AP Environmental Science Study Guide

Chapter 1: Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and Sustainability
1-1: What are Some Principals of Sustainability?
Sustainability - the capacity of the natural Earth’s systems and human cultural systems to survive, flourish, and adapt to changing environmental conditions into the very long-term future.
Environment – everything around us
We are utterly dependent on the earth for clean air and water, food, shelter, energy, fertile soil, and everything else in the planet’s life-support system
Environmental Science – an interdisciplinary study of how humans interact with the living and nonliving parts of their environment.
Integrates: natural sciences (Biology, Geology, and Chemistry), social sciences (Geography, Economics, and Political Science), humanities (ethics)
3 goals:
To learn how life on the Earth has survived and thrived
To understand how we interact with the environment
To find ways to deal with environmental problems and live more sustainably
Ecology – the biological science that studies how living things interact with one another and with their environment
Organisms – living things
Each organisms belongs to a species, a group of organisms that has a unique set of characteristics that distinguish it from other groups of organisms
Ecosystem – a set of organisms within a defined area or volume that interact with one another and with their environment of nonliving matter and energy.
Environmentalism – a social movement dedicated to trying to protect the Earth’s life-support system for all forms of life.
Scientific Principals of Sustainability: lessons from nature, lead to from science based research there are 3 major natural factors that have played key roles in the long-term sustainability of life on this planet.
Dependence on Solar Energy – use to produce nutrients or the chemicals necessary for their own life processes along with those of most other animals including humans; solar energy
Biodiversity – the variety of genes, organisms, species, and ecosystems in which organism exist and interact
Chemical Cycling (Nutrient Cycling): the circulation of chemicals necessary for life from the environment (mostly from soil and water) through organisms and back o the environment.
This means there is little waste in nature, other than the human world
Natural Capital – the natural resources and natural services that keep us and other species alive and support human economics.
Natural Resources – materials and energy in nature that are essential or useful to humans
Resources –anything that we can obtain from the environment to meet our needs and wants
Sustainable Yield – the highest rate at which we can use a renewable resource indefinitely without reducing its available supply
Refuse (don’t use), Reduce (use less), Reuse, and Recycle
Classified as: inexhaustible resources (continuous supply is expected to last for last for at least 6 billion years), renewable resources(can be replenished by natural processes within hours to centuries, as long as we do not use it up faster than natural processes can renew it), nonrenewable/depletable resources (exist in fixed quantities)
Natural Services/Ecosystem Services – processes provided by healthy ecosystems
One vital natural service is chemical/nutrient cycling
Important component: topsoil – a vital natural resource that provides us and most other land-dwelling species with food
Degrade natural capital – using renewable resources faster than they can be replaced.
Solutions - Sustainability begins with actions at personal and local levels
Social Science Principals of Sustainability:
Full Cost Pricing – include the harmful environmental and health cost of producing and using goods and services in the market price
Win-Win Solutions – “I win, you win, and the Earth wins”
A responsibility to future generations
Development of Countries –
More-developed countries – industrialized nations with high average income
17% of the world’s population
Less-developed countries – a mix between middle-income, moderately developed countries, and low-income, least developed countries
83% of the world’s population
1-2: How Are Our Ecological Footprints Affecting the Earth?
Environmental Footprint – the amount of land and water needed to supply a person or an area with renewable resources such as food and water, and that are needed to absorb and recycle the wastes and pollution produced by such a resource use.
Environmental Degradation – we are living unsustainably by wasting, depleting, and degrading the Earth’s natural capital at an accelerating rate.
AKA – Natural Capital Degradation
Pollution – which is a contamination of the environment by a chemical or other agent
Point Source – single, identifiable sources
Nonpoint Source – dispersed and often difficult to identify
Pollution Cleanup – involves cleaning up or diluting pollutants after we have produced them
Pollution Prevention – Efforts focused on greatly reducing or eliminating the production of pollutants
Tragedy of the Commons: the degradation of a shared or open-access resource occurs because each user of the resources 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 anyway, it’s a renewable resource.”
2 major ways to deal with this difficult problem:
Use a shared or open-access renewable resource at a rate well below its estimated sustainable yield by using less of the resource
Convert shared renewable resources to private ownership

Per Capita Ecological Footprint – the average ecological footprint of an individual in a given country or area

Per Capita Ecological Footprint: the average ecological footprint of an individual in a given country or area.
Affluence – wealth
IPAT Equation: Impact (I) = Population (P) X Affluence (A) X Technology (T)

Most less-developed countries, the key factor in total environmental impact is usually population size (P) as a growing number of poor people struggle to stay alive
More-developed countries, the key factor is overall environmental impact is affluence (A), which can result in high rates of per capita resources use, pollution, and resource depletion

