducing population, regulating, access to the resources, or
both
 Another solution is to convert free-access resources to private ownership.
o Because, if you own something you are more likely to protect your
investment
o Not such a good idea on a global scale because some resources cannot be
divided up and converted to private property (air, atmosphere, ocean)
Our Ecological Footprints (Science)
 Supplying each person with renewable resources and absorbing the wastes from
such resources use creates a large ecological footprint or environmental impact
 Ecological Footprint: is the amount of biologically productive land and water
needed to supply an area with resources and to absorb the wastes and pollution
produced by such resource use
 Per capita ecological footprint: is the average ecological footprint of an
individual in an area
 When a country’s ecological footprint is larger than its ecological capacity, it is
using and degrading faster than nature can replenish them and it is exceeding the
capacity of its environment to absorb and degrade the resulting wastes and
pollution
 When a country depletes its natural capital, it must either suffer the harmful
environmental consequences or import food and other resources from other
countries and export its pollutants and wastes to the global atmosphere, oceans,
and rivers that run through several countries
 The world is on an ecologically and economically unsustainable path
 The three things that have the greatest environmental impact are, in order,
agriculture, transportation, and heating and cooling of buildings
Nonrenewable Resources (Science)
 Nonrenewable resources can be economically depleted to the point where it costs
too much to obtain what is left. Some can also be recycled and reused
 Nonrenewable resources: exist in a fixed quantity or stock in the earth’s crust
 These resources can be depleted much faster than they are formed as a result of
exponential growth in our resource use
 We never completely exhaust a nonrenewable resource, it becomes economically
depleted when the costs of extracting and using what is left exceed its economic
value
 Fives choices when it comes down to this:
o Try to find more
o Recycle or reuse existing supplies (with the exception of nonrenewable
resources)
o Waste less
o Use less
o Try to develop a substitute
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

Recycling: involves collecting water materials, processing them into new
materials, and selling these new products
Reuse: is using a resource over and over in the same form
Recycling and Reusing are important ways to reduce the exponential growth in
resource use
Pollution
Sources and Harmful Effects of Pollutants (Science)
 Pollutants are chemicals found at high enough levels in the environment to cause
harm to people or other organisms
 Pollution: is the presence of chemicals at high enough levels in air, water, coil, or
food to threaten the health, survival, or activities of humans and other livings
organisms
 Pollutants can enter the environment naturally or through human activates
 Most pollution from human activates occurs in or near urban and industrial areas
 Industrialized agriculture also is a major source of air and water pollution
 Some pollutants contaminate the areas where they are produced; others are carried
by wind and flowing water to other areas
 The pollutants we produce come from two types:
o Point sources: of pollutants are single, identifiable sources
o Nonpoint sources: pollutants are larger, dispersed, and often difficult to
identify
 It is much easier and cheaper to identify and control pollution from point sources
than from widely dispersed nonpoint sources
 Pollutants have three types of unwanted effects:
o They can disrupt or degrade life-support systems from humans and other
species
o They can damage wildlife, human health, and property
o They can create nuisances such as noise and unpleasant smells, tastes and
sights
Solutions: Prevention versus Cleanup (Science and Economics)
 We can try to prevent production of pollutants or clean them up after they have
been produced
 Two basic approaches
o Pollution prevention/input pollution control: which reduces or
eliminates the production of pollutants
o Pollution cleanup/output pollution control: which involves cleaning up
or diluting pollutants after they have been produced
 Environmental scientists have identifies three problems with relying on pollution
clean up
 It is only a temporary bandage as long as pollution and
consumption levels grow without corresponding improvements in
pollution control technology
 Cleanup often removes a pollutant from one part of the
environment only to cause pollution in another
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Once pollutants have entered and become dispersed into the
environment at harmful levels, it usually costs too much or is
impossible to reduce them to acceptable levels
Both pollution prevention and cleanup are needed
o But we should put more emphasis on prevention because it works better
and is cheaper than cleanup
Environmental Problems: Causes and Connections
Key Environmental Problems and Their Basic Causes
 The major causes of environmental problems are population growth, wasteful
resource use, poverty, poor environmental accounting, and environmental
ignorance
 The first step in dealing with these and other problems is to identify their
underlying causes
o Causes of environmental problems: population growth, wasteful resource
use, poverty, poor environmental accounting, and environmental
ignorance
Poverty and Environmental Problems (Economics and Politics)
 Poverty is a major threat to human health and the environment and the world’s
poorest people suffer the most from pollution and environmental degradation
 Poverty: is the inability to meet one’s basic economic needs and is concentrated
mostly in the southern hemisphere
 Many of the world’s people deplete and degrade forests, soil, grasslands and wildlife because they are desperate for land to grow enough food
 Four preventable health problems:
o Malnutrition from lack of protein and other nutrients needed for good
health
o Increased susceptibility to normally nonfatal infectious diseases, caused
by weakened condition from malnutrition
o Lack of access to clean drinking water
o Severe respiratory disease and premature death from inhaling indoor air
pollutants produced by burning wood or coal in open fires or poorly
vented stoves for heating and cooking
Resource Consumption and Environmental problems (Economics and Ethics)
 Many consumers in developed countries have become addicted to buying more
and more stuff in their search for fulfillment and happiness
 Resources consumption is linked to both poverty and wealth
 Many of the prosperous over-consume by using and wasting far more resources
than they need
 Affluenza: is a term used to describe the unsustainable addiction to
overconsumption and materialism exhibited in the lifestyles of many affluent
consumer
o Has an enormous environmental impact
o Globalization and global advertising are now spreading the influenza virus
throughout much of the world

