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Influences of the Environmental Movement: Environmental Disasters
- 20th of April 1986, Chernobyl plant in Ukraine exploded. The incident raised questions about the general safety of nuclear power.
- 11th of March 2011, Fukushima power plant was hit by a tsunami wave. Following the incident, all 48 Japanese plants were shut down. The move away from nuclear power was replicated around the world.
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Influences:
Literature, Media, Technology, International Agreements, Environmental Disasters
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Literature
- Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring made a strong case against pesticides and DDT.
- James Lovelock’s Gaia proposed that the Earth was a living organism with homeostasis and that human activity was disturbing it.
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Media
- An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore 2006 made global warming accessible and well known.
- Greenpeace: Save the whales, anti nuclear testing protests
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Environmental Managers:
- Economic growth and resource exploitation with consensus among representative groups
- Taxes, fees, arrangements, compensation
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Technological Innovation
The Green Revolution between 1940 and 1960 were a time when developments in farming led to increased agricultural productivity and allowed for the population of the earth to persist.
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Technocentric short values:
- Pro-growth
- Research
- Optimism
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Ecocentric short values:
- Self-restraint
- No faith in tech
- Education
- biorights
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Increasing demands for water resources: technocentric
- Innovation and the ability to use untapped reserves
- Desalination
- Iceberg transport
- Wastewater purification
- Won’t change habits
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Increasing demands for water resources: ecocentric
- Encourage conservation
- Highlight misuse and overuse
- Change habits
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Intrinsic value:
Different EVSs view the different components of the biosphere differently based on cultural, aesthetic and bequest significance
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Ecosystems:
Is a community of independent organisms and the physical environment they inhabit.
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How to apply sustainability?
- Sustainable material cycles
- Social systems that contribute to a culture of sufficiency
- Ecological land usage
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Why are we unsustainable?
Overpopulation, financial motives, overgrazing, overculvitation
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A global perspective is important. Why?
- Many issues have global impact.ecosystems are affcted by global processes.
- Sometimes local solutions may also be fit (point-source pollution)
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Primary vs. Secondary pollution
- Primary is active on emission
- Secondary is arising from primary undergoing physical or chemical change
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Bioaccumulation
Is the build up of non biodegradable chemicals in the body
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Biomagnification
Is the process whereby the concentration of a chemical increases at each trophic level
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Pollution Management
- Changing human activity to prevent pollution will be the most effective
- Reduction of pollution through legislation or technology
- Clean up or restoration of damaged systems is costly and not effective (replantation)
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How to achieve sustainable development:
- Environment: reduce, reuse, recycle,
- Renewable energy sources
- Protected wildlife
- Society:
- Education and awareness
- Politial action
- Social stablity
- Economy:
- Reduced pollution
- Energy efficient
- Economics of sufficiency not greed
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Energy security
- Is the uninterrupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price\Long term: timely investments
- Short term: adaptation to changes in demand-supply
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What does the energy source choice of a country depend on?
- Availability
- Population size
- Tech
- Culture
- politics
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Energy Security Factors
- Political stability
- Protests
- Sudden rises in cost
- Exhaustion or disruption of supply
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What is climate
Describes how the atmosphere behaves over relatively long periods of time
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What is weather
Describes the conditions in the atmosphere for a short period of time
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Influences on climate:
- Ocean systems:
- Salinity and temperature
- Currents move and store heat
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Atmospheric circulatory systems
Pressure points
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Composition of the atmosphere:
- Trace gases: COz and CH4
- Nitorgen 78
- Oxygen 20
- Argon 1
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What is Adaptation
- Living with the consequences od climate change
- Protect cities from strom surges
- Protect crops form drought’coastal management’monitor and control tropical diseases
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What is Mitigation
- Reducing or stabilizing GHG emissions
- Cap and trade systems, carbon tax, energy efficient products, geoengineering CCS, UN-REDD fertilizing oceans, but past emissions will continue to have an effect for decades to come
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Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty which extends the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits State Parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (a) global warming is occurring and (b) it is extremely likely that human-made CO2
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Non-renewable resources will be more expensive in the future. Why?
Taxes, scarcity, extraction will be hard
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Cornucopian:
Belief that people can always find a way out of any difficulties.
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Stewardship
Every person has the responsibility to look after the planet.
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COP
They serve as the formal meeting of the UNFCCC Parties(Conference of the Parties, COP) to assess progress in dealing with climate change, and beginning in the mid-1990s, to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol to establish legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
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