Environment

UNIT 1. The Global Environment: An Emerging World View 1. How Many Planets? A Survey of the Global Environment, The Economist, July 6, 2002 In a series of six interconnected short essays, the editors of The Economist present an up-to-date summary of global environmental issues, including sustainable development, the amount of information available on the environment, climate change, and the role of both technology and market forces in helping to shape the future of environmental systems. 2. Forget Nature. Even Eden Is Engineered, Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times, August 20, 2002 The world has become a place where people have altered the atmosphere and ecosystems to the point that those systems are no longer natural but "engineered" although not usually in a conscious manner. Choices made within the next few years will determine whether the new human-dominated global ecosystem will become a "noosphere," a planet controlled by reason, or an environmental wasteland. 3. Crimes of (a) Global Nature, Lisa Mastny and Hilary French, World Watch, September/October 2002 One of the more dramatic but least-known global economic phenomena is the illegal traffic in endangered species. Demands for rare pets, aphrodisiacs, or clothing ensure that this international environmental crime will continue to grow. But more than just a trade in biological commodities, this new set of illegal activities that violate international environmental accords also includes dumping of hazardous wastes and the manufacture and use of environmentally-destru 4. Toward a Sustainability Transition: The International Consensus, Thomas M. Parris, Environment, January/February 2003 The international consensus on sustainability is highly diffuse: people cannot agree on just what to sustain. While it may appear hopeless to reach agreement on priorities for maintaining Earth's life-support systems, a number of common themes are emerging that will likely make up a future set of agreements structured on the environmental media of air, water, land, biodiversity, and toxics. 5. Making the Global Local: Responding to Climate Change Concerns From the Ground Up, Robert W. Kates and Thomas J. Wilbanks, Environment, April 2003 While environmental change is a global phenomenon, the actions that produce change are regional and local. The central question for many communities worldwide has to do with what local responses are most useful in dealing with global problems. Two geographers argue that the surprising answers are found in environmental policies that are global in nature. It is no longer a dictum to "think globally but act locally." UNIT 2. Population, Policy, and Economy 6. Population and Consumption: What We Know, What We Need to Know, Robert W. Kates, Environment, April 2000 A general consensus exists among scientists that the roots of the current environmental crisis are to be found in a combination of population growth, affluence, and increasing technology. No such consensus exists, however, about the ultimate cause of either population growth or the desire to consume. Notwithstanding this lack of agreement, society needs to sublimate the desire to acquire things for the good of the global commons. 7. An Economy for the Earth, Lester R. Brown, The Humanist, May/June 2002 A shift in economic theory similar to the transition between the Ptolemaic geocentric universe and the Copernican model is necessary to save the Earth from continuing environmental degradation. Will we continue to see the environment as a subset of the economy, resulting in an economy that is disjunctive with the ecosystem, or begin to see the economy as a subset of the environment, allowing us to produce an environmentally sustainable economy? 8. Factory Farming in the Developing World, Danielle Nierenberg, World Watch, May/June 2003 The spread of factory farming the intensive raising of livestock and poultry in enclosed conditions has allowed meat to become a more important part of diets worldwide. It has also reduced local diversity of breeds and increased the dangers from animal diseases. As more developed countries place stricter environmental regulations on factory farming, this industrialized agriculture spreads to developing countries with weaker or no legislation. 9. Common Ground for Farmers and Forests, Joyce Gregory Wyels, Americas, April 2003 During the past few decades, Costa Rica has suffered from alarming rates of tropical deforestation. However, recent trends toward community-based sustainable agriculture have slowed the trend of forest destruction and created the notion that some of the oldest tropical agricultural systems, such as those practiced by the Maya, may still be the most ecologically sound, creating a common ground between farmers and the forests they occupy. 10. Where the Sidewalks End, Molly O'Meara Sheehan, World Watch, November/December 2002 One of the dominant trends of the global population in the opening years of the twenty-first century is that of urbanization, with an increasing percentage of the world's population living in urban areas. A by-product of this trend is that of increasing slums. The UN now estimates that one out of every seven people in the world lives in an urban slum with almost no public services: electricity, water, sewage, or police protection. UNIT 3. Energy: Present and Future Problems 11. Beyond Oil: The Future of Energy, Fred Guterl, Adam Piore, and William Underhill, Newsweek, April 15, 2002 Some geologists believe that world oil production will peak by 2005 2008, after which chronic shortages of petroleum will become a way of life. There are already alternative energy technologies in place that will be able to pick up part of the slack but by no means all of it. Renewable energy strategies such as solar and wind power are being utilized. Much of the hope for sustained energy availability rests on the development and implementation of inexpensive hydrogen fuel cells 12. Powder Keg, Keith Kloor, Audubon, December 2002 In the vast open spaces of the American West, energy development in the form of natural gas extraction competes with livestock raisers for the same land. Much of the problem lies in the curious nature of mineral rights in which the owners of the minerals under the land are often different from the owners of the land itself and mineral rights nearly always take precedence over surface rights. 13. Living Without Oil, Marianne Lavelle, U.S. News & World Report, February 17, 2003 With war in the Middle East now a reality, the quest for alternatives to petroleum fuels grows ever more important. Yet the United States still has a petroleum-based economy, and efforts to develop reasonable energy alternatives to oil seem no closer to a solution than they were a decade or more ago. 14. Renewable Energy: A Viable Choice, Antonia V. Herzog, Timothy E. Lipman, Jennifer L. Edwards, and Daniel M. Kammen, Environment, December 2001 The widespread use of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and biomass energy could not only reduce U.S. reliance on fossil fuels, thereby strengthening the economy, but could also significantly improve environmental quality in the world's most energy-hungry region. To facilitate the adoption of energy systems based on something other than oil or coal, the United States needs a strong national energy policy. 