CHAPTER 1

Cards (50)

  • Sustainability
    Capacity of the earth's natural systems to survive, flourish, or adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinitely
  • Biomimicry
    Learning from the earth and living things to live more sustainably
  • Biomimicry example

    • Inventing a tape that uses same gripping manner as geckos' feet
  • Environment
    All living and nonliving things with which we interact
  • Environmental science
    Studies connections in nature, how the earth works and has survived and thrived, how humans interact with the environment, and how we can live more sustainably
  • Ecology
    Branch of biology focusing on interaction of living things with their environment
  • Species
    Each living thing belongs to a species
  • Ecosystem
    Set of organisms interacting in a defined area
  • Environmentalism (environmental activism)
    Social movement dedicated to protecting the earth's life and resources, practiced in realms of politics and ethics
  • Findings of environmental science can provide evidence for environmentalism
  • Three scientific principles of sustainability
    • Dependence on solar energy
    • Biodiversity
    • Chemical (nutrient) cycling
  • Natural capital
    Keeps humans and other species alive and supports economies
  • Natural resources
    • Inexhaustible (e.g. solar energy)
    • Renewable (e.g. forests, grasslands, topsoil, fishes, air, freshwater)
    • Nonrenewable (e.g. oil, coal, natural gas, copper, salt, sand)
  • Maximum sustainable yield
    Highest rate of renewable resource use without reducing its supply
  • Human activities can degrade natural capital by using renewable resources too fast and overloading air, water, and soil with wastes and pollutants
  • Humans must provide solutions to environmental problems
  • Conflicts between environmental protection efforts and economic effects can be resolved with trade-offs
  • Each individual plays a role in sustainability
  • Full-cost pricing
    Include harmful environmental and health costs in market prices of goods and services
  • Win-win solutions
    Look for solutions that will benefit people and the environment
  • Responsibility to future generations

    Leave planet's life-support system in same or better condition than it is now
  • Economic development and resource use
    • More-developed countries (17% of world population, use 70% of world's natural resources)
    • Less-developed countries (83% of world population, use 30% of world's natural resources)
  • Many people have a better quality of life due to human development of useful materials and products, increasing life spans, reducing poverty, improving food supply, and reducing exposure to toxic chemicals
  • Humans have protected some endangered species and ecosystems, and taken steps to restore cleared lands
  • Human activities directly affect 83% of earth's land surface through urban development, crop and energy production, mining, timber cutting, and more
  • Species are becoming extinct at least 100 times faster than in prehuman times
  • Open-access resources
    Atmosphere, ocean and its fishes, grasslands, forests, streams, and aquifers
  • Tragedy of the commons
    Cumulative effect of many people exploiting a shared resource can degrade, exhaust, or ruin it
  • Solution to tragedy of the commons
    Use resource at a rate well below its sustainable yield, through mutual agreement or access regulation
  • Ecological footprint
    Amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply a population with renewable resources and recycle wastes
  • Biocapacity
    The ability of an area's ecosystems to regenerate renewable resources
  • Ecological deficit
    Footprint larger than biological capacity for replenishment
  • IPAT
    Simple environmental impact model: I = P x A x T (I = Impact, P = Population, A = Affluence, T = Technology)
  • Ecological capacity
    The ability of an area's ecosystems to regenerate renewable resources
  • IPAT
    Simple environmental impact model: I = P x A x T, where I = Environmental impact, P = Population size, A = Affluence or resource consumption, T = Technology
  • IPAT model

    Discuss how the next several decades will progress for developed and developing countries, with one partner as an optimist and the other as a pessimist
  • Major cultural events
    • Agricultural revolution
    • Industrial–medical revolution
    • Information–globalization revolution
    • Sustainability revolution
  • Major environmental problems
    • Climate change
    • Loss of species and habitats
    • Ocean acidification
    • Diminishing access to freshwater
    • Resource waste
    • Hazardous pollutants
  • Basic causes of environmental problems
    • Population growth
    • Unsustainable resource use
    • Omission of harmful environmental costs in market pricing
    • Increasing isolation from nature
    • Competing environmental worldviews
  • Human population has grown exponentially, currently at 7.6 billion and could reach 9.9 billion by 2050