Chapter 1: the environment and sustainability
Key questions:
- 1.1 What are some key principles of sustainability?
- 1.2 How are our ecological footprints affecting the earth?
- 1.3 What causes environmental problems and why do they persist?
- 1.4 What is an environmentally sustainable society?
Sustainability id the capacity of the earth’s natural systems that support life and human social systems to
survive or adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinitly.
1.1
Environmental science: interdisciplinary study of how the earth nature works and had survived and thrived,
how humans interact with the environment and how we can live more sustainably.
Ecosystem: set of organisms within a defined area of land or volume of water that interact with one another
and with their environment of nonliving matter and energy.
3 scientific principles of sustainability
- dependence on solar energy: sun warms the planet and provides energy that plants use to produce
nutrients that plants and animals need to survive.
- Biodiversity: variety of genes, species, ecosystems and ecosystem processes. Interaction keep
populations from growing too large.
- Chemical cycling: the circulation of chemical of nutrient needed to sustain life from the environment
through various organisms back to the environment.
o Waste + useful resources
Natural capital= Natural recourses ecosystem services
- Natural resources: materials and energy provided by nature that are essential or useful to humans.
o Three categories
Inexhaustible. (solar energy)
Renewable (woods)
Nonrenewable (fixed amount, fossil fuel energy)
- Ecosystem services: natural services provided by healthy ecosystems that support life and human
economies at no monetary costs.
o Forests purify air/ reduce soil erosion, regulate climate ect.
o Service: nutrient cycling:
Human activity can degrade natural capital.
Three additional principles of sustainability
- Full cost pricing
- Win-win solution
- Responsibility to future generation
1.2
Tragedy of the commons: no one benefits in the end.: one way to deal with this problem is to use this open
resource at a rate well below its sustainability field. This way it can renew itself.
Other way: convert shared resources into private ownership. Doesn’t work for atmosphere/oceans etc .
Ecological footprint: the amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply a population in an
area with renewable resources and to absorb and recycle the wastes and pollution such resource use
produces.
related to the earths biocapacity: ability to regenerate resources after being used.
IPAT model: Impact= population x affluence x technology
3 cultural changes:
, 1. Agricultural revolution
2. Industrial-medical revolution
3. Information-globalization revolution
4. Sustainability revolution????
1.3
basic causes of environmental problems
- Population growth
o exponential population growth
- Wasteful and unsustainable resource use
o More consumption due to affluence, however wealth can also provide solutions.
- Poverty
o Sustainability is not on their agenda
- Omissions of the harmful environmental and health costs of goods and services in market prices
o Prices don’t include harmful environmental and health costs
- Increasing isolation from nature
o Nature-deficit disorder.
- Competing environmental worldviews
o People differ over the nature and seriousness of the problems and how to solve them.
o 3 worldviews
1. Human-centered:
Natural word to support human needs. Humans are separate from and in
charge of nature
2. Life centered
All species have value in fulfilling their particular role within the biosphere.
3. Earth centered.
Humans are part of and dependent on nature. We need to learn lessons
from nature on how it has sustained itself.
1.4
Environmentally sustainable society protects its natural capital and lives on its income. Meet the current and
future needs.
sustainable living by:
- Learning from nature
- Protecting natural capital
- Not wasting resources
- Recycling and reusing nonrenewable resources
- Using renewable resources no faster than nature can replenish them
- Incorporating the harmful health and environmental impacts of producing and using goods and
services in their market prices
- Preventing future ecological damage and repairing past damage
- Cooperating with one another to find win-win solutions to the environmental problems we face
- accepting the ethical responsibility to pass the earth the sustains us on to future generations in a
condition as good or better than what we inherited
Chapter 2 Science, Matter, Energy, and Systems
2.1 What do scientists do?
- Scientists collect evidence to learn how nature works
o Science: field of study to discover how nature works and describe nature
o Patterns can be observed through observations, measurement and experiments.
o Scientific method:
Identify problem
, Literature search
Ask question
Experiment & collect data
Analyze data
Propose hypothesis
Use hypothesis
Experiment
Accept/revise hypothesis
scientific theory
o Study nature by making a model: used for complex systems.
