1-3 Why Do We Have Environmental
Problems?
• Concept 1-3 Major causes of environmental
problems are population growth, wasteful and
unsustainable resource use, poverty, and exclusion of
environmental costs of resource use from the market
prices of goods and services.
Experts Have Identified Four Basic
Causes of Environmental Problems
According to a number of environmental and social
scientists, the major causes of environmental problems
are…
Population
growth
Unsustainable
resource use
Poverty
Excluding
environmental costs
from market prices
Experts Have Identified Four Basic
Causes of Environmental Problems
What environmental problems do you think are related
to these main causes?
Population
growth
Increased
resource use
Unsustainable
resource use
Environmental
degradation
Poverty
Excluding
environmental costs
from market prices
Focus on short Promotes the use of
term survival
environmentally
unfriendly products
and methods
Exponential Growth of Human Population
Exponential growth occurs when a quantity increases at a
___________
percentage per unit of time
fixed
slowly
• Exponential growth starts off ____________
• Quickly grows to enormous numbers because each doubling
is twice the total of earlier growth
Exponential
Growth
____
J growth
Logistic
Growth
____
S growth
Fig. 1-18, p. 21
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
Billions of people
?
3
Industrial revolution
2
Black Death—the Plague
2–5 million
years
8000
Hunting and
gathering
6000
4000
2000
Time
B. C.
1
2000
0
2100
A. D.
Agricultural revolution
Industrial
revolution
Fig. 1-18, p. 21
• 2010 world population - ______
billion
6.9
80
• Currently adding more than ______
million
people per year over 7 billion now
• Unless death rates rise sharply, there will
be around 9.5 billion people by the year
2050
_______
• This projected addition of people is
equivalent to…
8x
• _____
the current US population
• _____
that of China
2x
Goal: Having world population level-off at
around ___
8 billion by 2040 (Core Case
Study)
• How?
– Reducing
poverty
– Promoting
family planning
– Elevating the
status of
women
Affluence Has Harmful and Beneficial
Environmental Effects
• Reducing poverty through economic development
affluence
may lead to growing ________________…
• Unnecessary consumption and waste of resources
• Fueled by the assumption that buying more and more
material goods will bring fulfillment and happiness
• Affluenza – eventually unsustainable
addiction
_______________
to buying more and more stuff
Affluence Has Harmful and Beneficial
Environmental Effects
• Affluence can have POSITIVE environmental effects
as well…
education
• Better _______________
can lead people to become
more concerned about environmental quality
technologies
• Money for developing __________________
to
reduce pollution and waste
• As a result, affluent countries have…
• Cleaner air and water
• Safer and more abundant food supply
Good
News!
Poverty Has Harmful Environmental
and Health Effects
• Poverty occurs when people are unable to fulfill their
basic
needs
_________
_________
for adequate food, water,
shelter, health, and education
• According to a 2008 study by the
World Bank, 1.4 billion people, or
_____
people live
1 in every ______
5
in extreme poverty
Poverty Has Harmful Environmental
and Health Effects
The daily lives of the world’s poorest people are focused
short
on _________
term survival
• Leads to degradation of potentially renewable resources
few resources
• Even though poor people use very _______
individually, their ___________
population size leads to a high
large
overall environmental impact
LDC
P
A
T
I
Poverty Has Harmful Environmental
and Health Effects
Health problems caused by poverty…
protein and other
• Malnutrition – caused by a lack of __________
____________
needed for good health
nutrients
sanitation facilities and
• Limited access to adequate _______________
_____________
water
clean
• More than 2.6 billion people have no decent bathroom
facilities…leads to using contaminated water
• Severe respiratory disease – from breathing the smoke of open
stoves
fires and poorly vented ___________
• Premature death – for 6 million young children each year
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%)
Electricity
2 billion (29%)
Clean
drinking water
1.1 billion (16%)
Adequate
health care
1.1 billion (16%)
Adequate
housing
1 billion (15%)
Enough food for
good health
1 billion (15%)
Fig. 1-20, p. 22
• Which factor do you
think causes more
environmental
problems?
• Rapid population
growth in LDCs or
affluence in MDCs?
