ENVR 201 Flashcards
Explain the historical process of the global food status.
- increase of irrigated areas.
- dramatic increase of crop yields due to chemical fertilizers (fossil fuel dependent).
- pesticides prevent crop loss.
- plant genetics and breeding —> dwarf cereals ( reduce the height of plants to increase growth, changing the structural integrity of plants).
- global spread of crops, wheat, corn, potato, soya.
- 2 green revolutions contribute to high yield of plants.
What are 2 factors to food insecurity?
Population growth and changing diets.
What are the food policy imperatives needed to improve global food security?
- food calorie production will need to increase by 60% by 2050 to maintain per capital food ability levels - keep pace with changing diets and rapid population growth = big challenge.
- Increase food production while ensuring food security and livelihoods. Food security does not mean increased production. LICs depend on agriculture jobs.
- preserving ecosystems where agriculture is viable to grow food.
- Minimizing environmental impacts (biodiversity, GHGs =climate change, water loss, etc.).
Explain the barrier in achieving food policy imperatives in terms of crop land capita.
We need lots of land available for a mass production of cereals and crop land. Cereals feed humans and animals.
The total arable and permanent crop land is increasing, but at a declining rate. World arable and permanent crop land per capita is declining. This is a threat to crop land availability.
What is the potential for crop land expansion for global food security?
There is a potential for crop land expansion for rain fed crops. Huge potential in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, but not present in America. The potential in South Asia is very low because it accounts for billions of people. The potential is high in regions of the world where the population is low and low in high populated regions.
The land gap is the amount of crop land that will need to be added in order to keep growing enough food = 600 million hectares. Constraints: we cannot keep deforesting forests because they have important functions. (There is another point bu need to look at lecture).
Explain 20th century planning: Garden cities, Broadacre cities, The Radiant City, Highway Construction.
Garden Cities: idea of moving out of cities into new cities to get people out of terrible living conditions (dirty and dense cities). Based on land separation - there is a place where people live, work, buy food, etc. (People used to live near point sources of pollution). Connected by trains and canals.
Broadacre City: give every American a hectare of land that they can use. Based on personally owned transport as opposed to public transport and canals. Very little public space, mostly private space.
Radiant City: Vertical architecture and plenty of shared open space.
Highway Construction: building highways through cities, inefficient network of cars.
Why and where did cities develop?
They developed at key trading spots to maximize trade. More efficient use of space, technology, and transport. More protection and space to exchange ideas.
What is the definition of an urban area? What is a mega city? Who constitutes these areas?
Defined as an incorporated territory with a population of at least 2500. There are many definitions to an urban city.
A megacity has a population of over 10 million.
Wealthy countries are more urban, but most mega cities are in poorer countries.
What are the four limits to urban growth?
Nutritional limit: when food can be grown at a larger scale and shipped to cities, we get rid of the nutritional limit.
Military limit: cities no longer need walls, no longer a spacial constraint.
Traffic limit: based on the growth of high speed travel (animal power to trains to buses).
Power limit: hydropower, coal, electricity, etc. Allows for more density. (Example: elevator vs stairs = people can live in higher buildings).
What are the factors that can define an urban city?
- Administrative criteria or political boundaries (e.g. area within the jurisdiction of a municipality or town committee).
- A threshold population size: minimum is typically 2,000, but can vary globally between 200 and 50,000.
- Popularity density: people per square km.
- Presence of urban characteristics: paved streets, electric lighting, sewage, etc.
- Economic function.
- significant majority of the population is not primarily engaged in agriculture, or where there is a surplus of employèrent
How can urban planners/cities address issues related to energy, environmental damage, etc. ?
- Lad use policy (single residential zone vs mixed use).
- Street infrastructure.
- Density/height.
- Size of lots.
- Amount of parking (amount, cost, and location of parking).
- Tax breaks, economic incentives.
- Transport policy.
What are Glaeser’s methods of calculating carbon emissions?
Home heating (fuel oil and natural gas), electricity, driving, public transportation.
