UNIT 1- Introduction to environmental science and economics Flashcards
Early concerns about the environment
Since ancient times, the impact of human activities in the environment has been a social concern.
-Many religions have considered the equilibrium with nature as a core value.
-Roman law included provisions on water and air pollution and forest fires.
- In the Middle Ages, pollution was associated with the spread of epidemics and was therefore regulated.
However, public authorities were only concerned about the impacts of environmental degradation in public health or activities with economic importance.
Environmentalism and the industrial revolution
- Economic liberalism was the base of the Industrial Revolution and considered that free market was the best way to manage all social problems.
- In opposition to this view, early environmentalists believed that governments should take measures to protect the environment from the harms it was beginning to suffer.
▪ The modern environmental movement arose from the concerns about the destruction of landscape and rural areas, and its main aim was to protect them from industrial activities.
▪ This activism, which began and was most active in the USA, led to the designation of the first protected wilderness areas.
- Until the 1960s, environmentalism mostly focused on local issues (pollution, protection of certain areas, access to certain resources, etc.).
Post war environmentalism
- In the 1960s and 1970s, scientific research led to a better knowledge of the causes and consequences of environmental degradation.
▪ This research led to the conception of the Earth as a system, and the concern about its capacity to sustain human activities.
▪ Global problems took over local issues as the main concern.
–> As a consequence, environmentalism became a global movement that led to the establishment of international NGOs (Greenpeace, Friends of Earth, WWF), and green political parties in Western countries.
The Stockholm Summit
- 1972
- The first global agreement
- The first time they realized environmental problems were global problems
The Paris Agreement
- Our current global framework
- For the reduction of greenhouse effect gases
- Signed in 2016
Anthropocentric environmentalism
- focuses on the adverse effects environmental degradation has in human life.
- following this approach, humans should defend the environment as an obligation to other humans.
- we worry because it effects humans
Example: If we destroy the forest we lose economic value
Biocentric environmentalism
- claims that nature has an intrinsic value, regardless the use humans make of it.
- as a consequence, there is a moral obligation to defend nature (and the individual lifeforms that are part of it) for its own sake
- we worry because it has an intrinsic value, a value nature has on its own
Example: We have to protect the forest because it has its value on its own→ the nature is the center and we need to protect it (not the normal western view, but for many nature is related to religion, created by the Gods etc)
Earth and systems theory
- A system is an entity which works as a whole thanks to the interaction of the different organised parts that compose it.
▪ As a consequence, the system will always be something more than just the sum of the subsystems than compose it.
- When analysing the Earth as a system, environmental sciences use an holistic or synthetic approach, i.e., they focus in the system as a whole, integrating a big number of variables.
▪ Conversely, the reductionist (or analytical) approach tries to explain reality decomposing it in smaller parts. This approach may be useful in some cases, but is normally insufficient to study complex systems.
The characteristics of the earth as a system:
1) ▪ It is an open system that exchanges energy an matter with its surrounding environment.
2) ▪ It is an heterogeneous system, because it is composed by other subsystems and its properties are not the same in all its points.
3) ▪ It is a very complex system, since a lot of variables intervene in its functioning. Besides, this variables are related through feedback processes that appear in delay.
4) - Complex systems are unpredictable, because the introduction of small changes in them may activate powerful and unknown feedback loops. When these feedback processes appear it is common to ignore the exact cause-effect relationship.
The four big subsystems of the earth:
- the atmosphere (gaseous cover of the earth)
- the hydrosphere (the layer of water on the surface)
- the geosphere (the solid and geologically active compound)
- the biosphere (integration of all living and their relationships)
The laws of thermodynamics
Thermodynamics is the part of physics that studies energy transfers from one place to another, as well as the transformation of energy in its different forms (including matter).
- the first law of thermodynamics
- the second law of thermodynamics
The first law of thermodynamics
- states that the total amount of energy and matter within a closed system does not vary.
- this statement means that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but its form can change, leading to important environmental consequences.
The second law of thermodynamics
- states that the smaller the structure and order of energy in a system, the greater the entropy (disorder) of it.
- Any process in which we take advantage of any form of energy (for transportation, production of electricity, etc.) will increase entropy and lead to less structured forms of energy or matter, which will be more difficult to use.
Example: Using car → transform energy from the gasoline into the movement of the car however some energy is also lost as heat → this is a form of energy we cannot use and the entropy of the system will increase
The three fases of the historical relationship of humans with their environment:
1) The hunter-gatherer phase (until 10,000 BC)
2) The agricultural phase (from beginning of agriculture to the industrial revolution)
3) The industrial-technological phase (from the industrial revolution to present day)
Environmental economics
Environmental economics studies the impact of the environment in the forecasts and recommendations derived from economic models.