- Scientist are curious and skeptical and demand evidence
o Peer reviewing: publishing results for other researchers to evaluate
- Critical thinking and creativity are important in science
o Thinking critically involves 3 steps
1. Be skeptical about everything you read or hear
2. Evaluate evidence and hypotheses using inputs and opinions from a variety of
reliable sources
3. identify and evaluate your personal assumptions, biases, and beliefs and
distinguish between facts and opinions before coming to a conclusion
- Scientific theories and laws: the most important and certain results of science
- science can be reliable, unreliable and tentative
o Reliable: consist of data, hypothesis, models, theories and laws accepted by most scientist in
that field
o Unreliable: without peer-reviews or are discarded
o Tentative: without adequate testing and peer reviews
- Science has limitations
o There is always uncertainty in; measurements, observation, models etc.
o Scientists are human and biased.
o Systems in the natural world involve a huge number in complex interactions.
o Statistics for an estimation of certain number and results.
2.2 What is matter and what happens when it undergoes change?
- Matter consists of elements and compounds
o Matter is anything that has mass and takes up space
Solid, liquid or gas
o Element: type of matter with unique set of properties and cannot be broken down into
simpler substances.
o Most matter consist of compounds; combinations of 2 or more elements.
- Elements and compounds are made of atoms, molecules and Ions
o Atom: basic building block of matter; smallest unit of matter
o Atomic theory: all elements are made up of atoms.
o Atoms are made up of:
Neutrons
Protons (positive)
Electrons (negative)
o Nucleus: center of atom
o Atomic number: number of protons in the nucleus of atom.
o Mass number: total number of neutrons and protons in nucleus.
o Molecule: second building block of matter.
o Ion: third building block of matter
Used to measure acidity: Ph
- Organic compounds are the chemicals of life
o Organic compounds: contain at least 2 carbon atoms with atoms of one or more other
elements.
o Complex carbohydrates consist of 2+ monomers/simple sugars.
Key questions:
- 1.1 What are some key principles of sustainability?
- 1.2 How are our ecological footprints affecting the earth?
- 1.3 What causes environmental problems and why do they persist?
- 1.4 What is an environmentally sustainable society?
Sustainability id the capacity of the earth’s natural systems that support life and human social systems to
survive or adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinitly.
1.1
Environmental science: interdisciplinary study of how the earth nature works and had survived and thrived,
how humans interact with the environment and how we can live more sustainably.
Ecosystem: set of organisms within a defined area of land or volume of water that interact with one another
and with their environment of nonliving matter and energy.
3 scientific principles of sustainability
- dependence on solar energy: sun warms the planet and provides energy that plants use to produce
nutrients that plants and animals need to survive.
- Biodiversity: variety of genes, species, ecosystems and ecosystem processes. Interaction keep
populations from growing too large.
- Chemical cycling: the circulation of chemical of nutrient needed to sustain life from the environment
through various organisms back to the environment.
o Waste + useful resources
Natural capital= Natural recourses ecosystem services
- Natural resources: materials and energy provided by nature that are essential or useful to humans.
o Three categories
Inexhaustible. (solar energy)
Renewable (woods)
Nonrenewable (fixed amount, fossil fuel energy)
- Ecosystem services: natural services provided by healthy ecosystems that support life and human
economies at no monetary costs.
o Forests purify air/ reduce soil erosion, regulate climate ect.
o Service: nutrient cycling:
Human activity can degrade natural capital.
Three additional principles of sustainability
- Full cost pricing
- Win-win solution
- Responsibility to future generation
1.2
Tragedy of the commons: no one benefits in the end.: one way to deal with this problem is to use this open
resource at a rate well below its sustainability field. This way it can renew itself.
Other way: convert shared resources into private ownership. Doesn’t work for atmosphere/oceans etc .
Ecological footprint: the amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply a population in an
area with renewable resources and to absorb and recycle the wastes and pollution such resource use
produces.
related to the earths biocapacity: ability to regenerate resources after being used.