What is the connection between land use and energy?
There are big differences between the amount of driving, home heating and cooling based on size of home for example. Differences between cities due to climate and how homes are built.
Why don’t we build denser housing?
It is illegal to build denser housing in some parts of the US - only single-family detached houses (roughly 75%).
What is a Goldilocks density?
Gentle density, without being too high rise.
What are the challenges in urbanization?
- What urban forms can maximize human health and well-being while minimizing environmental degradation?
- Balancing ecological, social, economic goals and priorities.
- Green enough: too much green space between buildings = no circulation, there needs to be a balance.
Explain the sustainability issues that arise from land use patterns.
- Car dependency (energy, emissions, health, safety, aesthetics).
- Redundancy of infrastructure (Kim’s of roads, water and sewage lines, electricity/capita).
- Single family homes are less efficient to heat than appartements.
What are the effects of transportation on climate change?
- Increased GHG emissions lead to climate change (road transportation is a big contributor).
- Heat waves: risk on vulnerable populations with chronic diseases (respiratory disease and old people).
- Photochemical smog (respiratory disease).
0 Increase the length of the pollen season (respiratory disease).
Define accessibility in terms of an urban area.
The ease of reaching desired destinations. It is population based (% of people that can walk to …) and location based (something accessible within a certain distance).
Has nothing to do with speed, accessible areas can be congested. E.g. Manhattan has slow speeds and high number of accessible destinations (parks, restaurants, jobs, etc.).
Define mobility in terms of an urban area.
The ease of travelling through a transport network. The indicator of mobility is the flow of traffic (vehicles per hour, average time lost in gridlock).
It is a measure of the speed and movement of vehicles or people, but not necessarily what they can reach. E.g. Manitoba: fast speeds, few destinations.
Explain the vicious cycle of mobility planning.
Transportation:
- Congestion develops.
- Residents call for road widening.
- Road widened.
- No congestion on roadway.
- Land further out becomes accessible.
Land use:
- Land prices rise, and farmers request reasonings to residential and commercial areas.
- More political and development pressures, land is reasoned.
- Subdivisions and business develop and people move out to larger, cheaper homes.
- More residents and shoppers not travelling further.
Explain induced demand in terms of the mobility demand.
By providing the infrastructure/space for vehicles that was demanded, it fills very quickly.
Explain the Downs-Thompson paradox.
In response to the induced demand, three types of convergence occur in the “improved” expressway.
- Spatial convergence: driver who used alternative routes during peak hours switch to the improved expressway.
- Time convergence: driver who travelled before or after peak hours switch to driving during peak hours.
- Modal convergence: commuters who took public transit during peak hours switch to driving (faster).
What were Lewis Mumford’s solutions to the highway and city?
- Smaller cars: they dominate US and Canada market, they are safer.
- Planning for pedestrians: giving space to pedestrians as opposed to cars.
- Rebuild and expand public transportation.
- Regional governments: making sure transport decisions are made at the regional governments as opposed to smaller scales.
- Mortgage reform: where people can afford to live, accessibility.
Explain the history of US Highways.
No networks of roads across the country, had to convince the public and politicians of the necessity of roads as a public good. Key contributor were auto industry members, urban planners were absent (no profession). Highway engineers created fast, efficient roads without much consideration of what that would mean to the fabric of cities and environmental degradation —> cities and neighbourhoods were destroyed to build highways. Passage of Interstate Highway Bill in 1956.
What were the effects of changing the ownership of streets?
Drivers used to be perceived as intruders of urban space and a threat to safety. The auto industry convinced the public of the importance of cars to encourage more sales. Invention of the term jaywalking. Cars were not required to have speed governors.
How is speed and safety perceived?
- Pedestrians and cyclists are vulnerable road users, greatest injury is felt by them.
- Speed and mass of vehicles is a key factor (and both have been increasing).
- Equity issue: many accidents happen to non-white people.
- Pedestrian fatalities are increasing.
