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Topic Guide

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Selected World Wide Web Sites

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UNIT 1 The Global Environment: An Emerging World View

Overview

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Environmental Surprises: Planning for the Unexpected

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Chris Bright

Those scientists who investigate the different possibilities of the future have come up with some interesting ways to anticipate the consequences of the complex processes at work in today's world. Two of their major findings are that ecological change is nearly always irreversible and that human systems need to find a way to work with, rather than against, natural systems

The Nemesis Effect

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Chris Bright

The complexity of environmental systems and human interactions with them suggests that environmental pressures produced by human activities will begin to converge in ways that will produce a number of unexpected environmental crises. The only way to avoid the ``nemesis'' of unpredicted environmental crisis is to do a better job of managing the human/environmental systems

Harnessing Corporate Power to Heal the Planet

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L. Hunter Lovins

Amory B. Lovins

One of the great intellectual shifts of the late twentieth century is the emergence of a new form of economics called ``natural capitalism.'' The basis of the new corporate thinking is to enhance resource productivity through recycling and other efforts to eliminate the concept of waste. The primary goal of natural capitalism is to reverse the global trend of ecosystem destruction by using nature as a mentor and model in manufacturing

Crossing the Threshold: Early Signs of an Environmental Awakening

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Lester R. Brown

An environmental threshold is a critical parameter beyond which significant environmental change becomes inevitable. Globally, we are approaching some important environmental thresholds (the number of endangered species, for example). But we may also be approaching some key breakthroughs in social concepts and organization that will enable us to restructure the global economy before environmental deterioration can lead to irreversible economic decline

UNIT 2 The World's Population: People and Hunger

Overview

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The Population Surprise

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Max Singer

For years, population experts have been predicting that the world's population will continue to grow well into the twenty-first century before stabilizing sometime after 2050. Most of these predictions have been based on the demographic transition, a pattern of population growth experienced in the industrialized nations in which population growth eventually approaches zero. Recent evidence suggests that rather than leveling off, the world's population will actually enter a period of decline

Population and Consumption: What We Know, What We Need to Know

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Robert W. Kates

A general consensus exists among scientists that the roots of the current environmental crisis are to be found in a combination of population growth, affluence, and increasing technology. No such consensus exists, however, about the ultimate causes of either population growth or the desire to consume. Notwithstanding this lack of agreement, society needs to sublimate the desire to acquire things for the good of the global commons

Food for All in the 21st Century

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Gordon Conway

For people in the world's industrialized countries, there is little awareness of the depth of the global food problem. In order for agricultural systems to provide enough food to feed the world's population in the twenty-first century, that awareness needs to develop, as does agricultural and natural resource production aimed at not just equitable food production but at sustainability

Escaping Hunger, Escaping Excess

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Gary Gardner

Brian Halweil

Malnutrition is a growing global epidemic. Malnourishment includes both the underfed of the poorer countries and the overfed of the richer ones, and because misunderstanding exists as to the nature of malnutrition, policy responses to it have been inadequate. When taken in total, the world's food problem often appears to be more a problem of allocation than a problem of supply

UNIT 3 Energy: Present and Future Problems

Overview

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King Coal's Weakening Grip on Power

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Seth Dunn

Although the fuel of choice today is petroleum, for most of the last thousand years coal has been the fossil fuel most in demand for uses ranging from the village blacksmith to the modern electrical generation power plant. The use of coal has left a legacy of human and environmental costs that we have only now begun to assess. Initiatives to replace coal as a primary fuel in all societies suggest that the reign of this destructive energy source is nearing an end

Oil, Profit, and the Question of Alternative Energy

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Richard Rosentreter

Even though the costs of fossil fuels, particularly oil and natural gas, continue to rise, there has been public policy encouragement for the development of alternative energy sources, such as solar power, wind power, and others. It could be argued that the failure of alternative energy to capture either public attention or public money is the result of the political influence wielded by large corporations wedded to nonrenewable energy

Here Comes the Sun: Whatever Happened to Solar Energy?

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Eric Weltman

Amidst the oil embargos and nuclear accidents of the seventies, the future seemed to belong to solar energy, but federal dollars for research funding for solar power has decreased more than 600 percent since 1980, and renewable energy is expected to supply only about 3 percent of the needs of the United States in 2020. The primary reason for not implementing these alternative energy sources is the political environment surrounding renewable energy issues

The Hydrogen Experiment

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Seth Dunn

Iceland is an isolated volcanic island long adjusted to using alternative energy sources, particularly geothermal energy from the country's many hot springs and thermal vents. Now a new alternative energy experiment has been set into motion in Iceland's capital city-hydrogen power

Power Play Business Week, February 12, 2001

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The energy crisis in California is a prime example of overextended expectations on environmental issues. This aticle focuses on the manipulation and mismanagement of generating electrical energy and how these actions can impact on the average citizen. Implications are that the deregulation of energy sources could affect the entire nation

Bull Market in Wind Energy

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Christopher Flavin

Wind power is one of the world's most rapidly expanding industries, and both industrialized and developing countries are discovering that electrical energy from wind-driven turbines is not only cheap and environmentally protective but also technologically accessible. In some rapidly developing countries like China, the potential of wind energy exceeds the current demand for electricity

UNIT 4 Biosphere: Endangered Species

Overview

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Planet of Weeds

108

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David Quammen

Earth has undergone periods of major biological extinction requiring millions of years of recovery time. Biologists believe that we are entering another such period: a significant reduction in biodiversity brought about not by natural forces but by human action. Over the next century huge percentages of Earth's plants and animals will disappear, leaving behind impoverished ecosystems dominated by ``weeds,'' the hardiest, most adaptable plants and animals, including the consumate weed: Homo sapiens

