Unit 9 Test Pt. 2 Flashcards
Mass Extinction
During the past 500 million years, there have been five major extinction events, during which a significant percentage of all life on Earth, life inhabiting the oceans included, was exterminated by some catastrophic event. The most famous incident was the asteroid impact 65 million years ago near the present-day Yucatan Peninsula, which eliminated the dinosaurs and other large reptiles, vacating numerous niches that were quickly filled by mammals through radiative adaptation. Radiative adaptation is when, through evolutionary forces of natural selection, a species rapidly diversifies into numerous new species to take advantage of newly freed-up resources. The lesson to gain from this information is that life on Earth is very adaptive and capable of surviving great stress. Presently, humans are stressing the planet and may render the Earth uninhabitable for our species. Life, however, will certainly continue
Endangered Species Act
1973
Program for the protection of threatened plants and animals and their habitats
Prohibited the commerce of those species considered to be endangered or threatened.
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES)
1973
international treaty, bans the capture, exportation, or sale of endangered and threatened species.
sustainability
Living sustainably and conserving resources helps lower the demand that destroys habitats. Sustainable land use practices, including green building practices, sustainable agriculture, and new ideas to make roads and other infrastructure more environmentally friendly, will have a huge impact, since land use is a driving factor in habitat destruction and fragmentation. From simple techniques such as rainwater collection and home composting to more ambitious projects such as permeable pavement for roads and parking, organic farming, and habitat corridors—areas of habitat connecting wildlife populations separated by human activities or structures (such as roads, development, or logging)—these practices can help humans integrate better into our ecosystems and minimize the damage our daily existence does.
active work to restore habitats
Finally, it is important that we not stop at protection, and work to actively restore lost habitats. Given that human intervention has been causing so many wildlife populations to diminish, it makes sense that some intervention is required to preserve the functioning of the biosphere. Restoring habitats involves a deep understanding of the conditions a habitat requires, and careful management of soil conditions and leaf litter accumulation, for example, along with the control of invasive species, can be essential. We can also help organisms with a species-by-species approach. Zoos and other institutions have captive breeding programs in which endangered species are bred under human control until their populations are high enough to be reintroduced into the wild. Wildlife management is a complex field, and careful management of conditions for breeding and protection of vulnerable young within preserves can also be components of a restoration strategy.
Controlling invasive species
When it comes to controlling invasive species, a variety of human interventions are employed, depending on the species involved and their relationships to their environment. For example, pest animal species, especially those in contained environments such as islands, can sometimes be successfully eradicated through extermination. Invasivorism is a movement that explores the idea of eating invasive species in order to control, reduce, or eliminate their populations—chefs from around the world have begun seeking out and using invasive species as alternative ingredients. Genetic manipulation through breeding can be used to fight invasive pathogens, as in the example of the reintroduction of blight-resistant chestnut trees to fight the chestnut blight in the U.S.
It’s important to recognize that these efforts are complicated and can go wrong. Sometimes, an invasive species becomes a primary food source or other necessary resource for another part of the food web, and disturbing it will then damage the ecosystem. Sometimes a good idea has unforeseen consequences and environmental damage results even from well-intentioned interventions. Sometimes the only solutions are compromises. For example, non-native species can be introduced to fill an ecological role that previously was performed by a native species now extinct (this is known as taxon substitution).
International vs. National Environmental Policy
National policies are fairly easy to enfronce, but international policy is only achieveable and realistic i the affected countries all cooperate with decisions that are made collectively
There are ways in which the UN can attempt to force countries to follow mandates that are agreed on by the majority. These include withholding borrowing power through the World Bank, trade rules, and withholding aid. However, there are often certain environmentally significant countries that don’t belong to the UN, didn’t sign whatever agreement is at issue, or that just don’t have the infrastructure to enforce the objective—however worthy. Additionally, international agencies often don’t have the power to control what happens inside a particular country.
Much more effective are international policies that are put into effect through treaties that the countries involved have all agreed to—their governments have all ratified the treaty. Obviously, policies that countries agree to are most often ones that benefit these countries in some way, so it isn’t too surprising that they are more readily enforced. In other words, international laws that are not agreeable are not usually followed because they don’t provide countries with incentives. Moreover, it is not possible to punish countries that don’t follow these policies.
