Humans and the Environment, 1900 to Present Flashcards
~Population growth
● Due to principally to improvements in medicine an dpublic-health programming
● Has exploded in this period
● Population is estimated to be 7 billion today
~Resource extraction and consumption
● Reliance on erngy-dependent technology has led to unprecedented and continually mounting levels of it
~Pollution and species extinction
● Threaten the well-being of the environment as never before
~Earth-shaping capacity
● Consequences such as widespread flooding, deforestion, desertification and climate change int he form of global warming
~Vaccination campaigns
● Both in developed countries and internationally as part of relief efforst
● Have in many cases reduced or even eliminated diseases
● polio and smallpox
● Fomerly incurable venereal diseases, such as syphilis, have been developed as well
~New epidemic diseases
● Global spread made easier by better and faster transportation
● Some of them lasting only briefly, others proving to be of greater duration
~Spnish flue
● Influenza outbreak of 1918
● Infected 500 million people between early 1918 and 1920 and killed from 40 milliong to 100 million
● Origins are unknown
● Global movement of solldiers and supply shipments during the final months of WWI helped to spread Spnaish flue to all quarters of the globe
~Influenza
● Repeatedly threaten to reach pandemic status, such as the H1N1 virsu that caused great panic in 2009
~Ebola vius
● Since its identification in the mid-1970s in the Africa, it causes severe internal bleeding and kills a high percentage of its victems
● Threatened several times to erupt as a major disease beyond Africa’s borders
~HIV/AIDS
● Originating in Africa and identified in 1981
● Killed more than 30 million people worldwide
● Spread via blood or sexual transmission
● Became a global phenomenon and remained highly fatal until the developmen tof effective treatmeents in the late 1990s and early 2000s
● chornic disease for those with access to treatment but deadly to those without
● Rates of infection are high in AFrica
~Diabetes and heart disease and obesity
● Diets high in sugar and processed foods (common in North America) have caused a rapid increase int he diseases
~Alzheimer’s disease
● Medical advances in developed societies and the resulting extensionf o average lifespans into the eighties, rather than the sixteis or seventies have palced larger numebr so fpeople ar risk of this and other ailments asociated with old age
~National parks and national park services
● The first in the world being Yellowstone in 1872
● Modern conservation efforts date back to the creation of them
~John Muir
● Activism by figures such as the Scottish-American naturalist
● Co-funder of hte Sierra Club
~Theodore Roosevelt
● Avid outdoorsman
● Conservation of environemnet
~Environmental/green movement
● Arose as it became more evident hat pollution, species extinction and uncontrolled industrialization posed an undenicable threat to the earth’s ecological well-being
~International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
● Founded in 1948
● Began maintaining a red list of endangered speciesa nd continues to monitor hte issue today
● Many green groups and organizations took shap in the 1960s and 1970s, both in North America and Western Europe
~Silent Spring
● By Rachel Carson in 1962
● Warned of the dangers connected wiht usingt he insecticide DDT
~Earth Day
● First celebration also popularized hte environemtnal movement
● Now an annual event on April 22
~Non-governmental organzations (NGOs)
● Working on behalf of the environemtn
● Include the World Wildlife Fune (1961) and Greenpeace founded in 1969-1972
● Green Belt movement
~Greenpeace
● Found out of efforts to protect atomic testing in Alaska in 1969-1972
● Most famous econactivist group in the world
● One of the most interventionists, with its policy of direct action to impede industrial, hunting, and fishing efforts of which it disapproves
~Green Belt Movement
● Kenya’s movement established in 1977 by Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize
● Eco-feminism, it trained alrge numebrs of women to fight dforestation by planting trees and engaging in eco-tourism
~Green parties
● In certain countries, especially Western Europe, green parties play an important role in electoral politics
● Contemporary environemntal efforts are largely focused on the problem of climate change
~Green Revolution
● A massive campaign from the 1940s through the 1970s to improve agricultural production, especially in the developing worldy
