Environmental Essay
This lecture will help you understand:
- The meaning of the term environment
- The importance of natural resources
- That environmental science is interdisciplinary
- The scientific method and how science operates
- Some pressures facing the global environment
- Sustainability and sustainable development
Environment: the total of our surroundings
All the things around us with which we interact:
Living things
Animals, plants, forests, fungi, etc.
Non-living things
Continents, oceans, clouds, soil, rocks
Our built environment
Buildings, human-created living centers
Social relationships and institutions
Humans exist within the environment
- Humans exist within the environment and are part 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.
Humans and the world around us
- Humans depend completely on the environment for survival.
- Enriched and longer lives, increased wealth, health, mobility, leisure time
- But natural systems have been degraded
- Pollution, erosion, and species extinction
- Environmental changes threaten long-term health and survival.
- Environmental science is the study of:
- How the natural world works
- How the environment affects humans and vice versa
- With environmental problems come opportunities for solutions.
Natural resources: vital to human survival
Natural resources = substances and energy sources needed for survival
Natural resources: vital to human survival
- Renewable resources:
- Perpetually available: sunlight, wind, wave 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 6.7 billion humans
- Why so many humans?
- Agricultural revolution
- Stable food supplies
- Industrial revolution
- Urbanized society powered by fossil fuels
- Sanitation and medicines
- More food
Thomas Malthus and human population
Thomas Malthus
Population growth must be controlled, or it will outstrip food production.
Starvation, war, disease
Neo-Malthusians
Population growth has disastrous effects.
Paul and Anne Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (1968)
Agricultural advances have only postponed crises.
Resource consumption exerts impacts
Garret 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?
Governmental regulations?
The “ecological footprint”
- The environmental impact of a person or population
- Amount of biologically productive land + water
- For resources and to dispose/recycle waste
- Overshoot: humans have surpassed the Earth’s capacity to support us
We are using 30% more of the planet’s resources than are available 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. Can we act more wisely to conserve our resources?
Environmental science: how the natural world works
Environment impacts Humans
Its goal: developing solutions to environmental problems
- An interdisciplinary field
- Natural sciences: information about the natural world
- Environmental Science programs
- Social sciences: study human interactions and behavior
- Environmental Studies programs
Environmental science is not environmentalism
Environmental science
The pursuit of knowledge about the natural world
Scientists try to remain objective
Environmentalism
Environmental activism
A social movement dedicated to protecting the natural world
The nature of science
- Science:
- A systematic process for learning about the world and testing our understanding of it
- The accumulated body of knowledge that results from a dynamic process of observation, testing, and discovery
- Science is essential:
- To sort fact from fiction
- Develop solutions to the problems we face
Applications of science
Restoration of forest ecosystems altered by human suppression of fire
Policy decisions and
management practices
Energy-efficient methanol-powered fuel cell car from DaimlerChrysler
Technology
Scientists test ideas
- Scientists examine how the world works by observing, measuring, and testing
- Involves critical thinking and skepticism
- Observational (descriptive) science: scientists gather information about something not well known or that cannot be manipulated in experiments
- Astronomy, paleontology, taxonomy, molecular biology
- Hypothesis-driven science: research that proceeds in a structured manner using experiments to test hypotheses through the scientific method
The scientific method
A technique for testing ideas
A scientist makes an observation and asks questions of some phenomenon.
- The scientist formulates a hypothesis, a statement that attempts to answer the question.
- The hypothesis is used to generate predictions: specific statements that can be tested.
The results support or reject the hypothesis.
Testing predictions
- Experiment: an activity that tests the validity of a hypothesis
- Variables: conditions that can be manipulated and/or measured
- Independent variable: a condition that is manipulated
- Dependent variable: a variable that is affected by the manipulation of the independent variable
- Controlled experiment: one in which all variables are controlled
- Control: the unmanipulated point of comparison
- Treatment: the manipulated point of comparison
- Data: information that is generally quantitative (numerical)
Experiments test the validity of a hypothesis
Manipulative experiments yield the strongest evidence
- Provides the strongest type of evidence
- Reveal causal relationships: changes in independent variables cause changes in dependent variables
- But many things can’t be manipulated: long-term or large-scale questions (i.e., global climate change)
- Natural experiments show real-world complexity
- Only feasible approach for ecosystem or planet-scale
- Results are not so neat and clean, so answers aren’t simply black and white
The scientific process is part of a larger process
Peer-review: other scientists provide comments and criticism
Guards against faulty science
Conference presentations improve the quality of the science
Scientists interact with their colleagues
Grants and funding come from private or government agencies.
