Warm Up to ……
Causes of Environmental Problems
• We have been raising our awareness about the types of environmental problems that exist at local, regional, national and international levels.
• What do you think the ROOT CAUSES of these problems are ? Jot down as many as you can think of.
• Problem - Root Cause
• Ex. Runny nose, Sore throat – bacterial infection
• Ex. Car won’t run, battery dead – broken alternator

The Fate of Easter Island
Can what happened on one South
Pacific island serve as a cautionary tale for the planet as a whole?

Causes of Environmental Problems

Experts Have Identified Five Basic
Causes of Environmental Problems
• Population growth
• Wasteful and unsustainable resource use
• Poverty
• Failure to include the harmful environmental costs of goods and services in their market prices
• Insufficient knowledge of how nature works

Causes of Environmental Problems

Population growth
• Considered by many to be the biggest threat to the environment.
• Theorists hold the idea that the human population is rising beyond the Earth’s ability to regenerate. Has human population exceeded the Earth’s carrying capacity for it?
• Presently 7 + billion people on the planet.
Every minute 200,000 people are added.
• Slower growth rate is occuring but overall numbers keep going up (longer life length)

2 –5 million years
8000
Hunting and gathering
6000
?
Industrial revolution
Black Death —the Plague
4000
Time
2000
B. C.
A. D.
2000 2100
0
3
2
1
5
4
13
12
7
6
11
10
9
8
Agricultural revolution Industrial revolution
Fig. 1-1, p. 5

• Agricultural Revolution –
2 Events that gave rise to population increase
 Provided a way to maintain stable food source which improved human health
• Industrial Revolution –
 Began in the early 1700’s
 Shift from rural, animal-powered farming to an urban society pwered by nonrenewable fossil fuel energy sources
 Medical and agricultural technology and

Resource Consumption
• “It’s not just the number of people on Earth, but how much they consume”

Consumption of Natural Resources

Consumption of Natural Resources

What is a resource?
• Anything an organism needs to survive – food, shelter, mates, breeding sites, water, air, land
• Renewable natural resource – Resource that is replenished over “short” periods of time
(within our lifetime). If consumed faster than replaced it can be lost.
• Ex. Wood, wildlife, sunlight, wind, water, soil
• Nonrenewable natural resource - Resource that is formed much more slowly than its used.

Overexploiting Shared Renewable
Resources: Tragedy of the
Commons
• Three types of property or resource rights
– Private property
– Common property
– Open access renewable resources
• Tragedy of the commons – Garret Hardin
• If not managed, common resources will be exploited by its users – Ex. Ocean fishing

Ecological Footprint
• Resources use can be measured using the concept of “ecological footprint” (1990’s)
Ecological Footprint – measures the environmental effects of an individual or population in terms of the total amount of land and water required to provide raw materials and to dispose of waste.

Total Ecological Footprint (million hectares) and Share of Global Ecological Capacity (%)
United States
European Union
China
India
Japan
Per Capita Ecological Footprint
(hectares per person)
780 (7%)
540 (5%)
2,810 (25%)
2,160 (19%)
United States
European Union
2,050 (18%) China
India
Japan
0.8
1.6
4.7
4.8
9.7
Projected footprint
Earth's ecological capacity
Ecological footprint
Fig. 1-10, p. 15

Total Ecological Footprint (million hectares) and Share of Global Ecological Capacity (%)
United States
European Union
China
India
Japan
Per Capita Ecological Footprint
(hectares per person)
780 (7%)
540 (5%)
2,810 (25%)
2,160 (19%)
United States
European Union
2,050 (18%) China
India
Japan
0.8
1.6
4.7
4.8
9.7
Projected footprint
Earth's ecological capacity
Ecological footprint
Stepped Art
Fig. 1-10, p. 15

Cultural Changes Have Increased
Our Ecological Footprints
• 12,000 years ago: hunters and gatherers
• Three major cultural events
– Agricultural revolution
– Industrial-medical revolution
– Information-globalization revolution

Resource Sustainability is the Goal of
E.S.
• Resource use is considered sustainable if it can continue at the same rate into the future.
• As we consider our values, sustainability for the benefit of ourselves in the immediate, those in the future, those living elsewhere and natural in general is the goal of Environmental
Science

#3 Poverty and the Inequality of
Wealth
• One billion people live on less than a dollar a day, the official measure of poverty
• However, half the world — nearly three billion people — lives on less than two dollars a day.
• A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion

There Is a Wide Economic Gap between Rich and Poor Countries in terms of both Population Growth and Resource Use
Developing Nations
• Lower life expectancy
• Have less education
• Have less money income
Lowered living standard
• Underdeveloped industrial base
• Higher population growth rate
• Lower consumption rate
•
Developed Nations
• Higher life expectancy
• Have more education
• Greater income
• Higher standard of living
• Industrialized nation
Lower population growth
• Higher consumption rate per person

Comparing Developed and Developing Nations

Poverty Has Harmful
Environmental and Health Effects
• Population growth affected
• Malnutrition
• Premature death
• Limited access to adequate sanitation facilities and clean water

Lack of access to
Adequate sanitation facilities
Number of people
(% of world's population)
2.6 billion (38%)
Enough fuel for heating and cooking
2 billion (29%)
2 billion (29%) Electricity
Clean drinking water
Adequate health care
Adequate housing
Enough food for good health
1.1 billion (16%)
1.1 billion (16%)
1 billion (15%)
0.86 billion (13%)
Fig. 1-13, p. 18

• 1 billion people suffer from hunger and some
2 to 3.5 billion people have a deficiency of vitamins and minerals
• Yet, some 1.2 billion suffer from obesity

Affluenza
"a painful, contagious , socially transmitted condition of overload, debt , anxiety , and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more."

Affluence Has Harmful and
Beneficial Environmental Effects
• Harmful environmental impact due to
– High levels of consumption
– Unnecessary waste of resources
• Affluence can provide funding for
– Developing technologies to reduce
• Pollution
• Environmental degradation
• Resource waste

Poverty Also Has Harmful and
Beneficial Environmental Effects
• Beneficial environmental impact due to
– Low levels of consumption
– Reduced waste of resources
• Poverty negatively affects the environment through
• “Resource stripping” necessary to pay of personal and national debts.
• Lack of or poor pollution controls

#4 Poor Environmental Accounting
• Results from a lack of doing busineness that includes the full value of a products natural capital -
• What resources are used in making the product?
• How much water was used to make product and wasn’t available for drinking purposes?
• How many forests were cut down, displacing species, loss of ecological services like oxygen production and the take up of carbon dioxide?
• What is the real cost to Mother Nature and us

Prices Do Not Include the Value of
Natural Capital
• Companies do not pay the environmental cost of resource use
• Goods and services do not include the harmful environmental costs
• Companies receive tax breaks and subsidies
• Economy may be stimulated but there may be a degradation of natural capital (the goods

#5 Ecological Ignorance
• Ignorance – lack of understanding, crude knowledge
• Refers to the failure to understand the effect of human actions on the relationship between the environment and living things.

What is the connection between your
Big Mac and a rainforest destruction?

We Can Learn to Make Informed
Environmental Decisions
• Scientific research
• Identify problem and multiple solutions
• Consider human values