● Clering more land, relying on new sceintific techniques, and using new fertilizers and insecticies
● Most consider it to have begun with iprovements in corn production in Mexico during the 1940s and then spread throughout Latin America and places like India, China and the Middle East where famine had previously threatened populations on a regular basis
~Famine
● Periodically occured before hte Green Revolution
● Human-caused famines struck the USSR int he 1930s and China in the 1950s
● natural famines bliighted India in the 1940s and Ethiopia in the 1980s
● The dust bowl crisis of the 1930s
~Dust bowl
● Thousands of square miles of fertile soil were lost to a disastrous combination of aridity and huge windstorms
● Drastically lowered agricultural output and added extra stress to the Great Depression
~Dam building and diversion of rivers
● Constitute another form of earth shaping, increasingly frequent during the 1900s and 2000s
● Projects like the Hoover Dam in Depression era, the Dnieprostroi hydroelectric complex in Stalinist Russia, Egypt’s Aswan High Dam and China’s mammoth THree Gorges Dam have all left gigantic ecological footprints and sizable bodies of water have dried up or suffered irreversible damage
~Environmental impact of warfare
● A form of earth shaping
● Nuclear-weapons testing
● Biological and chemical warfare between Iran and Iraq during the 1970s
● Napalming of forests during the Vietnam War
● Destruction of oil wells during times of armed conflict, especially in the Middle East
~Pollution
● Whether on the ground or in the air and water
● Both in the developed and developing worlds, communities continue to generate more trash and toxic waste, burn more fossil fuels and release more emissions into the aira nd water with every passing year
● Habitats like wetlands, rain forests and polar ecosystems have been especially harmed, and in numerous urban settings, air quality reaches noxious levels on a routine basis
~Environmental disaster
● Proven particularly devastating, including the Bhopal incident of 1984
● 1989 wreck of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez off the Alaskan coast
● 2010 Deepwater oil platform blowout in the Gulf of Mexico
● Nuclear incidents
~Bhopal incident of 1984
● Union Carbide pesticide factory killed thousands in india with an accidntal release of poison gas
~Ozone layer
● Dangerously depleted by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) during the 1980s and 1990s
~Reliance on fossil fuels
● Such as coal and petroleum
● Leads not only periodic shortages and economic dilemmas but also to continued pollution
~Hydroelectric generation of electric power
● Has its limit
● Dams required for it create huge ecological stresses
~Nuclear power
● Carry with serious risks
● Nuclera accidnets at Three Mile Island (1979) in Pennsylvania
● Chernobyl (1986) in Ukraine, and Fukushima (2011) in Japan
~Climate change/Global warming
● Built gradually over the course of the industrial era
● Caused by the human-produced emission of carbon-based greenhouse gases
● Resulting rise in average temperatures became steadily more noticeabl during the 1900s and then spiked upward in the 1980s and 1990s
● Melting of Arctic, Antarctic and glacial ice
- Allow more of the sun’s heat to enter the atmosphere and greater quantities of greenhouse gases add to the problem
~Kyoto Summit (1997)
● More than 150 nations gathered to discuss the dangers of global warming
● Kyoto Protocol was hammered out and subsequent summits hae finetuned various points
● Contentious, and many countries, including the US havve not ratified it
~Climate-change dnial
● Arisen during the 2000s
● Sponsored by corporate and political interests with the goal of convincing the public to disregard the scientific consensus that climate change is indeed an urgent matter for concern
~What are problems related to population growth?
● Overconsumption of food and energy
● Overproduction of waste and pollution
● Overcrowding of spaces
~What were efforts of environmentalism during the 1800s?
● Striving to prevent the natural world from overdevelopment or destruction since the Inudstrial Revolution
● Romantic movement’s lvoe for nature sparked popular concern about the effects of industrialization
● FIgures such as Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson promoted environemntalist ideals
~What are hte negative consequences caused by the Green Revolution?
● Greater deforestation
● increased water consumption
● Extensive use of pesticides