As we touched upon above, it’s understandably much easier to enforce laws and policies in the United States than it is for us to police the other nations of the world. In the United States, state and local laws have an effect on the environment, but if there is a conflict between state or local law and federal law, most times federal law will take precedence. However, in some cases states have legislated controls that are even stricter than those the federal law requires. In these cases, the state laws are the ones enforced, rather than the more lenient federal law. Additionally, some laws are passed and enforced regionally because of particular geographic needs
Some laws are passed and enforced regionally because of particular geographic needs
East of the Mississippi River, water laws are based on the principle that the upstream consumers control the water but, by law, cannot impede or reduce its flow or change its quality. A number of lawsuits based on this premise have been filed and are currently pending. One example is the diversion of water from the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) and Alabama- Coosa-Tallapoosa (ACT) river basins. The state of Georgia would like to divert water from these basins to supply the growing needs of the urban area of Atlanta. The states of Alabama, Tennessee, and Florida, which are downstream from the diversion, are concerned about the flow and quality of water that will reach them if this diversion project is carried out. This controversy is still in the court system.
tlanta is a good example of a city whose ecological footprint is far larger than the resources that are available on the land it occupies. (Remember that an ecological footprint is the amount of resources available to support a population and absorb its wastes.) City lawmakers are rightfully concerned about water shortages in the near future.
On the other hand, water laws west of the Mississippi are based on water rights. West of the Mississippi, it’s held that the person who first files a claim on a water resource has rights to the use of the water. The amount of water an individual with a water right has claim to each year is determined by water flow that year (and also by how much water the individual wants!). But, regardless of the amount of water present or the place where the right was claimed, the oldest person who made the water claim gets to use his or her share of water before anyone else can partake. Obviously, water rights in the West do not require sharing, as they do in the East.
Environmental Law History
Constittuion didn’t specificlaly mention environment, but was implied in 5th Amendment
Early laws did not mention the environment because when these laws were written, there was so much land and so many resources in the United States that it was unimaginable that they could ever be in danger of being used up. In fact, many early laws, such as the Homestead Act of 1862, encouraged the settlement and exploitation of western lands. Others, such as the Mineral Lands Act of 1866, encouraged the use of resources, and, unfortunately, this exploitative act is still in effect for many mining regulations. A few years later, the General Mining Act of 1872, a federal law, was created to systematically oversee and control prospecting and mining for economic minerals, such as gold, platinum, and silver, on federal public lands.
Shortly after the Civil War, as people continued to migrate to the West, it was realized that the United States did not have an endless supply of land or resources. In fact, in order to preserve some of the lands in the West that were being very quickly settled, the first national park, Yellowstone National Park, was established in 1872. Further legislative action in 1891 created the forest reserves, which made these lands off-limits to logging in order to protect the land from being overharvested and to maintain the existing watersheds. This legislation marked the beginning of the federal government assuming an environmentally protective role.
activism: works of literature
Henry David Thoreau, Walden - retreat from society adn quiet years spent living on Walden Pond sudying nature
George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature - helped American public understand that there are limits to natural resources, plan for conservation of resources is basis for many of the resource conservatin principles we try to adhere to today
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring - written by Rachel Carson in 1962, awoke in many Americans an awareness of the state of the environment.
Paul Ehrlich, Population Bomb - 1968, warned of the myriad problems that would arise along with the quickly increasing human population, and an entertainer named John Deutschendorf took the stage name of John Denver and began to popularize the environmental movement through song.
activism: John Muir
John Muir, nature rpeservationist who founded the Sierra Club in 1892, led a compaign for the protection of lands from human exploitation and advocated low-impact recreational activities such as hiking and camping. These ideas did not become popular until the 1960s.
Activism and policies: Roosevelt
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring - written by Rachel Carson in 1962, awoke in many Americans an awareness of the state of the environment.
Paul Ehrlich, Population Bomb - 1968, warned of the myriad problems that would arise along with the quickly increasing human population, and an entertainer named John Deutschendorf took the stage name of John Denver and began to popularize the environmental movement through song.
Activism and policies: Nixon
A multitude of environmental laws and policies were initiated during the presidency of Richard Nixon. For example, the first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970. Also in 1970, Nixon signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); this act created the Council on Environmental Quality and required the submission of an environmental impact statement before any major federal action could be taken. One of Nixon’s major environmental contributions was to consolidate two agencies that had environmental responsibilities into a bureau called the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Finally, two major legislative actions were enacted in this new era of environmental awareness in the United States. The first was the Clean Air Act of 1963, which we have mentioned many times in these pages, and the second was the Clean Water Act (introduced in 1972).
Recent environmental response
Although some environmental bills and amendments have been added since 1985, lately there has been a distinct anti-environmental movement influencing government actions. Large, established environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, have declined in membership, which is an interesting litmus test of environmentalism in America. However, hope lies in the fact that new grassroots environmental organizations are currently growing throughout the United States. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund also play a role in protecting the environment. Six environmental issues that are expected to take center stage in the 21st century include:
climate change
water shortages and water supplies population growth
loss of biodiversity
air and chemical pollution
ocean acidification and pollution
“command and control” laws
Most often, the United States government has approached environmental issues by passing “command and control” laws. These laws set limits on factors, such as the amounts of pollution that are allowable from various sources, and they establish penalties for those that go over the limits. Wildlife has always been protected by similar types of legislation. There is no doubt that these laws have led to cleaner air and water as well as the conservation of soil and other natural resources. Endangered and threatened species have also both been protected, and some extremely endangered species have even been able to recover somewhat.