Cultural Changes can Affect/Effect our Ecological Footprint:
Hunter-Gatherers – who obtained food by hunting wild animals or scavenging their remains, and gathering wild plants
3 major cultural changes have occurred: Each change gave us more energy and new technologies with which to alter and control more of the planet’s resources to meet our basic needs and increasing wants. Results are greater resources use, pollution, and environmental degradation as they allowed us to dominate the planet and expand our ecological footprints
Agricultural Revolution
Industrial-Medical Revolution
Information-Globalization Revolution
Fourth Major Change: Sustainability Revolution
Which we could learn to live more sustainability with smaller ecological footprints, during this century

1-3: Why Do We Have Environmental Problems?
Several Causes of Environmental Problems:
Population growth
Wasteful and unsustainable resource use
Poverty
Failure to include the harmful environmental costs of goods and services in their market prices
Increasing isolation from nature
Exponential Growth: occurs when a quantity such as the human population increases at a fixed percentage per unit of time --- Starts of slowly
Slow the population growth –ways to do this include:
Reducing poverty through economic development
Promoting family planning
Elevating the status of women
The lifestyles of many consumers in more-developed and less-developed countries are built on growing affluence, which results in high levels of consumption and the resulting environmental degradation, wastes, and pollution.
Downside: Higher levels of consumption expand a person’s ecological footprint.
Downside: wealth allows affluent consumes to obtain their resources from almost anywhere in the world without seeing the harmful environmental and health impacts of their higher consumption lifestyles.
Poverty – a condition in which people are unable to fulfill their basic needs for adequate food, water, shelter, health care, and education.
Causes a number of harmful environmental and health effects
Poorest people focus daily lives on:
Getting enough food and water
Getting cooking and heating fuel to survive
By doing this individuals collectively:
Degrade forest
Topsoil
Grasslands
Fisheries
Wildlife
Some of the world’s poorest people have learned how to take care of their environment as a part of their long-term survival strategy
Pollution and environmental degradation can worsen the poverty of people:
Malnutrition – caused by a lack of protein and other nutrients needed for good health
Limited access to adequate sanitation facilities and clean drinking water
Severe respiratory disease that people get from breathing the smoke of open fires or poorly vented stoves used for heating and cooking inside their dwellings
Companies using resources to provide goods for consumers generally are not required to pay for most of the harmful environmental and health cost for supplying such goods.
Example: Timber companies pay the cost of clear-cutting the forest but do NOT pay for the resulting environmental degradation and loss of wildlife habitat.
Because the prices of goods and services do not include most of the harmful environmental and human health cost, consumers have no effective way to evaluate the harmful effects, on their own health an on the Earth’s life-support systems, of producing and using these goods and services.
Example: Producing and using gasoline results in air pollution and other problems that damage the environment and people’s health. Estimated real cost of gasoline in the U.S. should be about $3.18 per liter ($12 per gallon).
Subsidies – tax breaks and payments given to companies, from the government (tax payers), to assist the company with using resources to run their business.
Helps to create jobs and stimulate economics, but environmentally harmful subsidies encourage the depletion and degradation of natural capital.
Isolation from nature is increasing:
Our artificial urban environments, increasing use of cell phones, computers, and other technological devices isolate us from the natural world
Many people do not know the full story of where their food, water, and other goods come from
Many people are unaware of the amounts of wastes and pollutants they produce, where they go, and how the wastes and pollutants affect the environment
We are suffering from natural deficit disorder
Environmental Worldview - Your set of assumptions and values reflecting how you think the world works and what you think your role in the world should be
Environmental Ethics – the study of our various beliefs about what is right and wrong with how we treat the environment, provides important ways to examine our worldviews
Planetary Management Worldview - holds that we are separate from and in charge of nature, that nature exists mainly to meet our daily needs and increasing wants, and that we an use our ingenuity and technology to manage the earth’s life-support systems – mostly our benefit into the distant future.
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, or stewards of the earth.
Environmental Wisdom Worldview – holds that we are part of, and dependent on, nature and that the earth’s life-support system exists for all species, not just for us.

1-4: What is an Environmentally Sustainable Society?
Environmentally Sustainable Society – should be our ultimate goal, one meets the current and future basic resources needs of its people in a just and equitable manner without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their basic needs
Lesson: Protect your capital and live on the income it provides. Deplete or waste your capital and you will move from a sustainable to an unsustainable lifestyle.
Natural Income – living sustainable, the renewable resources such as plants, animals, soil, clean air, and clean water, provided by the Earth’s natural capital