PEE Quiz 1

• Pollution is the contamination of the environment by any chemical or other agent to a level that is harmful to the health, survival, or activities of humans or other organisms
• The Tragedy of the Commons occurs when degradation of shared or open-access renewable resources happens due to individual users reasoning that their impact is insignificant
• Natural Capital

  The natural resources and ecosystem services that keep us and other species alive and support human economies
• Ecosystem Services

  • Supporting services
  • Regulating services
  • Provisioning services
  • Cultural services
• Natural Resources

  • Inexhaustible resources
  • Renewable resources
  • Nonrenewable (depletable or exhaustible) resources
• Human Use of the Earth

  1. Natural Capital Use & Degradation

  2. Human Wellbeing & Environmental Worldviews

  3. Principles of Sustainability
• Pollution sources

  • Point sources
  • Nonpoint sources
• Growing Ecological Footprint can be thought of as the harmful environmental impact, representing the amount of land and water needed to supply a population with renewable resources and to absorb and recycle wastes and pollution
• Natural Resources


  Materials and energy in nature that are essential or useful to humans
• Ecosystem Services


  Processes provided by healthy ecosystems that support life and human economies at no monetary cost to humans
• Dealing with pollution

  1. Pollution cleanup

  2. Pollution prevention
• As we have expanded into and dominated almost all of the earth’s ecosystems in a short time, we have seriously degraded the natural systems that support all species, including our own and our economies
• Human activities have degraded or overused about 60% of the earth’s ecosystem services, mostly since 1950
• The IPAT Model was developed in the early 1970s by scientists Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren
• Ecological footprint < Biological capacity to replenish resources

  ECOLOGICAL RESERVE/CREDIT
• The human ecological footprint has an impact on about 83% of the earth’s total land surface
• Per capita ecological footprint

  The average ecological footprint of an individual in a given country or area
• The average American consumes ~30 times the amount of resources an average Indian consumes and 100 times the amount consumed by the average person in the world’s poorest countries. We would need 5 planet Earths to indefinitely sustain the rate of resource use of the average American
• Ecological footprint > Biological capacity to replenish resources

  ECOLOGICAL DEFICIT
• Causes of Environmental Problems

  • Population Growth
  • Unsustainable Resource Use
  • Poverty
  • Avoidance of Full-cost Pricing
  • Increasing Isolation from Nature
• The IPAT Model

  Impact (I) = Population (P) × Affluence (A) × Technology (T)
• The Philippines (2008)


  • Per capita biological capacity = 0.6 gha/person
  • Per capita ecological footprint = 1.3 gha/person
  • Ecological deficit: -0.7 gha/person
• Globally, we are running up a huge ecological deficit. We would need 1.5 planet Earths to indefinitely sustain the world’s 2012 rate of total resource use
• To determine the environmental impact (I) of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from motor vehicles, multiply the population (P) by the number of cars per person (A) by the average annual CO2 emissions per year (T)
• Ecological footprint


  Amount of land and water needed to supply a population or an area with renewable resources and to absorb and recycle the wastes and pollution produced by such resource use
• About 900 million people live in extreme poverty, struggling to live on the equivalent of less than $1.25 a day. About one of every three, or 2.6 billion, of the world’s people struggles to live on less than $2.25 a day. Desperate for short-term survival, these individuals do not have the luxury of worrying about long-term environmental quality or sustainability. Collectively, they can degrade forests, topsoil, and grasslands, and deplete fisheries and wildlife populations in order to stay alive
• Collectively, individuals in survival situations can degrade forests, topsoil, and grasslands, and deplete fisheries and wildlife populations in order to stay alive
• Timber companies pay the cost of clear-cutting forests but do not pay for the resulting environmental degradation and loss of wildlife habitat
• Environmentally harmful subsidies encourage the depletion and degradation of natural capital
• The primary goal of a company is to maximize profits for its owners or stockholders, so it is not inclined to add these costs to its prices voluntarily
• Environmental Worldview

  • Human-centered
  • Life-centered
  • Earth-centered
• Many people are unaware of where their food, water, and other goods come from, as well as the amounts of wastes and pollutants they produce and how they affect the environment
• Biodiversity refers to the variety of genes, organisms, species
• Sustainability is the capacity of the earth’s natural systems and human cultural systems to survive, flourish and adapt to changing environmental conditions into the very long-term future
• Wellbeing describes what is ultimately good for a person: basic needs are met, individuals have a sense of purpose, they feel able to achieve important personal goals, and participate in society
• Artificial urban environments and the increasing use of electronic devices are isolating more and more people, especially children, from the natural world
• Individuals in survival situations do not have the luxury of worrying about long-term environmental quality or sustainability
• Dependence on solar energy: Solar energy warms the planet and provides energy that plants use to produce nutrients necessary for their own life processes and for most animals, including humans
• Components of Human Wellbeing

  • Enough material resources
  • Health
  • Freedom
  • Security
  • Good social relations
• More than half of the world’s people live in urban areas, and this shift from rural to urban living is continuing at a rapid pace