A. PLANTS

Invasive Species: Pathogens of Globalization

116

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Christopher Bright

One of the least expected and least visible consequences of economic globalization has been the spread of invasive species-plants and animals that are hitchhiking through the global trading network and finding niches where they can survive better than native species. This bioinvasion is difficult to control because it means altering the nature of the global trading economy that released invasive species in the first place

B. ANIMALS

Mass Extinction

123

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David Hosansky

Biologists cannot be precise about the number of species that are becoming extinct because they don't know how many species exist. What they can say, however, is that the rate of biological extinction over the past few centuries is 100 to 10,000 times the normal rate. The Earth has lost over 30 percent of its species since 1970 and it may be that half of all existing animal species in 2000 will be gone by the end of the twenty-first century

Watching vs. Taking

130

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Howard Youth

In many parts of the world, people have turned to wildlife watching for recreation and business instead of for hunting and poaching. The reasons are largely economic: a live lion in a Kenyan game reserve may generate as much as $575,000 in tourist dollars. This is ecotourism at its most productive. Certainly the growing awareness of global biodiversity loss is an issue, as the public becomes more aware that watching rare and endangered species can be a valuable experience-and one not easily replicated

UNIT 5 Resources: Land, Water, and Air

Overview

140

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The Tragedy of the Commons: 30 Years Later

142

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Joanna Burger

Michael Gochfeld

In 1968, the pioneering human ecologist Garrett Hardin argued in an article entitled ``The Tragedy of the Commons'' that increasing human population would create such pressure on finite resources at both local and global levels that the inevitable consequence would be overexploitation and environmental crisis. Hardin's work spawned new approaches to resource management, but, 30 years later, the problem of the commons still exists

A. LAND

Where Have All the Farmers Gone?

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Brian Halweil

The movement toward a global economy has meant a standardization in the management of much of the world's land. These new standardized land management practices have, in turn, led to a decrease in the number of farmers. As agribusiness, in the form of large corporations, takes over more and more of the world's farmland, not only is a way of life lost but also crop diversity, ecosystems, and cultures are threatened

B. WATER

When the World's Wells Run Dry

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Sandra Postel

Most of the water used in irrigation agriculture is ground-water rather than water drawn from surface reservoirs. And because groundwater is being extracted or withdrawn at rates far in excess of its renewal or recharge, the world is quickly running short of one of its most precious resources. The only solution is to develop plans to reduce overconsumption of groundwater and to ensure sustainable groundwater use

Oceans Are on the Critical List

170

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Anne Platt McGinn

The world's oceans are both central to the global economy and to human and planetary health. Yet these critical areas are being threatened by overfishing, habitat degradation, pollution, introduction of alien species, and climate change. Unfortunately, protection efforts are being hampered and the human impact on oceans is in danger of disrupting life on the planet

C. AIR

The Human Impact on Climate

174

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Thomas R. Karl

Kevin E. Trenberth

Scientists are in general agreement that the global climate is undergoing a warming trend. There is even substantial agreement that much of this temperature increase is human-induced. What is not known is exactly how much of the global warming can be attributed to natural processes or to human ones. We can have accurate climate monitoring systems in place by the middle of the century, but to wait until those systems are in place before taking action to halt the warming trend would be foolish

Warming Up: The Real Evidence for the Greenhouse Effect

180

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Gregg Easterbrook

Despite the scientific and nonscientific rhetoric and wrangling over global warming, it is clear that the planet is becoming warmer and that human activities are playing some role in that process. Whoever develops a clean energy system will not only aid in the global warming problem but also will have a significant competitive advantage in twenty-first-century economics

UNIT 6 Pollution: The Hazards of Growth

Overview

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Making Things Last: Reinventing Our Material Culture

188

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Gary Gardner

Payal Sampat

Consumption of industrial products in countries like the United States have increased nearly twentyfold in this century and manufacturing has converted unprecedented amounts of raw materials to usable products that then end up as solid waste. The waste that characterizes the industrialized countries of the world has produced enormous damage to both human and environmental health

Groundwater Shock: The Polluting of the World's Major Freshwater Stores

193

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Payal Sampat

Most of the planet's freshwater-97 percent to be exact-is stored in vast underground aquifers, which supply nearly 40 percent of the world's population with drinking water and over 90 percent of the world's irrigated agriculture with the water necessary to sustain it. While the pollution of surface water is easily recognizable and has more readily understood sources, groundwater pollution is not only more difficult to identify but also tends to have sources that are less visible

POPs Culture

204

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Anne Platt McGinn

While industrial innovation is usually viewed as a good thing, at least economically, one form of innovation that the world could do without is that which produces persistent organic pollutants or ``POPs.'' Many of these substances, widely used in both agricultural and industry, are so toxic and so durable that they may be creating public health problems 1,000 years from now

It's a Breath of Fresh Air

212

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David Whitman

When the world celebrated the 30th anniversary of the original Earth Day in April 2000, the United States was pleased with the progress made in environmental cleanup. While most Americans surveyed in 2000 believed that the environment had improved only slightly since 1970, the fact is that the environmental trend in the United States has produced substantial reductions in air and water pollution, without forestalling economic growth

Environmental Information Retrieval

215

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Glossary

221

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Index

225

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Test Your Knowledge Form

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