 Science and environmental issues
 Not an environmentalist activist perspective
 Evaluation of environmental issues
 Careers in environmental science

 First year college course
 Content The College Board AP Program
 Lab and field study based learning
 Less lecture - more independent responsibility
 Emphasis on current events

 Goals:
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Prepare for APES AP test
Critical Thinking: Evaluating issues and “coming to judgement”
Demonstrate and apply sound science and scientific method
 Understand environmental issues as interdiscinplinary:
Science, Technology, Society (STS)

 Ecology - branch of biology
 Environmental science
 Uses natural sciences and social sciences to:
 assess how earth works
 evaluate how were are affecting earth’s life-support systems
 evaluate best ways to to deal with environmental problems, and hopefully reach sustainability

 Sustainability and Sustainability
Development
 What is sustainability?
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Are our current social/economic systems sustainable?
If not, can the global society become sustainable?
 Ecological Principle: Everything is connected there is no such thing as a free lunch

 Environmental
 Social
 Political
 Economic

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“An environmental sustainable society satisfies the basic needs of it people for food, clean water clean air and shelter in the indefinite future without depleting or degrading the earth’s natural resources” (pare 4)
In addition to helping sustain the earth’s life support systems, sustainable development leads to greater economic security, healthier life-styles, and worldwide improvement in the human condition (15)

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Can all of earth’s population live at or near the consumption levels of the developed countries?
 Can technology solve the problems?
Can human societies: Living off of interest, thus not using up capital
 What are some examples?
Read and analyze: “Natural Capital” by Paul
Hawken (page 17)

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I: “..cyclic industrial systems work better than linear ones.”
 Relate to throughput page 60
 Contrast to natural ecosystems
II: Discuss“Markets are not giving us correct information about how much our suburbs, cars, and plastic drinking water bottles truly cost based on the environmental harm they cause”
III.
Discuss: A “more rational economic system “…” is based on the simple but powerful proposition that all capital must be valued .” In your discussion, be surely to clearly “define” and explain natural capital.
IV. Round 2: You are Gary Hardin. If you were in charge of the worlds economy, what are the three most important things you would do?

 Definition: amount of land needed to produce resources needed for a person(or average person) in a country
 Compare: developed and developing
 Compare: Netherlands and U.S.
 Calculate your footprint

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Constant Rate but not constant number
“A quantity increases by a fixed percentage of the whole in a given time”
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Essentially, compound interest
Growth at a given rate
Doubling time is calculated if rate remains same
Number organisms added per unit time increases
Examples:
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Folding paper
Bacteria in a bottle
Read: Current Exponential Growth of the Human Population (5)

DO NOT POST TO INTERNET
16
15
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14
13
12
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11
10
9
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8
7
6
Black Death –the Plague
1
2000 2100
0
3
2
5
4
2-5 million years
8000 6000 4000
Time
2000
Agricultural revolution
B.C.
A.D.
Hunting and gathering
Industrial revolution

 Doubling time - rule of 70
 70/ % growth rate = doubling time
 Growth rate is decreasing
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1963: 2.1%
2002: 1.28%
 BUT, demands for resources growing exponentially
 Pollution growing exponentially

World Population Reached
1 billion in 1804
2 billion in 1927 (123 years later)
3 billion in 1960 (33 years later)
4 billion in 1974 (14 years later)
5 billion in 1987 (13 years later)
6 billion in 1999 (12 years later)
World Population May Reach
7 billion in 2013 (14 years later)
8 billion in 2028 (15 years later)
9 billion in 2050 (22 years later)

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11
10
9
6
5
8
7
4
3
2
1
1950
Figure 1-4
Page 6
2000
World total
Developing countries
Year
2050
Developed countries
2100

 Improvement of living standards by economic growth
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How to measure “living standards”?
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Probably best measure: Per Capita GNI PPP
Page 4
 Developed countries
 Developing countries
 World Night Lights
 NA night lights

Per capita GNI PPP, 2001
Low income
(Under $2,700)
Middle income
($2,701
–$10,750)
High income
(Above $10,750)

 Simplified model (13)
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 population consumption (measured by affluence) technologic impact of unit of consumption

 Definition
 Perpetual resources
 Renewable resources
 Sustainable yield
 How can renewable resources become nonsustainable?
 Nonrenewable resources
 economic depletion vs actual depletion

 Reduce
 Reusing
 Recycling
 What non-renewables cannot be recycled or reused?

