Chapter 1
1.1 What are three principles of sustainability
Sustainability: The capacity of the earth’s natural systems and human cultural systems to survive,
flourish, and adapt to changing environmental conditions into the very long-term future.
Environment: All external conditions, factors, matter, and energy, living and nonliving, that affect any
living organism or other specified system
Three principles of sustainability
Reliance on solar energy: The sun warms the planet and supports photosynthesis—a
complex chemical process used by plants to provide the nutrients, or chemicals that most
organisms need in order to stay alive and reproduce. Without the sun, there would be no
plants, no animals, and no food. The sun also powers indirect forms of solar energy such as
wind and flowing water, which we can use to produce electricity.
Biodiversity (short for biological diversity): This refers to the astounding variety of organisms,
the natural systems in which they exist and interact (such as deserts, grasslands, forests, and
oceans), and the natural services that these organisms and living systems provide free of
charge (such as renewal of topsoil, pest control, and air and water purification). Biodiversity
also provides countless ways for life to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Without
it, most life would have been wiped out long ago.
Chemical cycling: Also referred to as nutrient cycling, this circulation of chemicals from the
environment (mostly from soil and water) through organisms and back to the environment is
necessary for life. Natural processes keep this cycle going, and the earth receives no new
supplies of these chemicals. Thus, for life to sustain itself, these nutrients must be cycled in
this way, indefinitely. Without chemical cycling, there would be no air, no water, no soil, no
food, and no life.
Natural capital: The natural resources (materials) and natural services (processes) that keep us and
other forms of life alive and support our human economies.
Perpetual source: For example the sun, because it’s supply is continuous.
Renewable resource: Any kind of source that takes anywhere between several days to several
hundred years to be replenished. Examples are forests, fish and fresh air.
Sustainable yield: The highest rate at which we can use a renewable resource indefinitely without
reducing its available supply.
Nonrenewable resources: Resources that exist in a fixed quantity, or stock, in the earth’s crust. On a
time scale of millions to billions of years, geologic processes can renew such resources.
1.2 How are our ecological footprints affecting the earth?
Biodegradable pollutants: Harmful materials that natural processes can break down over time.
Examples are human sewage and newspapers.
Nondegradable pollutants: Harmful chemicals that natural processes cannot break down. Examples
are toxic chemical elements such as lead, mercury, and arsenic.
,Pollutants can have three types of unwanted effects. First, they can disrupt or degrade life-support
systems for humans and other species. Second, they can damage wildlife, human health, and
property. Third, they can create nuisances such as noise and unpleasant smells, tastes, and sights.
We have tried to deal with pollution in two very different ways. One method is pollution cleanup, or
output pollution control, which involves cleaning up or diluting pollutants after we have produced
them. The other method is pollution prevention, or input pollution control, which reduces or
eliminates the production of pollutants.
Three problems with relying primarily on pollution cleanup:
1. It is only a temporary bandage as long as population and consumption levels grow without
corresponding improvements in pollution control technology.
2. Cleanup often removes a pollutant from one part of the environment only to cause pollution
in another.
3. Once pollutants become dispersed into the environment at harmful levels, it usually costs
too much to reduce them to acceptable levels.
1.3 Why do we have environmental problems?
Tragedy of the commons: It occurs because each user of a resource reasons “If I do not use this
resource, someone else will. The little bit that I use or pollute is not enough to matter, and it’s a
renewable resource.”
Regulating access to the resource will help or make it private ownership. You are more likely
to protect your own investment.
Three major cultural changes have occurred. First was the agricultural revolution, which began
10,000–12,000 years ago when humans learned how to grow and breed plants and animals for food,
clothing, and other purposes. Second was the industrial–medical revolution, beginning about 275
years ago when people invented machines for the largescale production of goods in factories. This
involved learning how to get energy from fossil fuels and how to grow large quantities of food in an
efficient manner. It also included medical advances that have allowed a growing number of people to
live longer and healthier lives. Finally, the information–globalization revolution began about 50
years ago, when we developed new technologies for gaining rapid access to much more information
and resources on a global scale. Many scientist call for a fourth cultural change, a sustainability
revolution.
Planetary management worldview: Holds that we are separate from and in charge of nature, that
nature exists mainly to meet our needs and increasing wants, and that we can use our ingenuity and
technology to manage the earth’s life-support systems, mostly for our benefit, indefinitely.
Stewardship worldview: Holds that we can and should manage the earth for our benefit, but that we
have an ethical responsibility to be caring and responsible managers of the earth. It says we should
encourage environmentally beneficial forms of economic growth and development and discourage
environmentally harmful forms.
Environmental wisdom worldview: Holds that we are part of, and dependent on, nature and that
nature exists for all species, not just for us. According to this view, our success depends on learning
how life on earth sustains itself and integrating such environmental wisdom into the ways we think
and act.
1.4 What is an environmentally sustainable society?
Individuals matter
, 1. Research by social scientists suggests that it takes only 5–10% of the population of a
community, a country, or the world to bring about major social change.
2. Such research also shows that significant social change can occur in a much shorter time than
most people think.
Three big ideas (strategies) based on the three principles of sustainability:
Rely more on renewable energy from the sun, including indirect forms of solar energy such
as wind and flowing water, to meet most of our heating and electricity needs.
Protect biodiversity by preventing the degradation of the earth’s species, ecosystems, and
natural processes, and by restoring areas we have degraded.
Help to sustain the earth’s natural chemical cycles by reducing the production of wastes and
pollution, not overloading natural systems with harmful chemicals, and not removing natural
chemicals faster than nature’s cycles can replace them.
Chapter 2
2.1 What do scientists do?
Science is a human effort to discover how the physical world works by making observations and
measurements, and carrying out experiments. It is based on the assumption that events in the
physical world follow orderly cause-and-effect patterns that we can understand.
The scientific process
Identify a problem.
Find out what is known about the problem.
Ask a question to investigate.
Collect data to answer the question.
Propose a hypothesis to explain the data.
Make testable projections.
Test the projections with further experiments, models, or observations.
Accept or reject the hypothesis.
4 features of the scientific process:
Curiosity
Skepticism
Reproducibility
Peer review
Thinking critically
1. Be skeptical about everything we read or hear
2. Look at the evidence to evaluate it and any related information and
opinions that may come from various sources.
3. Identify and evaluate personal assumptions, biases and beliefs.
Scientific law: A well-tested and widely accepted description of what we
find happening repeatedly in nature in the same way. An example is the
law of gravity.
Scientific results that capture news headlines are controversial because they have not been widely
tested and accepted by peer review. They are not yet considered reliable, and can be thought of as
tentative science.