Explain the Vision Zero approach.
Zero traffic fatalities are acceptable because all fatalities/injuries are preventable (e.g. drinking and driving, non-safe infrastructure, decisions of car manufacturers/government, etc.).
This approach requires wide range changes, rethinking the need for speed, the role of a car, the design of a road (people drive faster on roads well-suited for it), street policies and street design to encourage multimodal transport, liability (more blame on the drive than the pedestrian).
What are solutions to reducing trafic-related CO2 emissions and other pollutants (least to most effective)?
- Changes of fuel (biofuels, reduced fossil fuels component).
- Improve efficiency of vehicles: making them run on less fuel.
- Fuel pricing: changing the market, increasing the price and tax on fuel.
- Land use changes: more wide spread, long-lasting impacts.
- Improve competitiveness of public transport and active transport: lasts longer.
What is the problem with transport emissions?
Th objective is to reduce CO2. However, there is an issue with efficiency vs. Effectiveness. As fuel efficiency has increased, miles driven by vehicles has also increased.
Define nihilism.
Nothing has any intrinsic value.
Define egoism.
I have intrinsic value. No other humans have any value, except possibly for instrumental value for promoting my good.
Define anthropocentrism.
All humans have intrinsic value. All other animals have only instrumental value for humans, or no value at all.
Define zoocentrism.
All animals able to experience pleasure, or happiness, have intrinsic value. Other organisms can have only instrumental value for sentient animals, if that.
Define biocentrism.
All and only loving organisms have intrinsic value. Lifeless matter and energy can have, at best, only instrumental value for organisms.
Define ecocentrism.
All organisms, species, and ecosystems (and interactions) have irreducible intrinsic value. Lifeless matter and energy can have, at best, only instrumental value for organisms, species, or ecosystems.
Define cosmic universalism.
All organisms, species, and ecosystems, and even lifeless matter and energy, have intrinsic value.
What is the first step to making a decision (decision theory)? What are the two cases to make decisions?
The first step is realizing there is a decision to be made and thinking about what is the best alternative option to a given action. We weigh our options through opportunity cost (value of what you didn’t do but could have done) or by benefit/cost analysis (value different options).
- Rights-based decisions: we don’t consider other options , cost of taking away individual liberties are not allowed for a particular situation.
- Weigh alternatives: find a way to weigh alternatives and find the best outcome.
Explain ecosystem services.
Ecosystem service are the attempt to evaluate and quantify services from nature by conceptualizing them as a service to humanity.
What are the different types of values of ecosystem services? What services do they provide?
Use value: we take a consumptive benefit from a good/service directly. Direct flow from nature to humans. It can be indirect if we use something but its value does not reach humans immediately, it may support something else which has a direct value to humans.
Option: something we would like to be able to use if we need it, but we might not. Possibly a category of non-use value.
Non-use: Bequest (we may value something now because we want to use it in the future) or Existence (value it even though we don’t use it because we want it to exist).
Services: provisions services, regulating services, cultural services, supporting services.
Explain Contingent Valuation. What is WTP? WTA?
A method of estimating the value that a person places on a good and to derive consumer surplus.
WTP: Willingness to pay for improved ecosystem services. Not paying over a certain amount is the equivalent benefit you get from having a certain good/service.
WTA: Willingness to accept compensation in exchange for degraded ecosystem services. Instead of offering an improved ecosystem service, how much would the consumer need to be payed to agree to get rid of a good/service.
Contingent value is mostly used for existence value (non market benefit).
Is WTP or WTA better to use?
In standard practise, WTP is better. More consistent estimates, people say more when asked for WTA.
For preserving an existing piece of common property, already belonging to “people,” WTA is better.
Wealthier communities give higher values.
What are the sources of error of contingent valuation?
- Free-riding: might lead to an under-estimate of true WTP.
- Strategic Bias: might lead to inflation of WTP to achieve a better outcome if they believe they will not have to pay for their stated answer (only influences the result).
- Framing Bias: changing the framing of the question affects the answer.