 Definition
 Natural or anthropogenic
 Point vs. nonpoint
 Effects of pollutants (11)
 Solutions:
 Elimination of the waste
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Prevent from reaching environment
Five R’s: refuse to use, replace, reduce, reuse.
Recycle
 Is dilution a solution to pollution?
 Maybe sometimes? Maybe not??

Pollution Cleanup (output control)
(11)
 Cleanup after produced
 Problems
 Temporary bandage – as long as population continues to grow
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Removes from one location, but puts pollutant into another (eg, scrubbers)
Dispersal – low concentrations, almost impossible to cleanup

 Activity: In notebook, keep track of data after each round (everyone fishes)
 Round 1: NO talking – fishing isolated from all team members
 10 seconds to fish
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Fish replace 1 for every two remaining; less than four, population eliminated
Cup more than ½ full, fish exceed carrying capacity.

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Round 2: NO talking – fishing isolated from all team members
 SAME rules as round 1: better technology
Round 3: Discuss before beginning – may talk throughout activity
 10 seconds to fish
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Fish replace 1 for every two remaining; less than four, population eliminated
Cup more than ½ full, fish exceed carrying capacity.
CHOOSE “technology”

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Awareness began in 1980’s
 Acid precipitation
 Ozone depletion
 Global climate change
 Ocean pollution and depletion of fish resources

 World becoming more integrated
 Economic
 1970-2002: 7,000 to 60,000 transnational corporations
 Communication and information
 Pollutants
 Acid precipitation, climate change, ozone depletion, depletion of ocean resources

 Diagram page 12

Causes of environmental problems (12)
 Rapid population growth
 Unsustainable resource use
 Poverty
 Cost of economic goods excludes costs of pollution
 Not enough knowledge about complex natural systems
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Think of the “Precautionary Principle”

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Experts disagree
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Political viewpoint
Economics
World views
How serious is an environmental problem?
What can be done?
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What is economic impact of reducing pollution or resource use?
Are technologies available?
Who gains and who losses?

 Global food production outpaced global population growth since 1970
 Pollution growth rate is reduced worldwide
 Infant mortality decreased worldwide
 In developed countries: cleaner water and air
 Much more interest and concern about environmental issues

 Pollution in developing countries increased – clean water a big problem
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Exponential increase in use of most natural resources
Population still increasing in developing countries
Global climate change
Gulf between rich/poor widening
Global decrease in biodiversity
Economic systems do not incorporate pollution costs
Globalization

 Incentives: subsidies and tax write-offs
 Regulations, fines, taxes
 Require pollution cleanup
 Research funds
 Education
 Developed world provide model for developing
 Reduce or eliminate loans for developed countries

Conventional vs. Ecological
Economists ( 693-697)
 Conventional
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 Economic systems independent of natural systems
 Human technology/ingenuity will deal with shortages and destruction of biodiversity
Ecological economics – Hawkin’s ideas
 Economic system subsystem of environment
 Natural capital supplies and maintains economic systems
 Environmentally sustainable economic
 development
Economic system “mimics” natural systems
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Recycling
Not depleting earth’s net primary productivity
Living off ecological income, not the capital

 Subtract from GNI things that lead to a lower quality of life and resource depletion
 Add things that enhance environmental quality and human well-being
 Problem: how to determine the value of such environmental indicators
 NOTE: today's GNI does not account for environmental/human externalities – only dollar costs and benefits (income)

 Costs not incorporated in the final consumer cost of product
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Thus, Hawkin’s “improper accounting”
 Costs passed on to public and maybe future generations
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Problem: Can they be quantified?
 Some quantifiable, some difficult to quantify
Who in society “pays” more of these externalities?

