Chapter 1, section 1.2 Chapter Review
How are humans living unsustainably?
People continually waste, deplete, and degrade much of the earth's life-sustaining natural capital.
Define and give three examples of environmental degradation (natural capital degradation).
1. Air pollution 2. Water pollution 3. Shrinking forests
What are the two key concepts for this section?
1. Humans dominate the earth with the power to sustain, add to, or degrade the natural capital that supports all life and human economies. 2. As our ecological footprints grow, we deplete and degrade more of the earth's natural capital that sustains us.
About what percentage of the earth's natural or ecosystem services have been degraded by human activities?
60%
What is an ecological footprint?
A rough measure of the total harmful environmental impacts of individuals, cities, and countries on Earth's natural resources, ecosystem services, and life-support system.
What is biocapacity, or biological capacity, and what is an ecological deficit?
Biocapacity: the ability of an area's ecosystems to regenerate the renewable resources used by a population, city, region, country, or the world in a given time period and to absorb the resulting wastes and pollution. Ecological deficit: If the total ecological footprint in a defined area (such as a city, country, or the world) is larger than its biocapacity, the area is said to have an ecological deficit. Such a deficit occurs when people are living unsustainably by depleting natural capital instead of living off the renewable resources and ecosystem services provided by such capital.
Explain how three major cultural changes taking place over the last 10,000 years have increased our overall environmental impact.
Each of these three cultural changes gave us more energy and new technologies with which to alter and control more of the planet's resources to meet our basic needs and increasing wants. They also allowed expansion of the human population, mostly because of larger food supplies and longer life spans. In addition, these cultural changes resulted in greater resource use, pollution, and environmental degradation and expanding ecological footprints.
What are the three major cultural changes that took place over the last 10,000 years that have increased our overall environmental impact?
First was the agricultural revolution. It began around 10,000 years ago when humans learned how to grow and breed plants and animals for food, clothing, and other purposes and began living in villages instead of frequently moving to find food. They had a more reliable source of food, lived longer, and produced more children who survived to adulthood. Second was the industrial-medical revolution, beginning about 300 years ago when people invented machines for the large-scale production of goods in factories. Many people moved from rural villages to cities to work in the factories. This shift involved learning how to get energy from fossil fuels (such as coal and oil) and how to grow large quantities of food. It also included medical advances that allowed a growing number of people to have longer and healthier lives. Third, about 50 years ago, the information-globalization revolution began when we developed new technologies for gaining rapid access to all kinds of information and resources on a global scale.
Use the ecological footprint concept to explain how we are living unsustainably.
In 2016, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Global Footprint Network estimate that we would need the equivalent of 1.6 planet Earths to sustain the world's average 2014 rate of renewable resource use per person far into the future. They estimated that by 2030, we would need the equivalent of two planet Earths and, by 2050, three planet Earths. The current and projected future overdraft of the earth's natural resources and ecosystem services and the resulting environmental degradation will be passed on to future generations.
What is a per capita ecological footprint?
The average ecological footprint of an individual in a given population or defined area
What is the tragedy of the commons? What are two ways to deal with this effect?
The tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action. 1. To use a shared or open-access renewable resource at a rate well below its estimated sustainable yield. 2. To convert shared renewable resources to private ownership.
What is the IPAT model for estimating our environmental impact?
This IPAT model shows that the environmental impact (I) of human activities is the product three factors: population size (P), affluence (A) or resource consumption per person, and the beneficial and harmful environmental effects of technologies (T). The equation: Impact (I) = Population (P) × Affluence (A) × Technology (T) The T factor can be either harmful or beneficial.
What would a sustainability revolution involve?
This would involve avoiding degradation and depletion of the natural capital that supports all life and our economies and restoring natural capital that we have degraded. Making this shift would involve learning how nature has sustained life for over 3.8 billion years and using these lessons from nature to shrink our ecological footprints and increase our beneficial environmental impacts.
How have humans improved the quality of life for many people?
We have learned how to use wood, fossil fuels, the sun, wind, flowing water, the nuclei of certain atoms, and the earth's heat (geothermal energy) to supply us with enormous amounts of energy. We have invented computers to extend our brainpower, robots to perform repetitive tasks with great precision, and electronic networks to enable instantaneous global communication.