Explain contingent choice.
“Choice experiments” consist of a series of hypothetical binary choices. By looking at many choices, one can infer valuations of specific goods.
Giving people a number of choices and doing it a number of times, from these choices, you can tell how much people value a certain good.
What is a consumer surplus?
Consumer surplus is the benefit to people that they get beyond what they pay for. It is the difference between WTP and what one actually has to pay for a service.
For a society at large, it is the difference between the sum of benefits over all people and the total cost of provision.
Explain the travel cost method to evaluate the consumer surplus.
The travel-cost method measures the amount of money that people spend to get to the resource (park, river, beach, etc.). Part of revealed preference method.
By relating differences in travel cost to differences in consumption, a demand curve for the resource can be derived and the consumer surplus can be estimated. No one will pay more to travel somewhere than the benefit they get from arriving there.
For example, people that live close to parks have a lower travel cost, but don’t necessarily have the same benefits.
What are the problems with the travel cost method?
- People have different opportunity costs: they have different alternatives, being far from one park means that you might be closer to another one.
- Some may have alternative recreational alternatives that others do not: you might want to do something else with your time.
- Money: people have different amounts of money (different WTP) and some have a higher ability and willingness to travel from people that are wealthier.
Explain house prices in terms of a contingent value.
Looking at house prices as a way to value access to an amenity or a disamenity. Part of revealed preference method.
For example: a house near a contamination.
Looking at the sales of homes before and after a contamination became public, there was a change in valuation. You can add up the total disbenefit tear occurred as a result of the incident. The price and value of a house decline as a function of the location from the incident.
Explain the wage risk method in terms of contingent valuation.
Used exclusively for valuing human life. We get the estimated value of a statistical life. Monetary life is put on a human life.
For example, a profession.
Comparing different professions, we can get an idea of the value of the hazard. We can estimate a WTA an increase in the risk of death, which estimates the value of life/
What are problems with the wage-risk valuation of statistical life?
- Assumes worker have/understand accurate information.
- Sample selection bias: people who chose risky Jon’s are not average people, lower risk aversion.
- Assumes voluntary and involuntary risks have the same value: people require more to accept a risk that is imposed on them without their consent, they did not make that choice.
- Puts a larger value on life in rich countries than in poor countries.
- Statistical life is not equal to individual life: the value we get from the studies is the amount of money that the average individual in a society requires to accept a high risk death, we cannot put money value on someone’s life.
What is the replacement cost?
An engineering cost method used to figure out the cost to put something back like it was (e.g. after damage). It is the cost of adaptation to environmental damage or cost of complying with needed environmental legislation. In the case of an ecosystem service, it is the cost of replacing it with a human alternative.
Central for ecosystem services evaluation.
What is the life satisfaction approach?
Focuses on experiences human well-being rather than productivity/market consumption. Using data of how people are happy with their life and using statistical analysis to infer what differences across people and overtime and different places explain those differences in life satisfaction.
We can evaluate things like the value of pollution, value of an access to a park, etc.
What are the two roles for taxes?
- Revenue: raise revenue for governments to spend in order to solve other CAPs.
- Punitive (and Pigouvian): tax thing to reduce people’s consumption of them (e.g. cigarettes).
Explain government financing in terms of Revenue vs. Expenditure.
Government has various ways to make revenue (taxes) and many ways to spend money, they are often tied together.
It does not make sense in terms of the right amount to be spending on something and the right amount to be taxing something (Green Fund). Expenditures should be made at the level which is efficient and adresses the CAP correctly. The revenue, in order to fund that level, should be raised from whatever the means are that we have to raise.
What are some considerations and challenges in choosing policies?
Mixed messages, visibility, free-riding, capital turnover timescale, R+D investment and scale-up sequence, commitment, rebound effect.
Explain the aggregation of benefits problem in terms of individuals.
Who is in the sum when we add benefits? Who gets a vote in the sum? Do we count people equally?
Fairness: who do we count? With what weight?
