Environment and Society spring 2017 Notes
Environment: the total of our surroundings
- All the things around us with which we interact:
- Living things (biotic factors): Animals, plants, forests, fungi, etc.
- Non-living things (abiotic factors): continents, oceans, clouds, soil, rocks
- Our built environment: buildings, human created living centers
- Social relationships and institutional
- Humans exist within the environment
- Humans exist within the environment and we are a apart of nature
- Our survival depends on a healthy, functioning planet
- The fundamental insight of environmental science is that we are part of the natural
world
- Our interactions with its other parts matter a great deal. Generally, what does Scripture
say our role is in terms of the environment?
- Humans depend completely on the environment for survival
- Enriched and longer lives, increases wealth, health, mobility, leisure time
- But natural systems have been degraded
o Pollution, erosion, and species extinction
o Environmental changes threaten long term health and survival
- Environmental science is the study of:
o How the natural world works
o How the environment affects humans and vice versa
, - Natural resources: substances and energy sources needed for survival
- Renewable resources: perpetually available: sunlight, wind, waves, energy
- Renew themselves over short periods of time: timber, water, soil
- These can be destroyed
- Non-renewable resources can be depleted: oil, coal, minerals
Global human population growth
- More than 7.3 billion humans
- Why so many humans? Agricultural revolution, stable food supplies, industrial
revolution, urbanized society powered by fossil fuels, sanitation and medicine
Thomas Matthews and Human Population
- Population growth must be controlled, or it will outstrip food production
- Starvation, war, disease
- Neo-Malthusians
- Population growth has disastrous effects
- Paul and Anne Erlich, The Population Bomb (1968)
- Agricultural advances have only postponed crises
Resource consumption exerts impacts
- Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the commons” (1968)
- Unregulated exploitation causes resource depletion
- Grazing lands, forests, air, water
- No one has the incentive to care for a resource
- Everyone takes what he or she can until the resource is depleted
, - Solution? Private ownership? Voluntary organization to enforce responsible use?
- Government regulations?
The Ecological Footprint
- The environmental impact of a person or population
- Amount of biologically productive land and water
- For resources and to dispose/recycle waste
- Overshoot: humans have surpassed the Earth’s capacity to support us. Is this true?
- We are using more of the planet’s resources than are available to us on a sustainable
basis
Environmental science
- Can help us avoid mistakes made by past civilizations
- Human survival depends on how we interact with our environment
- Our impacts are now global
- Many great civilizations have fallen after depleting their resources
- The lesson of Easter Island: people annihilated their culture by destroying their
environment
Environmental science: How the natural world works
- Environment Impacts Humans
- Its goal: developing solutions to environmental problems
- An interdisciplinary field
- Natural sciences: info about the natural world
- Environmental science programs
Environment: the total of our surroundings
- All the things around us with which we interact:
- Living things (biotic factors): Animals, plants, forests, fungi, etc.
- Non-living things (abiotic factors): continents, oceans, clouds, soil, rocks
- Our built environment: buildings, human created living centers
- Social relationships and institutional
- Humans exist within the environment
- Humans exist within the environment and we are a apart of nature
- Our survival depends on a healthy, functioning planet
- The fundamental insight of environmental science is that we are part of the natural
world
- Our interactions with its other parts matter a great deal. Generally, what does Scripture
say our role is in terms of the environment?
- Humans depend completely on the environment for survival
- Enriched and longer lives, increases wealth, health, mobility, leisure time
- But natural systems have been degraded
o Pollution, erosion, and species extinction
o Environmental changes threaten long term health and survival
- Environmental science is the study of:
o How the natural world works
o How the environment affects humans and vice versa
, - Natural resources: substances and energy sources needed for survival
- Renewable resources: perpetually available: sunlight, wind, waves, energy
- Renew themselves over short periods of time: timber, water, soil
- These can be destroyed
- Non-renewable resources can be depleted: oil, coal, minerals
Global human population growth
- More than 7.3 billion humans
- Why so many humans? Agricultural revolution, stable food supplies, industrial
revolution, urbanized society powered by fossil fuels, sanitation and medicine
Thomas Matthews and Human Population
- Population growth must be controlled, or it will outstrip food production
- Starvation, war, disease
- Neo-Malthusians
- Population growth has disastrous effects
- Paul and Anne Erlich, The Population Bomb (1968)
- Agricultural advances have only postponed crises
Resource consumption exerts impacts
- Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the commons” (1968)
- Unregulated exploitation causes resource depletion
- Grazing lands, forests, air, water
- No one has the incentive to care for a resource
- Everyone takes what he or she can until the resource is depleted
, - Solution? Private ownership? Voluntary organization to enforce responsible use?
- Government regulations?
The Ecological Footprint
- The environmental impact of a person or population
- Amount of biologically productive land and water
- For resources and to dispose/recycle waste
- Overshoot: humans have surpassed the Earth’s capacity to support us. Is this true?
- We are using more of the planet’s resources than are available to us on a sustainable
basis
Environmental science
- Can help us avoid mistakes made by past civilizations
- Human survival depends on how we interact with our environment
- Our impacts are now global
- Many great civilizations have fallen after depleting their resources
- The lesson of Easter Island: people annihilated their culture by destroying their
environment
Environmental science: How the natural world works
- Environment Impacts Humans
- Its goal: developing solutions to environmental problems
- An interdisciplinary field
- Natural sciences: info about the natural world
- Environmental science programs