Can lead to conflict of interest if the data show the funding source in an unfavorable light
The scientist may be reluctant to publish or doctor the results.
The scientific community
Theories and paradigms
A consistently supported hypothesis becomes a theory, a widely accepted explanation of one or more cause-and-effect relationships
Has been extensively and rigorously tested, so confidence in a theory is extremely strong
Darwin’s theory of evolution, atomic theory, cell theory, big bang theory, plate tectonics, general relativity
Differs from the popular meaning of theory, which suggests a speculative idea without much substance
With enough data, a paradigm shift — a change in the dominant view — can occur.
Ethics
- Ethics: the study of good and bad, right and wrong
- The set of moral principles or values held by a person or society that tells us how we ought to behave
- People use criteria, standards, or rules when making judgments.
- Different cultures or worldviews lead to different values, which lead to different actions.
- Relativists: ethics vary with social context
- Universalists: right and wrong remains the same across cultures and situations
Ethical standards
- Ethical standards: criteria that help differentiate right from wrong
- Classical standard = virtue
- The golden rule: treat others as you want to be treated
- Utility: something right produces the most benefits for the most people
Environmental ethics
- Environmental ethics: application of ethical standards to relationships between human and non-human entities
- Hard to resolve; depends on the person’s ethical standards
- Depends on the person’s domain of ethical concern
Should we conserve resources for future generations?
Is it OK for some communities to be exposed to excess pollution?
Should we drive other species to extinction?
Is is OK to destroy a forest to create jobs for people?
Three ethical perspectives
- Anthropocentrism: only humans have rights
- Costs and benefits are measured only according to their impact on people
- Anything not providing benefit to people has no value
- Biocentrism: certain living things also have value
- All life has ethical standing
- Development is opposed if it destroys life, even if it creates jobs
- Ecocentrism: whole ecological systems have value
- Values the well-being of species, communities, or ecosystems
- Holistic perspective, stresses preserving connections
Expanding ethical consideration
The preservation ethic
Unspoiled nature should be protected for its own inherent value.
We should protect our environment in a pristine state, because it promotes human happiness and fulfillment.
John Muir (right, with President Roosevelt at Yosemite National Park) had an ecocentric viewpoint.
The conservation ethic
Use natural resources wisely for the greatest good for the most people
A utilitarian standard that calls for prudent, efficient, and sustainable resource extraction and use
Gifford Pinchot had an anthropocentric viewpoint.
The land ethic
Healthy ecological systems depend on protecting all parts.
Aldo Leopold believed that humans should view themselves and the land as members of the same community.
We are obligated to treat the land ethically.
The land ethic will help guide decision making.
Ecofeminism
In the 1960s and 1970s, feminist scholars saw parallels in how people treated nature and how men treated women.
Degradation, social oppression
Ecofeminism: a patriarchal (male-dominated) society is a root cause of both social and environmental problems
Female worldview: interrelationships and cooperation
Male worldview: hierarchies, competition, domination, and conquest
Environmental justice (EJ)
Involves the fair treatment of all people with respect to the environment, regardless of race, income, or ethnicity
The poor and minorities are exposed to more pollution, hazards, and environmental degradation.
Despite progress, significant inequalities remain.
The U.S. has still not ratified the Basel Convention, which prohibits the international export of waste, particularly to poor nations.
Conclusion
- Finding ways to live sustainably on Earth requires a solid ethical grounding and scientific understanding of our natural and social systems.
- Environmental science helps us understand our relationship with the environment and informs our attempts to solve and prevent problems.
- Identifying a problem is the first step in solving it.
- Solving environmental problems can move us toward health, longevity, peace, and prosperity.
- Environmental science can help find balanced solutions to environmental problems.
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