Law of progressive simplification: “True growth occurs as civilizations transfer
an increasing proportion of energy and attention from the material side of life to
the nonmaterial side and thereby develop their culture, capacity for compassion,
sense of community, and strength of democracy”
Beneficial Effects of Affluence on Environmental Quality (Economics)
 Affluent countries have more money for improving environmental quality
 Affluence provides money for developing technologies to reduce pollution,
environmental degradation, and resource waste
 Affluence finances improvements in environmental quality
 Many affluent countries are living beyond their ecological means by running up
eventually unsustainable global ecological debts
Connections between Environmental Problems and Their Causes
 Environmental quality is affected by interactions between population size,
resource consumption and technology
 The environmental impact (I) of a population on a given area depends on three
key factors:
o The number of people (P)
o The average resource use per person (affluence, A)
o The beneficial and harmful environmental effects of the technologies (T)
used to provide and consume each unit of a resource and control or
prevent the resulting polluting and environmental degradation
 In developing countries, population size and the resulting degradation of
renewable resources tend to be the key factors in total environmental impact
o In such countries, resource use per person is low
 In developed countries, high rates of resource use per person (affluenza) and the
resulting high levels of pollution and environmental degradation per person
usually are the key factors determining overall environmental impact
 Some forms of technology increase environmental impact by raising the T factor
in the equation, while other technologies such as pollution control and prevention,
solar cells, and energy saving devices, lower environmental impact by decreasing
the T factors
 Some forms of technology are environmentally harmful and some are
environmentally beneficial
Cultural Changes and The Environment
Human Cultural Changes
 Since out hunter-gather days, three major cultural changes have increase the
human impact on the environment
 The agricultural revolution allowed people to settle in villages and raise crops and
domesticate animals
 Industrial-medical revolution led to a shift from rural villages and animalpowered agriculture to an urban society using fossil fuels for manufacturing
material items, agriculture, and transportation
o Involved using science to help us improve sanitation and understand and
control disease
 Information-globalization revolution is based on using new technologies for
gaining rapid access to much more information on a global scale
Eras of Environmental History in the United States
 The environmental history of the United States consists of the tribal, early
conservation, and modern environmental eras
 Tribal era: when the Native Americans lived originally and then European settlers
came
 Frontier era: When European colonists began settling in North America
o Frontier Environmental Worldview: having vast resources and as a
wilderness to be conquered and managed for human use
 Early Conservation era during which some people became alarmed at the scope of
resource depletion and degradation in the United States
o Most of the warning and ideas were not taken seriously
 Modern Environmental Era: an increased role of the federal government and
private citizens in resource conservation, public health, and environmental
protection
Sustainability and Environmental Worldviews
Are Things Getting Better or Worse? A millennium Assessment (Science and Politics)
 There is good and bad environmental news
 Our global economy is outgrowing the capacity of the earth to support it
 No economy, however technologically advanced, can survive the collapse of its
environmental support systems
 We are living unsustainably
 Some things are getting better and some things are getting worse
 Making the transition to a sustainable life style requires:
o Reconstructing the global economy so that it can sustain civilization
o An all-out effort to eradicate poverty, stabilize population, and restore
hope
o Systematic effort to restore natural systems
Environmental Worldviews and Ethics
 The way we view the seriousness of environmental problems and how to solve
them depends on out environment worldview and our environmental ethics
 Environmental Worldview: is a set of assumptions and value about how you
think the world works and what you think your role in the world should be
 Environmental Ethics: is a concerned with your beliefs about what is right and
wrong with how we treat the environment
 Planetary Management Worldview: holds that we are separate from nature, that
nature exists mainly to meet our needs and increasing wants, and that we can use
our ingenuity and technology to manage the earth’s life-support systems, mostly
for our benefit
o Assumes that economic growth is unlimited
 Stewardship Worldview: holds that we can manage the earth for our benefit but
that we have an ethical responsibility to be caring and responsible managers, or
stewards, of the earth
o we should encourage environmentally beneficial forms of economic
growth and discourage environmentally harmful forms

Environmental Wisdom Worldview: holds that we are part of and totally
dependent on nature and that nature exists for all species, not just for us
o Also calls for encouraging earth-sustaining forms of economic growth and
development and discouraging earth-degrading forms
Four Scientific Principles of Sustainability: Copy Nature (Science)
 We can develop more sustainable economics and societies by mimicking the four
major ways that nature has adapted and sustained itself for several billion years
 Reliance on Solar Energy: the sun warms the planet and supports photosynthesis
used by plants to provide food for us and other animals
 Biodiversity: a great variety of genes, species, ecosystems, and ecological
processes have provided many ways to adapt to changing environmental
conditions throughout the history of life on the earth
 Population Control: competition for limited resources among species places a
limit on how much any one population can grow
 Nutrient Recycling: natural processes recycle all chemicals or nutrients that
plants and animals need to stay alive and reproduce. The wastes and dead bodies
of all organisms become food or resources for other organisms
Building Social Capital: Talking and Listening to One Another (Politics and Ethics)
 A key to sustaining natural capital is to build social capital by working together to
find common ground and implementing an informed and shaved vision of a better
world based on hope
 Social Capital: making the shift to more sustainable societies and economies
involves building
 A key to building social capital and implementing solutions to environmental
problems is to recognize that most social change results from individual actions
and individuals acting together to bring about change by grassroots action from
the bottom up
 Never doubt a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the
world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Core Case Study: Chattanooga, Tennessee (Science, Economics, and Politics)
 Local officials, business leaders, and citizens have worked together to transform
the U.S. city from a highly polluted city to one of the most sustainable and livable
cities in the U.S.