However, there have always been problems with the “command and control” approach. For example, consider the Endangered Species Act. Red-cockaded woodpeckers are endangered because the open forests with big, old pine trees have been replaced by forests with younger, smaller pines. Also, periodic natural fires, which historically kept the pinewoods open, have been suppressed because humans have settled in these areas. Periodic fires are needed to control the brushy understory and keep the pinewoods open. Creating yet another problem for the endangered bird, timber owners have been known to kill them in order to avoid preserving their habitat. However, it’s very hard to prove what happens to these birds—are they being exterminated by landowners, or are they simply migrating elsewhere or declining in number for other reasons?
Green taxes reasoning
There are other approaches that are more successfully used to continue environmental improvement without forcing the enactment of other types of command and control
Over time, it has become clear that the act of punishing actions that hurt the environment is not nearly as effective as rewarding actions that help the environment.
Since the 1970s, the United States has substantially increased taxes on labor and modestly increased taxes on income, while allowing actions that create pollution and cause resource depletion to remain largely untaxed, result is that the tax system of the United States encourages resource depletion and discourages investments in machinery and labor
Worldwide discussion is taking place about how to move away from taxing “goods,” such as investments and employment (activities we should be encouraging), and toward taxing “bads,” like pollution, which we would like to discourage. Pollution taxes have now been embraced by a growing number of mainstream economists and policy makers and are just one of a new group of taxes called green taxes.
Green taxes
A green tax shift is a fiscal policy that lowers taxes on income, including wages and profit, and raises taxes on consumption, particularly the unsustainable consumption of nonrenewable resources. Some taxes that could be lowered by the implementation of a green tax shift are payroll and income taxes, and the following is a list of taxes that could be implemented or, if currently in existence, increased:
carbon taxes on the use of fossil fuels
taxes on the extraction of mineral, energy, and forestry products
license fees for fishing and hunting
taxes on technologies and products that are associated with substantial negative externalities
garbage disposal taxes
taxes on effluents, emissions, and other hazardous wastes
Additionally, taxes on certain forms of consumption may occur through the “feebate” approach, in which additional fees are imposed on less sustainable products—such as sport-utility vehicles—and then pooled to fund rebates on more sustainable alternatives, such as hybrid electric vehicles.
In this scheme, taxes serve as policy tools as well as a way to protect the environment.
The three main goals of green taxes are:
to generate revenue to correct past pollution damage and reduce future pollution
to change behavior
to use the funds received from pollution taxes for restoration
Market permits
being used somewhat successfully to encourage reduction in pollutants. Market permits are cap-and-trade permits and they work in this way: companies are allowed to buy permits that allow them to discharge a certain amount of substances into certain environmental outlets. If they can reduce their discharge, they are allowed to sell the remaining portion of their permit to another company. Economically speaking, it is to a company’s advantage to reduce its discharge and sell the remainder of its allowable discharge to another company. But perhaps a better idea is for the government to buy back the unused permits rather than have them sold to another industry; this would reduce the overall discharge.
Many people think that subsidies (which are giveaways or tax breaks on certain resources to encourage their use) are hurting the environment more than they’re helping it; detractors think that subsidies only encourage the use of unsustainable products.
Globalization
Globalization, our world is becoming more and more interconnected
Affects society, the economy, and the environment
Positive effects can be seen in new economic opportunities, our expanded access to information, and the interactions of many societies.
Ex. grapes can be grown in Chile, shipped north, and be sold in your supermarket in less than a week
Negative effects of globalization
Ex. In certain parts of China, large piles of unusable electronic components have been creating water pollution problems as rainwater leaches out heavy metals. The rapid spread of emerging diseases, increased levels of air pollution and hazardous waste, and the loss of marine fish stocks are just a few more examples of globalization’s negative impacts. Not to mention those grapes from Chile required an enormous amount of energy (and fossil fuel) and probably added to the pollution during their trip north!
Globalization - Tragedy of the Commons
Tragedy of the Commons - Fresh water, clean air, ample supplies of fish, and access to fertile croplands are all examples of the global Commons. It is important to use these resources sustainably because they are the foundations for economic and social development.
Poverty and greed can cause people to use resources in an unsustainable manner and damage the environment. Cutting down important rainforest habitats to raise crops and accepting companies that generate a lot of harmful pollutants are two examples of how people’s hunger for money can lead to unsustainable practices. Unfortunately, the economically disadvantaged people who allow unsustainable practices to continue are also the ones most susceptible to environmental issues brought about by climate change and have the least amount of resources to combat the health and environmental problems that result.
International organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations are two examples of institutions that are trying to ameliorate the poverty issue. The World Bank uses loans to reduce poverty and to help foster improvements in biodiversity, environmental policies, land management, pollution management, and water resources management. The United Nations, through its environmental program, seeks to promote international cooperation, develop regional programs to promote sustainability, and to assess global, regional, and national environmental trends.