Critique: wealth matter. An evaluation of amenities or benefits by a person who has more means, you will get a higher number. We can’t add up people whose experiences can’t be compared.
Equity problem: do we consider all humans? Non-human? Do we consider future humans (they usually don’t get a vote)?
Explain the aggregation of benefits problem over time.
Summing-up benefits overtime.
What is something worth overtime? It is worth to invest in things to have a flow of benefits overtime.
Explain the aggregation of benefits problem in terms of possible outcomes.
There is risk and uncertainty of benefits.
The future is far away and it is divergent, it represents multiple possibilities. It is difficult to add up benefits that have different possible futures.
Why is sooner more valuable in terms of benefits?
- Future is uncertain: the resource/offer might disappear or not be credible later.
- Increased income: might have a job/more income by then, the resource is worth less and there is no need for free handouts.
- Limited empathy/intrinsic impatience: I care less about my future than present self.
- Exchange/selling of good for a productive asset: it becomes more valuable to trade it in the present than the future offer.
Explain discounting in terms of benefits.
When future benefits are not weighed as heavily as current befits, we say that the future benefits are discounted.
Due to interest (growth of productivity over time), resources on hand today are more valuable than resources available at a later date.
The amount we would put aside today to grow to a certain benefit in the future is the present discounted value (PDV) of that benefit. It is the different in value between the future and the present.
Explain what it means for people to be “richer” in the future.
People in the future will be wealthier than us due to capita economic growth. Future people can afford to buy resources to solve certain issues that we cannot afford in the present. They do not value the same things as us (e.g. we value keeping forests but their technology does so easily).
Their marginal benefit from consumption is much lower than ours.
Define pure time preference (e.i. Intrinsic discount rate).
The rate at which we discount the future people’s well-being compared to ourselves, regardless of their wealth status.
How much do you care about the future person’s well-being? We care less about someone in 5 years, and even less in 10 years.
Define discount factor.
A combination of the pure time preference discounting and their wealth. This is the overall valuation we consider now of someone in the future having a particular material benefit. It is a way to compare one point in time versus another.
The discount factor tells us how to discount marginal consumption at a particular future date.
How much does the person value one extra of a certain good?
Define discount rate.
Closely related to discount factor. The rate tells us how how to calculate the discount factor, based on how far in the future the consumption happens.
It is the rate of fall overtime of the discount factor.
E.g. a discount rate of 1% means the discount factor is 0.99 next year, 0.98 the year after, etc.
Define real interest rate.
It is a market reflection of the private (as opposed to social) discount rate. It is the market speaking about what it considers the discounted rate to be.
Explain risk aversion.
An individual is risk averse if they prefer a “sure thing” to a gamble with a high expectancy payoff.
Risk aversion implies that people will dislike exposure to catastrophic event occurring with low probability more than unpleasant event occurring with high probability even if they have the same average cost.
Explain why some individuals may perceive risk differently than the actual risk.
- Voluntary vs. Involuntary risk: there is a preference of voluntary risk over involuntary risk (e.g. Driving vs. Flying) . Psychological factor.
- Lack of knowledge: people don’t deal with risk properly due to lack of information (e.g. educating people about climate change could lead to more will for policy to address it).
- Distrust of experts: people are averse to knowledge about certain kinds of risks, cognitive bias.
- People are risk averse.
Explain the Jevon’s Paradox.
An extreme case where people are using more of a resource in response to an increased efficiency of use of that resource. We consume more when something is cheaper.
Jevon’s Paradox is not likely, but mostly the rebound effect, in which some of the expected conservation from efficiency gains is lost to increased use, is the norm.
Explain the rebound effect.
- Increased consumption of the good (substitution effect): use of the resource directly through the appliance/service that ois being increased in efficiency. When it is strong enough, it leads to Jevon’s Paradox.
- Increased consumption of other goods (wealth effect): an indirect effect. There is an increased consumption of other goods, which may relate to the same resources.
