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What are some ways we could reduce our ecological footprint?, define ecological fotprint...
- Ecological footprint: amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply a population with the renewable resources it uses and to absorb or dispose of the wastes from such resource use. It measures the average environmental impact of populations in different countries and areas.
- Ways to reduce:
- Recycle (less area used because of reduced waste disposal)
- Reduce use of heating/cooling units
- Agriculture reform – change ways in means of reducing footprint
- Transportation reform – reduce it and change it so that it is reducing size of footprint
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Recycling is...
- collecting and reprocessing a resource so that it can be made into new products (ie: aluminum cans)
- Recycling non-renewable metallic resources takes much less energy, water, and other resources and
- produces much less pollution and environmental degradation than exploiting virgin metallic resources
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Explaine Reusing
- using a product over and over again in the same form (ie: glass beverage bottles)
- Reusing such resources takes even less energy and other resources and produces less pollution and environment degradation than recycling
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How do recycling and reusing differ, and what are the advantages of these processes as we move to become more sustainable
Recycling non-renewable metallic resources takes much less energy, water, and other resources and produces much less pollution and environmental degradation than exploiting virgin metallic resources
- Reusing such resources takes even less energy and other resources and produces less pollution and
- environment degradation than recycling
recycling and reuse are important ways to reduce the exponential growth in resource use
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EXTREMELY IMPORTANT – think about the changes in world economies, global resources, and global conflict in 2030 (most of you should be in your mid-40s) simply due to population growth in China and India. If resources are not available, what will happen?
There will be increased competition for resources between the top consumers in the worldThere will need to be drastic changes in regards to consumption of resources and production of pollution because with such increases in populations, we can’t follow the current trend we’ve fallen into
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Talk about Pollution
- results when natural systems cannot process the wastes generated by living organisms, either because they are highly toxic (e.g., mercury), or are produced in such quantities (e.g., manure from a feedlot) that they can not be assimilated in natural systems. Pollutants can be nuisances,
- they can affect the health of living organisms, and perhaps most importantly, can damage the life support systems across the planet.
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Point source pollution is...
single identifiable source that discharges pollutants into the environment
- Smokestack of a power plant or industrial plant
- Drainage pipe of a meatpacking plant
- Chimney of a house
- Exhaust pipe of a car
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Non-point source pollution is...
large or dispersed land areas such as crop fields, streets and lawns that discharge pollutants into the environment over a large area
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Input control
(pollution prevention) device or process that prevents a potential pollutant from forming or entering the environment or sharply reduces the amount entering the environment
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Output control is...
: (pollution cleanup) device or process that removes or reduces the level of a pollutant after it has been produced or has entered the environment.
- Car emission control devices
- Sewage treatment plants
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Can you think of some good examples of input control that you could employ in your daily activities?
Walk or ride bike instead of drive
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How does poverty affect our natural resource base, and what are the four leading, preventable causes of mortality for the world’s poor?
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Poverty: inability to meet basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter
- Effects on natural resource base:
- Desperate for land to grow enough food, many of the world’s poor people deplete and degrade forests, soil, grasslands, and wildlife for short-term survival
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4 leading preventable causes of mortality for the world’s poor...
- Malnutrition
: lack of protein and other nutrients needed for good health- Increased susceptibility to normally nonfatal infectious diseases, such as diarrhea and measles, caused by their weakened condition from malnutrition
- Lack of access to clean drinking water
- Severe respiratory disease and premature death from inhaling indoor air pollutants produced by burning wood or coal in open fires or poorly vented stoves for heating and cooking
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What is affluenza, is it good, or bad, or both?
Affluenza: unsustainable addiction to overconsumption and materialism exhibited in the lifestyles or affluent consumers in the united states and other developed countries
- Bad because using the resources to make the materials sold produces large amounts of pollution, environmental degradation, and wastes.
- Globalization and global advertising are now spreading the affluenza virus throughout much of the world
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how does affluenza relate to Toynbee’s law of progressive simplification?
Related to Toynbee’s law of progressive simplification because he says the way civilizations survive is through the opposite of affluenza. True growth occurs as civilizations transfer an increasing proportion of energy and attention from the material side of life to the nonmaterial side and thereby develop their culture, capacity for compassion, sense of community, and strength of democracy.
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The simplified environmental impact model I = P x A x T shows that both developed and developing countries can have significant
negative resource impacts, but for very different reasons, expound on this
- Environmental impact of population (I) = population (P) x consumption per person (affluence, A)
- x technological impact per unit of consumption (T)
- Developing countries: population size and resulting degradation of renewable resources tend to be the key factors in total environmental impact (resource use per person is low)
- Developed countries: high rates of resource use per person (affluenza) and the resulting high levels of pollution and environmental degradation per person usually are the key factors determining overall environmental impact and a country’s global ecological footprint and its ecological footprint per person
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Environmental worldviews is...
set of assumptions and beliefs about how people think the world works, what they think their role in the world should be, and what they believe is right and wrong environmental behavior
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Planetary management worldviews
: we are separate from nature, nature exists mainly to meet our needs and increasing wants, and we can use our ingenuity and technology to manage the earth’s life-support systems, mostly for our benefit. It assumes that economic growth is essentially unlimited
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Stewardship is...
: we can manage the earth for our benefit but we have an ethical responsibility to be caring and responsible managers, or stewards, of the earth. It calls for encouraging environmentally beneficial forms of economic growth and discouraging environmentally harmful forms
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Environmental wisdom is...
we are part of and totally dependent on nature and nature exists for all species, not for us, and we should encourage earth-sustaining forms of economic growth and development and discourage earth-degrading forms. Our success depends on learning how the earth sustains itself and integrating such environmental wisdom into the ways we think and act
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Who is Aldo Leopold (p. 23), why is he important, and what are his views on stewardship of the planet?
- Aldo Leopold: the role of the human species should be to protect nature, not conquer it
- Stewardship: take care of the land
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Nature functions sustainably because of four simple principles are:
1. Solar energy powers Earth’s ecosystems, providing heat and light for photosynthesis.
2. Maintenance of Earth’s biodiversity has allowed organisms and ecosystems to adapt to change.
3. All populations are limited by resources or by other populations.
4. Almost everything in nature is recycled, with virtually no waste.
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The development of ____ _____ will be critical to our attempts to become a more sustainable society. This will involve considerable discussion (not arguments) and conflict resolution if we are to change the way people live and preserve what’s left of our natural resource heritage. Committed individuals must make this happen at local, regional, state, national, and international scales across the planet. We have a long way to go, and at the current rate of resource loss and degradation, not much time to change.
social capital
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