IPAT model: Impact= population x affluence x technology
3 cultural changes:
, 1. Agricultural revolution
2. Industrial-medical revolution
3. Information-globalization revolution
4. Sustainability revolution????
1.3
basic causes of environmental problems
- Population growth
o exponential population growth
- Wasteful and unsustainable resource use
o More consumption due to affluence, however wealth can also provide solutions.
- Poverty
o Sustainability is not on their agenda
- Omissions of the harmful environmental and health costs of goods and services in market prices
o Prices don’t include harmful environmental and health costs
- Increasing isolation from nature
o Nature-deficit disorder.
- Competing environmental worldviews
o People differ over the nature and seriousness of the problems and how to solve them.
o 3 worldviews
1. Human-centered:
Natural word to support human needs. Humans are separate from and in
charge of nature
2. Life centered
All species have value in fulfilling their particular role within the biosphere.
3. Earth centered.
Humans are part of and dependent on nature. We need to learn lessons
from nature on how it has sustained itself.
1.4
Environmentally sustainable society protects its natural capital and lives on its income. Meet the current and
future needs.
sustainable living by:
- Learning from nature
- Protecting natural capital
- Not wasting resources
- Recycling and reusing nonrenewable resources
- Using renewable resources no faster than nature can replenish them
- Incorporating the harmful health and environmental impacts of producing and using goods and
services in their market prices
- Preventing future ecological damage and repairing past damage
- Cooperating with one another to find win-win solutions to the environmental problems we face
- accepting the ethical responsibility to pass the earth the sustains us on to future generations in a
condition as good or better than what we inherited
Chapter 2 Science, Matter, Energy, and Systems
2.1 What do scientists do?
- Scientists collect evidence to learn how nature works
o Science: field of study to discover how nature works and describe nature
o Patterns can be observed through observations, measurement and experiments.
o Scientific method:
Identify problem
, Literature search
Ask question
Experiment & collect data
Analyze data
Propose hypothesis
Use hypothesis
Experiment
Accept/revise hypothesis
scientific theory
o Study nature by making a model: used for complex systems.
- Scientist are curious and skeptical and demand evidence
o Peer reviewing: publishing results for other researchers to evaluate
- Critical thinking and creativity are important in science
o Thinking critically involves 3 steps
1. Be skeptical about everything you read or hear
2. Evaluate evidence and hypotheses using inputs and opinions from a variety of
reliable sources
3. identify and evaluate your personal assumptions, biases, and beliefs and
distinguish between facts and opinions before coming to a conclusion
- Scientific theories and laws: the most important and certain results of science
- science can be reliable, unreliable and tentative
o Reliable: consist of data, hypothesis, models, theories and laws accepted by most scientist in
that field
o Unreliable: without peer-reviews or are discarded
o Tentative: without adequate testing and peer reviews
- Science has limitations
o There is always uncertainty in; measurements, observation, models etc.
o Scientists are human and biased.
o Systems in the natural world involve a huge number in complex interactions.
o Statistics for an estimation of certain number and results.
2.2 What is matter and what happens when it undergoes change?
- Matter consists of elements and compounds
o Matter is anything that has mass and takes up space
Solid, liquid or gas
o Element: type of matter with unique set of properties and cannot be broken down into
simpler substances.
o Most matter consist of compounds; combinations of 2 or more elements.
- Elements and compounds are made of atoms, molecules and Ions
o Atom: basic building block of matter; smallest unit of matter
o Atomic theory: all elements are made up of atoms.
o Atoms are made up of:
Neutrons
Protons (positive)
Electrons (negative)
o Nucleus: center of atom
o Atomic number: number of protons in the nucleus of atom.
o Mass number: total number of neutrons and protons in nucleus.
o Molecule: second building block of matter.
o Ion: third building block of matter
Used to measure acidity: Ph
- Organic compounds are the chemicals of life
o Organic compounds: contain at least 2 carbon atoms with atoms of one or more other
elements.
o Complex carbohydrates consist of 2+ monomers/simple sugars.