Malnourished child
Prices Do Not Include the Value of
Natural Capital
• Companies do not pay the environmental cost for the
use of resources to provide goods/products
subsidies
• Companies receive _______________
such as tax breaks
and payments to assist them with using resources
• Helps provide jobs but promotes natural capital
degradation
• Future trade-offs?
earth-sustaining
• Provide subsidies for ______________________
practices
pollution
waste
• Tax ________________
and _____________
heavily while
reducing taxes on income and wealth
Environmentally Unfriendly Hummer
• Uses more fuel
• Adds more
pollutants to the
atmosphere
• Does more
damage to roads
• Requires more
material and
energy to build
(larger footprint)
• These harmful costs are not
included in the price of the vehicle
Fig. 1-22, p. 24
Different Views about Environmental
Problems and Their Solutions
Differing opinions about environmental problems arise mostly
worldviews
from our different environmental ____________________
• Your environmental worldview is your set of assumptions
and values reflecting….
works
• how you think the world __________
role in the world should be
• what you think your _________
• Environmental ethics: what is right and wrong with how we
treat the environment
Justice Movement
• Environmental _____________________________
- Every
person should be entitled to equal protection from
environmental hazards
Different Views about Environmental
Problems and Their Solutions
Three Different Environmental World Views
• Planetary management worldview
charge
• We are separate from and in _______________
of nature
• Stewardship worldview
• Manage earth for our benefit but with an ethical responsibility
to be responsible managers, or _______________
of the earth
stewards
• Environmental wisdom worldview
• We are ____________
of nature and must engage in
part
sustainable use
1-4 What Is an Environmentally
Sustainable Society?
• Concept 1-4 Living sustainably means living off the
earth’s natural income without depleting or
degrading the natural capital that supplies it.
Environmentally Sustainable Societies Protect
Natural Capital and Live Off Its Income
• Environmentally sustainable society: meets
current
______________
needs while ensuring that needs of
______________
generations will be met
future
• Best Practice? Live on natural income of natural
renewable
capital (our ________________
resources) without
diminishing the natural capital
Banking example: Imagine you win $1 million in a lottery
• Invest so that you earn 10% interest per year ($100,000)
• If you overspend by even just $10,000 a year, you will be
bankrupt in 18 years
We Can Work Together to Solve
Environmental Problems
• Making the shift towards more sustainable societies
and economies includes building what sociologists
call _______________
________________
social
capital
• Involves getting people with different views and
values to communicate
• Promotes collaboration and hope
• Requires people to find and implement trade-off
solutions
Case Study: The Environmental
Transformation of Chattanooga, TN
• Environmental success story: Social capital was built in
Chattanooga, TN
• 1960: rated as one of the most polluted city in the U.S.
• Its air was so polluted that people sometimes had to turn
on their vehicle headlights during the day
• Tennessee river bubbled with toxic waste
• Eventually people and industries fled the downtown area,
leaving…
buildings
• Abandoned ____________________
• High __________________
unemployment and _________________
crime
Case Study: The Environmental
Transformation of Chattanooga, TN
1984 Vision 2000 meetings where citizens gathered to
• ________:
discuss improvements for the city
• 1995: most goals met
• Encouraged ____________________
industries to locate there
zero-emission
electric
• Replaced diesel buses with ________________
buses
• Launched a ____________________
program
recycling
• Renovated ___________________
housing
low-income
• Developed a _________________
park
riverfront
• Result? People and businesses have moved back downtown
Chattanooga, Tennessee
I
Fig. 1-23, p. 26
Individuals Matter
• Most social change results from individuals and
bottom-up
collaboration from __________________
grassroots
action
5-10%
• It only takes _____________
of a population
to bring about major social change
Good
News!
• Significant social change can occur in a __________
short
period of time (Chattanooga Ex: 10 years)
• We have perhaps only ___________
years to make
50-100
the change to sustainability before it’s too
Three Big Ideas
1. We could rely more on renewable energy from the
____________,
including indirect forms of solar
sun
energy such as ___________
and ___________
wind
flowing
water, to meet most of our heating and electricity
needs.
preventing
2. We can protect biodiversity by ______________
the
degradation of the earth’s species, ecosystems, and
restoring
natural processes, and by _________________
areas we have degraded.
Three Big Ideas
3. We can help to sustain the earth’s natural chemical
cycles by…
•
•
•
reducing our production of ___________
and
pollution
_____________
waste
overloading
not ____________________
natural systems with
harmful chemicals
not _________________
natural chemicals faster
removing
than those chemical cycles can replace them.
Review Questions
• What are the four main causes of our environmental
problems?
population
growth
Unsustainable
resource use
poverty
Excluding
environmental
costs from
market prices
Review Questions
• Which worldview holds that we are a part of and
dependent on nature?
Environmental wisdom worldview
• What is considered our planet’s natural income?
our renewable resources
• Having citizens collaborate to find trade-off solutions
capital
social
is called ______________
_______________
• How long do scientists think that we have to make a
shift towards sustainable living?
50-100 years