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It’s All About Sustainability

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE • “The ability of the earth’s various natural systems
and human cultural systems and economies to
survive and adapt to changing environmental
conditions indefinitely.“

1- Environmental • United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment:

– Human actions put long-term sustainability in doubt
Problems, Their Causes,
and Sustainability • Life on earth for 3.5 billion years
– Survived many catastrophes
– Humans have caused major changes in the last 500 years
– Humans are smart, but are they wise?

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It’s All About Sustainability It’s All About Sustainability

Three Principles of Sustainability • 2. Biodiversity
• 1. Solar energy
-Large variety of species
– Warms earth
– Provides energy for plants to – Many ecosystems
make food for other organisms • Deserts
– Powers winds • Forests
– Powers the hydrologic cycle – • Oceans
which includes flowing water
• Grasslands
– Provides energy: wind and
moving water can be turned into – Species and systems renew
electricity soil and purify air and water.

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Core Case Study: Solar Energy

It’s All About Sustainability

• 3. Chemical Cycling
– Natural processes recycle nutrients
– Recycling is necessary because there is
a fixed supply of these nutrients on
earth
– Nutrients cycle from living organisms to
the nonliving environment and back
– Chemical cycles are necessary to
sustain life
Chemical Cycling Biodiversity Fig. 1-1, p. 5

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What Is an Environmentally
Studying Connections in Nature
Sustainable Society?
• Our lives and economies depend on • Environment
energy from the sun and natural • Environmental Science
resources and natural services (natural • Ecology
capital) provided by the earth.
-Species
• Ecosystem
• Living sustainably means living off
earth’s natural income without depleting • Environmentalism
or degrading the natural capital that
supplies it.

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Environment
• all living and nonliving
things with which an
organism interacts
• everything around us
• series of complex web or
relationships
• “The environment is
everything that isn’t me.”
–Albert Einstein
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Ecology
• studies relationships between living
organisms, and their interaction
with the environment.
• species: a group of organisms that
have distinctive traits and, for
sexually reproducing organisms
can mate and produce fertile
offspring.
• Ecosystems: major focus ecology
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Environmental Science
• an interdisciplinary study
which deals with how the
earth works, our
interaction with the earth,
and ways to deal with
environment problems
and live more sustainably.
• integrates information and
ideas from the natural
sciences, social sciences,
and the humanities.
Ecosystems
• set of organisms within a defined area
interacting with one another and with their
environment of non-living matter and energy.
• Speciesà Populationà Communityà
Ecosystems
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Environmentalism Living More Sustainably

• is a social movement • Sustainability – central theme

dedicated to protecting
life support systems for • Natural capital
all species. – Natural resources
• practiced more in the – Natural services
political and ethical – Photosynthesis
arenas than in the realm • Powered by solar energy
of science • Human activities degrade natural capital

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Natural Resources Natural Services

• Materials • Functions of nature
–Renewable –Purification of air, water
• Air, water, soil, –Nutrient cycling
plants • From the environment to organisms
–Nonrenewable and back to the environment
• Minerals, oil,
coal

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Organic
matter in
animals

Dead
organic
matter
Organic
matter in
plants
Decomposition

Inorganic
matter in soil

Fig. 1-2, p. 7 Fig. 1-3, p. 8

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Sustainable Living from Natural How Are Our Ecological

Capital Footprints Affecting the Earth?
• Environmentally sustainable • As our ecological footprints grow, we
society deplete and degrade more of the
• Financial capital and financial income earth’s natural capital.
• Natural capital and natural income
• Living sustainably: living on natural
income only

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Natural Resources Natural Resources

• Perpetual – renewed continuously • Some resources are not renewable.
– Solar energy – Nonrenewable resources exist in fixed
§ Renewable – days to centuries quantities.
– Water – Exhaustible energy (e.g. coal and oil).
– Air – Metallic minerals (e.g. copper and
aluminum).
– Grasslands
– Nonmetallic minerals (e.g. salt and sand).
– Forest
– Soils
• Sustainable solutions: Reduce, reuse,
– Fish populations
recycle (and refuse).

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Natural Resources
• Sustainable yield
Shrinking
Climate forests
change
Decreased
- highest rate at which a renewable and non- Air pollution
wildlife
habitats
renewable resource can be used indefinitely Species
extinction
without reducing its available supply. Soil erosion

Water
• Environmental degradation pollution

–Use exceeds natural replacement Aquifer

depletion
Declining ocean
fisheries

rate

Fig. 1-4, p. 10

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Ecological Footprint
• Ecological footprint
– The amount of biologically productive land
and water needed to indefinitely supply the
people in a given area with renewable
resources
– Also includes the land and water necessary to
absorb and recycle wastes and pollution
• Per capita ecological footprint
– Average ecological footprint of an individual in
a given area
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Tragedy of the Commons
• “If I do not use this resource, someone else will. The
little bit that I use or pollute is not enough to matter,
and anyway, it’s a renewable resource.”
• Environmental degradation of openly shared
renewable resources
• Users focus on their own selfish, short-term
gain
• Works when only a small number of users
• Big part of why humans now live unsustainably
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Ecological Footprint
• Ecological deficit
– Total ecological footprint greater than
biological capacity for resource
renewal and absorption of wastes and
pollution
– 2008 study: at least 30% global excess
– 88% for high-income countries
– Humans currently need 1.3 earths
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Stepped Art
Fig. 1-5, p. 11