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Consumer pays FULL cost of production of a product. (Hawkin: all “information” incorporated into the cost of the product)
Preventing pollution more profitable than cleaning it up
Methods
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Taxes for pollution
 Example: proposed carbon taxes
Regulations requiring pollution controls and of mitigation damaged environments
 Eliminate subsidies for resource extraction
Problem: direct cost of many services and products would rise
Problem: Law of diminishing returns (graph 26.10)

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Based on person’s beliefs and values
“Facts” interpreted, conclusions reached based on worldview
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Worldviews become a “window” through which “facts” interpreted and decisions made
 Two basic worldviews:
 Planetary management
 Environmental wisdom worldview`

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What is each individuals role?
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed,it the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

 Conservationism
 Preservationism
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(Read: “How should …Conservationists” on 32)
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Stewardship
“Modern” environmentalism
 Globalism

 Pragmatic or utilitarian resource conservation
 George Perkins Marsh
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Man and Nature , 1864
Warned of the ecological and economic consequences of “frontier” mentality

Conservationism and forest preserves
 Roosevelt and Pinchot
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Forests should be saved “ not because they are beautiful or because the shelter wild creatures of the wilderness, but only to provide homes and jobs for people”
 Turning point: Forest Reserve Act of
1871

National Forest Service and Soil
Conservation Service
(in Dept. of Agr.)
 Multiple use
 Sustainable yield

 John Muir
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Fundamental right of other organisms to exist
“The world, we are told, was made for man…Nature’s object in making animals and plants might possibly be first of the happiness of each one of them…Why ought man to value himself as more than an infinitely small unit of one great unit of creation?”

 National Park Service 1916 (Dept of Interior)
 Yellowstone National Park – 1872 – American
Forestry Association
 Protection of all organisms, with humans
“onlookers” – no multiple use

 Dust bowls and Grapes of Wrath
 Soil Conservation Service - 1935

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Modern ecology, with philosophical
“underpinning”
“That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.” ..Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac – A
Land Ethic
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The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land .
The land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it.
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.
When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use with love and respect.
Anything is right when it tends to preserve the integrity , stability, and beauty of the biotic community.
It is wrong it tends otherwise
Leopold, Aldo: A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and
There , 1948, Oxford University Press , New York, 1987, pg. 204.

 Rachel Carson :
Silent Spring 1962
 Effect of DDT in the food chain
 Earthday- 1970

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Relationships between population growth, resource use, and pollution
1969 – photograph from space – “Spaceship
Earth”
 Many laws, agencies, environmental organizations established between ‘68 and late’70s

 Environmental protection agency
 Environmental laws
 Pollution abatement
 Species saved from extinction
 Habitat protection
 Environmental education

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Wilderness Act – National Wilderness System
1970 – National Environmental Policy Act –
 Requires Environmental Impact Statements
1970 – Clean Air Act
1970 – EPA Established
1972 – Marine Mammal Protection Act
1973 – Endangered Species Act
1977 – Clean Water Act
1980 – Superfund law (CERCLA)
1987 – Montreal Protocol

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Acid precipitation
Nuclear accidents – TMI and Chernobyl
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Ozone depletion
“International Convention of Biological
Diversity” – 1991
Kyoto agreement – 1997
Today – globalization of world markets – can countries control their own destinies?

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True or False Concerning the Process of Science
 Science is incapable of providing absolute proof for any theory.
 The process of science can be used to test value judgments.
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Some observed phenomena may not lend themselves to controlled experiments.
Science is capable of predicting the future.
Does science provide a framework for understanding complex ecological systems and potential impacts on those systems?

 Presentations of selective results
 Public distortions of scientific works
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Publication in quasi-scientific journals
Funding of “biased” science