Goals, History and Background

 What is an “environmental issue”?  What are the basic causes of current environmental problems  What does it mean to be an environmentally sustainable society?  What is your impact or your “ecological footprint”?

 ____________ study organisms in their natural environment, their home

 Environmentalism is NOT the science of anything, it is a political movement  E___________  P___________  A___________ ◦ Was constructed originally by ______________in 1970

 We study the Earth with help from organizations like ________________  NASA stands for ◦ _____________________ ◦ AERONAUTICS ◦ (and) _______________ ◦ ADMINISTRATION

 To learn how nature works  To learn how the environment affects us and how we affect the environment  To learn how humans can live sustainably on Earth

 Habitat destruction and degradation

 Depletion of renewable and non-renewable resources  Pollution  Climate change  Loss of species biodiversity

 Human population growth  Wasteful use of resources  Poverty  Poor environmental accounting  Lack of environmental education

 Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social economic and other requirements of present and future generations.  -from EPA website

 “an environmentally sustainable society meets the basic resource needs of its people in a just and equitable manner without degrading or depleting the natural capital that supplies these resources” –Living in the Environment by Miller  How would this be achieved? 

 An ecological footprint is a measure of the demand of a human on the Earth’s ecosystem.  The amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply an individual with the renewable resources he/she uses and to absorb or dispose of the wastes from such resource use

 NOPE ◦ Crop Rotation  History of it in Roman Literature  In Greek Literature

 1962 ◦ DDT

 1969 

 April 1970, First Earth Day  1970, Nixon creates EPA  Clean Air Act  Clean Water Act  Endangered Species Act

 1984 ◦ Pesticide gas leaked from a plant exposing >500,000 people  3,787 immediately killed  >8,000 within two weeks ◦ Caused premature death for thousands more ◦ Light shown on need for environmental safety standards

 1986 ◦ Largest ever recorded uncontrolled radioactive release for any civilian Operation -32 died immediately -~5,000 have died from cancer and radiation exposure ◦ Released in air for 10 days -Contaminated millions of acres of farmland