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Nonrenewable Resources
• Nonrenewable – fixed quantities
–Energy (fossil fuels)
–Metallic minerals
–Nonmetallic minerals
• Recycling
• Reduce
• Reuse
• Refuse Fig. 1-5, p. 11

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Developed Countries Have

Higher Impacts
• Developed countries
–United States, Japan, New
Zealand, most of Europe, some
others
–19% world population
–Use 88% of world’s resources
–Create 75% of world’s pollution
Developing Countries
• 81% world population
• Middle income: Brazil, China, India
• Least developed: Haiti, Nigeria,
Nicaragua
• Use far fewer resources per capita
than developed countries
• Smaller per capita ecological footprint

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IPAT Environmental Impact

Model
• Determines impact of a country or
regions
• I=PxAxT
• I = environmental impact
• P = population size
• A = affluence of population
• T = technology influence
Supplement 3, Fig. 5, p. S9

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Developing Countries

Consumption Technological impact Environmental

Population (P) per person per unit of impact of population
(affluence, A) consumption (T) (I)

Developed Countries

Fig. 1-7, p. 13

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What Is Pollution and What Can

Pollution
We Do about It?
• Preventing pollution is more effective • What is pollution?
and less costly than cleaning up - Contamination of the environment by a chemical or
other agent such as noise or heat that is harmful to health,
pollution. survival, or activities of humans and other organisms.

• Point sources: single identifiable sources

• Nonpoint sources: dispersed and often
difficult to identify

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Solutions to Pollution
• Pollution prevention
– Prevent pollutants from entering the
environment
• Pollution cleanup
– After pollutants released into environment
– Temporary fix only
– Often results in different pollution: burning
garbage
– Dispersed pollutants usually too costly to
clean up effectively
Fig. 1-8, p. 14

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Why Do We Have Experts have identified four basic

Environmental Problems? causes of environmental problems
Major causes 1. Population growth.
• population growth 2. Unsustainable resource use.
• wasteful and unsustainable resource 3. Poverty.
use 4. Excluding environmental costs from
market prices.
• exclusion of harmful environmental
costs from the market prices of goods
and services

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The human population is growing

exponentially at a rapid rate
• Human population is increasing at a fixed
percentage so that we are experiencing
doubling of larger and larger populations.
• Human population in 2009 was about 6.8
billion.
• Based on the current increase rate there
will be 9.6 billion people by 2050.
• We can slow population growth.

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12 Poverty has harmful environmental
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and health effects
?
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• Poverty occurs when the basic needs for
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adequate food, water, shelter, health,
6 and education are not met.
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4
• One in every five people live in extreme
3 poverty (<$1.25/day), and more are
Industrial revolution
2 susceptible.
Black Death—the Plague
1
0
2-5 million 8000 6000 4000 2000 2000 2100
years B.C. A.D.
Hunting Agricultural revolution Industrial
and gathering revolution
Fig. 1-1,
Fig. 1-10,p. 1
p. 16

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Poverty has harmful environmental

and health effects
• Poverty causes harmful environmental and
health effects.
– Environmental degradation caused by need
for short-term survival.
– Malnutrition.
– Inadequate sanitation and lack of clean
drinking water.
– Severe respiratory disease.
– High rates of premature death for children
under the age of 5 years.
Fig. 1-11, p. 16

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Lack of Number of people

access to (% of world's population)

Adequate 2.5 billion (37%)

sanitation facilities

Enough fuel for

2 billion (29%)
heating and cooking

Electricity 2 billion (29%)

Clean drinking
1.1 billion (16%)
water

Adequate
health care 1 billion (15%)

Adequate 1 billion (15%)

housing

Enough food
0.93 billion (14%)
for good health
Fig. 1-12, p. 17 Fig. 1-12, p. 17

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Fig. 1-13, p. 17

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Affluence has harmful and Evaluating Full Cost of

beneficial environmental effects Resources Use
• Wealth results in high levels of consumption • Prices do not include the value of natural
and waste of resources. capital and harmful environmental costs
• Average American consumes 30 times as much
• Examples
as the average consumer in India.
– Clear-cutting + habitat loss
• “Shop-until-you-drop” affluent consumers are
afflicted with a disorder called affluenza. – Commercial fishing + depletion of fish stocks
• Affluence has provided better education, scientific • Tax breaks
research, and technological solutions, which • Subsidies
result in improvements in environmental quality
(e.g., safe drinking water).

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How Can we Live More
Sustainably? Three Big Ideas
• We can live more sustainably by
relying more on solar energy,
preserving biodiversity, and not
disrupting the earth’s natural
chemical recycling processes.
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Three Big Ideas for
Sustainability
• Rely more on renewable energy from
the sun
• Protect biodiversity
• Do not disrupt earth’s natural
chemical cycles
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What is an environmentally
sustainable society?
• Environmentally sustainable societies protect
natural capital and live off its income.
– Increase reliance on renewable resources.
– Protect earth’s natural capital.
• We can work together to solve environmental
problems.
– Trade-off solutions provide a balance between
the benefits and the costs.
– Individuals matter especially in success of
bottom-up grassroots action.
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