15. Fossil Fuels and Energy Independence, B. Samuel Tanenbaum, The World & I, May 2002 In order for the United States to achieve energy independence or self-sufficiency, the conservation strategies developed since the Arab oil embargo of the early 1970s need to be combined with the newest fuel-saving technologies. These new technologies, including hybrid gasoline-electric motor vehicles, could reduce overall demand for fossil fuels by as much as 50 percent within the next 20 years. UNIT 4. Biosphere: Endangered Species 16. What Is Nature Worth?, Edward O. Wilson, The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2002 Preserving our living natural environment is important for the maintenance of existing economic systems and the hope for future economic prosperity. It is impossible to calculate the importance of a healthy biosphere for either the Earth's material well-being or the health of the human race. But there are powerful moral arguments as well as economic ones that should compel us to take responsibility for the future of the natural world. 17. Where Wildlife Rules, Frank Graham Jr., Audubon, June 2003 The centennial of the National Wildlife Refuge System is testimony to a national commitment to conservation, made in the opening years of the twentieth century. Unlike other federal conservation systems such as national parks, however, the wildlife refuge system was not created to provide recreation for humans but to protect and preserve other species. If the NWRS is to survive, governmental commitments similar to those made 100 years ago seem necessary. 18. Invasive Species: Pathogens of Globalization, Christopher Bright, Foreign Policy, Fall 1999 A least expected and least visible consequence of economic globalization has been the spread of invasive species plants and animals that are hitch-hiking through the global trading network and finding niches where they can survive better than native species. This bioinvasion is difficult to control because it means altering the nature of the global trading economy that released invasive species in the first place. 19. On the Termination of Species, W. Wayt Gibbs, Scientific American, November 2001 Most conservation biologists agree that the world is undergoing a mass extinction of plant and animal species brought about by habitat degradation and loss resulting from human activities. Skeptics challenge the alarming reports from biologists by noting the lack of precision in the data on extinction, and politicians, for whom extinction is an abstract, largely ignore the issue. A major part of the problem is the difficulty in calculating the rates of species loss and in convincing decision makers that biological loss matters. UNIT 5. Resources: Land and Water 20. Where Have All the Farmers Gone?, Brian Halweil, World Watch, September/October 2000 The movement toward a global economy has meant a standardization in the management of much of the world's land. These new standardized land management practices have, in turn, led to a decrease in the number of farmers. 21. What's a River For?, Bruce Barcott, Mother Jones, May/June 2003 In the drought-stricken American West, a new round of water wars has erupted, with farmers, fishermen, ranchers, and urban dwellers all contesting for an increasingly scarce water resource. The first major river system to become a casualty in the conflict for water is the Klamath River of northern California and southern Oregon where federally mandated irrigation rights produced enough water withdrawal to cause a massive salmon dieback. 22. A Human Thirst, Don Hinrichsen, World Watch, January/February 2003 More than half of all the world's freshwater resources are now consumed by humans and their agricultural and industrial systems. As a consequence of increasing uses of water for irrigation, we are now seeing not just humans competing with humans farmers against factories for water. What is now emerging in some areas of the world is interspecies competition for a dwindling resource. 23. Our Perilous Dependence on Groundwater, Marc J. Defant, The World & I, April 2003 While the surface water we see often seems more important than the groundwater we don't, in fact most of the water that humans use for all purposes comes from groundwater reserves called aquifers. While these underground reservoirs have remained reliable sources for centuries, they are currently being impacted by two major problems: seepage of pollutants into them and rates of water withdrawal greater than the rate of replacement or recharge. 24. Oceans Are on the Critical List, Anne Platt McGinn, USA Today Magazine (Society for the Advancement of Education), January 2000 The world's oceans are both central to the global economy and to human and planetary health. Yet these critical areas are being threatened by overfishing, habitat degradation, pollution, introduction of alien species, and climate change. UNIT 6. The Hazards of Growth: Pollution and Climate Change 25. Three Pollutants and an Emission, Dallas Burtraw, Brookings Review, Spring 2002 Existing and potential legislation in the United States would attack the problem of air pollution by regulating against the emissions of three pollutants sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury from large stationary sources. But carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas culpable in global warming debates, remains an "emission" rather than a "pollutant" in definitional terms. A major debate is taking place as to whether the attempt should be made to regulate carbon dioxide emissions along with the pollutants. 26. The Quest for Clean Water, Joseph Orlins and Anne Wehrly, The World & I, May 2003 The United States is far ahead of much of the world in cleaning up its surface water supplies, due to the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. Although water pollution problems persist in the United States, those problems are less severe than in most of the world's less-developed countries. It has been estimated that nearly one-third of the world's people suffer from diseases associated with polluted water. 27. Solving Hazy Mysteries, Sid Perkins, Science News, December 7, 2003 Microscopic droplets of water, tiny ice crystals, and miniature salt and dust particles make up a component of the atmosphere called aerosols. These aerosols play an important role in Earth's weather and climate system, but their importance is being magnified by the human-produced particulate matter resulting largely from the burning of fossil fuels that combines with them and alters their atmospheric function. 28. Feeling the Heat: Life in the Greenhouse, Michael D. Lemonick, Time, April 9, 2001 No force short of nuclear war or an asteroid impact has as much capacity to change the Earth's natural ecosystems as does climate change. While most scientists agree that the current trend of global warming is "anthropogenic" or human-caused, political and economic issues get in the way of solutions and strategies for coping with and reducing the threat of an enhanced greenhouse effect.