Comprehensive Summary Living in the Environment - Sustainable Development (GEO1-2103)
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Course
Duurzame ontwikkeling (GEO12103)
Institution
Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
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Living in the Environment
This document contains a comprehensive summary of the chapters for the first and second exams. It includes chapters 1 to 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24.
In other words, all chapters except chapters 4, 7, 8, 11, 18, and 25.
Test Bank for Living in the Environment 18th Edition by G. Tyler Miller
Test Bank for Living in the Environment 18th Edition by G. Tyler Miller
Test Bank for Living in the Environment 18th Edition by G. Tyler Miller
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Summary Living in the Environment
6 principles of sustainability:
Solar energy
Chemical cycling
Biodiversity
Economics (full-cost pricing)
Politics (win-win results)
Ethics (responsibility to future generations)
Chapter 1
Biomimicry: the rapidly growing scientific effort to understand, mimic and
catalog the ingenious ways in which nature has sustained life on the earth. Views
earth’s life-support system as the world’s longest and most successful research
and development laboratory.
1.1 What are the key principles of sustainability?
Environmental science is a study of connections in nature. It is an
interdisciplinary study of:
1) How the earth (nature) works and has survived and thrived
2) How humans interact with the environment
3) How we van live more sustainably
Ecology: the branch of biology that focuses on how living organisms interact
with the living and non-living parts of their environment.
Ecosystem: a set of organisms within a defined area of land or volume of water
that interact with one another and with their environment of non-living matter
and energy.
3 scientific principles of sustainability
Dependence on solar energy: the sun’s energy warms the planet and
provides energy that plants use to produce nutrients.
Biodiversity: interactions among species provide vital ecosystems
services and keep any population from growing too large.
Chemical cycling: circulation of chemicals or nutrients needed to sustain
life from the environment through various organisms and back to the
environment. Waste = useful resources.
Key components of sustainability:
Natural capital: the natural resources and ecosystems that keep humans and
other species alive and that support human economies.
Natural resources:
o Inexhaustible resource: expected to last forever
o Renewable resource: any resource that can be replenished by
natural processes within hours to centuries, as long as people do not
use the resource faster than natural processes can replace it.
Sustainable yield: highest rate at which people can use a
renewable resource indefinitely without reducing its available supply
o Non-renewable or inexhaustible resources: exist in a fixed
amount in the earth’s crust.
Human activities can degrade natural capital, by using renewable
resources faster than nature van restore them and by overloading the
earth’s normally renewable air, water and soil with pollution and waste.
, Creating solutions
3 additional principles of sustainability
Full-cost pricing (economic): ways to include the harmful environmental
and health costs of producing and using goods and services in their market
prices. Gives consumers information about the harmful environmental
impacts of products.
Win-win solutions (political): cooperation and compromise that benefit
the largest number of people as well as the environment.
Responsibility to future generations (ethics): leave the planet’s life-
support systems in a condition that is as good/better than it is now.
Countries differ in their resource use and environmental impact. More developed
countries use about 70% of the earth’s natural resources, less developed
countries use about 30%.
1.2 How are our ecological footprints affecting the earth?
Environmental degradation or natural capital degradation: process of
waste, deplete and degradation of the earth’s life-sustaining natural capital.
Garret Hardin Tragedy of the commons: many of the renewable resources
have been environmentally degraded. Because of people thinking the little bit I
use/pollute is not enough to matter, but when everyone thinks this way the
source degrades.
One way to deal with this: use shared or open-access renewable source at a rate
well below its estimated yield, by regulating access to the source.
Other way: make shared renewable resources private. If you own it, you are more
likely to protect it. But not an option for open-access resources as air, ocean, etc.
Biocapacity: ability of the earth’s productive ecosystems to regenerate the
renewable resources used by people, and to absorb the resulting wastes and
pollution indefinitely.
Footprint > biocapacity = ecological deficit (living unsustainable)
IPAT is another environmental impact model
IPAT: Impact (I) = Population (P) x Affluence (A) x Technology (T)
IPAT is created by Ehrlich and Holdren. IPAT includes the environmental impact
of using both renewable and non-renewable resources. T-factor can be harmful
and beneficial.
Cultural changes can increase or shrink our ecological footprint.