- General equilibrium growth effect: increased consumption by everyone, due to spillover of more economic activity. Everyone is wealthier, so consuming more resources.
What is the social cost of carbon (SCC)?
The total (summed), discounted (net-present) value of all future damage caused by emitting an extra unit (ton) of GHG today (or in a given year).
What is the Integrated Assessment Model (IAM)?
This is an economic feedback model that calculates the SCC.
What is the emissions (or concentrations) pathway?
One possible sequence of future emissions (or concentrations) overtime, by country. We have to assume an emissions pathway since we don’t know how much people will emit in the future.
What are the 3 climate/GHG policies?
- Mitigation: practise of avoiding or reducing emissions into the atmosphere (information, subsidies, prices, regulation).
- Adaptation: coping by preparing or responding to damage, there are already enhanced climate forcing/climate change that has effect on people (disaster management, development policy).
- Geo engineering: emergency countermeasures that reverse climate changes without treating the GHG cause.
Explain Cap and Trade in terms of a carbon pricing.
The quantity is fixed.
The government decides on a maximum amount of GHG emissions for a period of time. Firms emitting GHGs can sell/bid on permits at an auction. The reduction of GHG is achieved at a minimal cost because we mitigate at the cheapest places.
The investment of mitigation goes to the lowest hanging fruit, the ones who have the opportunity to reduce their emissions. This achieves a maximum amount of reduction for a minimal cost to society.
Explain the Carbon Tax in terms of carbon pricing.
The price is fixed.
The government decides on a price that should be paid for the emissions of GHGs. This results in the maximum reduction of GHGs for a given cost. Firms for whom it is cheaper to mitigate will save money by not paying the tax. Those for whom it is more expensive will choose to pay the tax and not yet mitigate.
What are the implementation details of carbon pricing?
- Coverage: it is difficult to implement a carbon pricing system that covers all GHG emissions in the economy because some are difficult to measure.
- Horizon/timeline: signals about prices in the future so that firms can make smart investment decisions.
- Revenue neutrality: what will the government due with the revenue? Giving it back to the people or spending it on a particular domain.
- Handouts and allowance: giving permits for free, but less every year and eventually auctioning them off. Easier integration of new policies and eases competition without having t o worry about carbon pricing.
- Offsets: paying someone else to reduce their emissions so that you can keep emitting.
- Commitment: clear signal about what will happen in the future. It is not credible if someone can change the legislation and change the carbon pricing system in the future.
How are taxes and caps alike?
- Impose a uniform price on carbon across the whole economy.
- Generate revenue for the government.
- Require monitoring and enforcement.
- Very few firms need to be monitored. Only a few emit a significant amount of carbon that needs to be monitored.
How are taxes and caps different?
- Pricing.
- Cap and trade: the future price is less certain. - Emissions:
- Taxes: the quantity of emissions in the future is uncertain. - It is easier to hand out permit for caps.
What is the difference between a source and a sink?
Resources can be material or sinks. Resources can be sinks and sinks can be resources.
Source: something that you draw things from (e.g. the global atmosphere).
Sink: collection of a resource.
- a source can also be a sinks -e.g. water is a source and also a sink because we dump all sorts of waste into it.
Complete the sentence: without - no resources.
Without us humans, there would be no resources.
Reflection of human need:
- The term resource as we use it is a reflection of human needs. Without humans, there are no resources because only we conceive resources as a need, it is a human construct.
Not stable over space and time:
- Resources can change with human needs —> whether it is a resource or not.
Explain the story of wild rubber.
- Used in Central America for thousands of years - Rubber trees. Discovery of rubber and its properties by Europeans —> not seen as a resource (used for erasers and raincoat —> not durable).
- Rubber is heated —> flexible, durable, resilient - explosion in demand = vulcanization. Increase in price —> perceived as an important resource (increase in wealth in Amazon).
- Rubber growth and production in a mass production —> rubber is a fraction of its cost.
- Wild rubber collapse post WW2. Synthetic rubber is developed —> plantation collapses.