Since hunter-gatherers, 3 major cultural changes occurred:
1. Agricultural revolution
2. Industrial revolution, the shift from rural villages to cities to work involved
learning how to get energy from fossil fuels and how to grow large
quantities of food in an efficient manner.
3. Information-globalization revolution, we developed new technologies for
gaining rapid access to al kinds of information and resources on a global
scale.
Each of these cultural changes gave us more energy and new technologies. Also
allowed expansion of the human population. These changes resulted in greater
resource use, pollution and environmental degradation and expanded our
footprint.
,On the other hand, technological leaps have enabled us to shrink our ecological
footprint by reducing our use of energy and matter resources and our production
of wastes and pollution (LED-lights).
Sustainable revolution, in which we learn to live more sustainably during this
century avoiding degradation and restoring natural capital.
1.3 What causes environmental problems and why do they persist?
Major causes of environmental problems:
Population growth
Wasteful and unsustainable resource use
Poverty
Omission of the harmful environment and health costs of goods and
services in market prices
Increasing isolation from nature
Competing environmental worldviews
Exponential growth of about 1.2%. Reducing environmental degradation by
slowing population growth and level it of at around 8 billion instead of 9.8 billion.
Effects of increasing footprints can be dramatic. But wealth can allow for
widespread and better education that can lead people to become more
concerned about environmental quality. Wealth also makes more money available
for developing technologies to reduce pollution, environmental degradation and
resource waste along with ways to increase our beneficial environment impacts.
Poverty has harmful environmental and health effects
The lives of the world’s poorest people centre on getting enough food, water and
fuel to survive, these people don’t worry about long-term environmental quality
or sustainability forced to degrade environment.
But some of the poor increase their beneficial environmental impact by planting
and nurturing trees and conserving the soil that they depend on as part of their
long-term survival strategy.
Environmental degradation can have severe health effects on the poor:
malnutrition, lack of nutrients, illnesses caused by limited access to adequate
sanitation facilities and clean drinking water.
Prices of goods and services rarely include their harmful environmental
and health costs
Companies generally are not required to pay for the harmful environmental and
health costs of supplying such goods. By not including these costs, consumers
have no effective way to know the harm caused by what they buy.
Lack of information is a major reason for why we are degrading key components
of our live-support system.
Other problem is subsidies helps to create jobs and stimulate economies, but
some encourage the depletion and degradation of natural capital.
2 ways to implement full-cost pricing:
1. Shift from environmentally harmful government subsidies to
environmentally beneficial subsidies.
2. Increase taxes on pollution and wastes that we want less of and reduce
taxes on income and wealth that we want more of.
, People are increasingly more isolated from nature
Shift from rural to urban is increasing at rapid pace. Urban environments and cell
phones, etc are isolating people from nature, especially children nature-deficit
disorder. People gain benefits from outdoor activities.
People have different views about environmental problems and their
solutions
Environmental worldview: set of assumptions and values concerning how the
natural world works and how you think you should interact with the environment.
Environmental ethics: various beliefs about what is wrong/wright about treating
environment.
3 major categories of environmental worldviews:
Human-centred: natural world is support system for human life.
2 versions: planetary management worldview and stewardship worldview.
Both: Humans are separate from and in charge of nature; we should
manage the earth for our benefit. When something is degraded we can use
our technology to find a substitute.
Stewardship: calls for us to be caring and responsible managers (stewards)
of the earth for current and future human generations. Also calls for us to
encourage environmentally beneficial forms of economic growth and
development and discourage environmentally harmful forms.
Life-centred: all species have value in fulfilling their particular role within
the biosphere. Ethical responsibility to avoid hastening the extinction of
species through our activities.
Earth-centred: we are part, and dependent on nature and the earth’s
natural capital exists for all species, not just for humans. Our economic
success and long-term survival of our cultures, our and other species
depend on learning how life on earth has sustained itself and integrating
these lessons in the way we think and act.
1.4 What is an environmentally sustainable society?
Protect your (natural) capital and live on the income it provides. Deplete or waste
your (natural) capital and you will move from a sustainable to an unsustainable
lifestyle. Living sustainable means living on natural income (renewable
resources provided by the earth’s natural capital).
Chapter 2
2.1 What do scientists do?
Scientific method:
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