Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
Environmental Problems
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, students should be able to:
- Explain how globalization affects the environment, including permeability of international borders, cultural and social integration across nations, and growth of transnational corporations and free trade agreements.
- Illustrate the structural-functional approach to understanding environmental problems, including the independence between humans and the natural environment, how changes in other aspects of society affect concerns about environmental problems, and the unintended environmental consequences of human activities.
- From the conflict perspective, explain how wealth, power, and the pursuit of profit underlie many environmental problems.
- Use the symbolic interactionist perspective to explain how corporations manipulate public perceptions by the use of “greenwashing” and “pinkwashing.”
- Describe how energy use worldwide is depleting natural resources and the problems this is causing especially with respect to global warming and climate change.
- Explain problems of air pollutions, land pollution and water pollution
- Explain health problems caused by commercial production of toxic chemicals, including the vulnerability of children and multiple chemical sensitivity disorder.
- Describe environmental injustice in the United States and around the world.
- Explain the social causes of environmental problems, including population growth, industrialization and economic development, and cultural values and attitudes.
- Describe environmental activist movements to reduce environmental problems, including environmental organizations, online activism, religious environmentalism, ecoterrorism, and the role of corporations in environmental management.
- Describe strategies to solve environmental problems by environmental education and “green” energy, including solar power, wind power, biofuels, hydrogen power, and green building.
- Describe international and government policies, programs, and regulations relating to environmental problems, including cap and trade programs, commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, policies on chemical safety, policies and regulations on energy use, taxes, and fuel efficiency standards.
KEY TERMS
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Chapter 13
acid rain 414
biodiversity 421
bioinvasion 404
deep ecology 424
deforestation 410
desertification 410
ecosystems 408
ecoterrorism 425
environmental footprint 411
environmental injustice 406
environmental racism 406
environmental refugees 405
e-waste 417
global warming 414
green energy 427
greenhouse gases 414
Green Revolving Funds
(GRFs) 433
Greenwashing 406
Kyoto Protocol 432
light pollution 421
multiple chemical sensitivity
419
pinkwashing 408
planned obsolescence 405
radical environmental
movement 424
sustainable development 433
tar sands 403
tar sands oil 403
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Chapter 13
LECTURE OUTLINE
I. THE GLOBAL CONTEXT: GLOBALIZATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT
A.Permeability of International Borders
1.Environmental problems such as global warming extend far beyond their source to affect the entire planet and its inhabitants.
2.Bioinvasion: the emergence of organisms into regions where they are not native
a.Bioinvasion is largely a product of the growth of global trade and tourism.
B.The Growth of Transnational Corporations and the Free Trade Agreements
1.The world’s economy is dominated by transnational corporations, many of which are implicated in environmentally destructive activities.
2.The World Trade Organization (WTO) and free trade agreements such as NAFTA and FTAA provide transnational corporations with privileges to pursue profits, expand markets, use natural resources, and exploit cheap labor in developing countries while weakening the ability of governments to protect natural resources or to implement environmental legislation.
3.Transnational corporations have influenced the world’s most powerful nations to institutionalize an international system of governance that values commercialism, corporate rights, and “free” trade over environment, human rights, worker rights, and human health.
II.SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
A. Structural-Functionalist Perspective
1.Focuses on how changes in one aspect of the social system affect other aspects of society.
a.As croplands become scarce people must find alternative livelihoods.
b.By 2020 there will be an estimated 50 million environmental refugees globally—individuals who have migrated because they can no longer secure a livelihood due to environmental problems.
2.Raises our awareness of latent dysfunctions—negative consequences of societal actions that are unintended and not widely recognized.
a.The more than 840,000 dams worldwide provide water to irrigate farms and supply 17% of the world’s electricity, yet dam building destroys wetlands and wildlife habitat, emits methane gas (that contributes to global warming), kills plant and animal life, and has displaced millions of people from their homes.
B. Conflict Perspective
1.Focuses on how wealth, power, and the pursuit of profit underlie many environmental problems.
2.Wealthy nations have higher per capita consumption of petroleum, wood, metals, cement, and other commodities that deplete the earth’s resources, emit pollutants, and generate massive amounts of waste.
3.The capitalistic pursuit of profit encourages making money from industry regardless of the damage done to the environment.
4.To maximize sales, manufacturers design products intended to become obsolete—a phenomenon referred to as planned obsolescence.
5.Industries use power and wealth to influence politicians’ environmental and energy policies as well as the public’s beliefs about environmental issues.
6.Environmental justice and environmental racism focuses on the tendency for marginalized populations to disproportionately experience adversity due to environmental problems.
C. Symbolic Interactionist Perspective
1. Focuses on how meanings, labels, and definitions learned through interaction and through the media affect population and environmental problems.
2.Large corporations and industries commonly use marketing and public relations strategies to construct favorable meanings of their corporation or industry.
3.Greenwashing: a business strategy in which environmentally damaging companies portray their corporate image and products as being “environmentally friendly” or socially responsible.
4.Pinkwashing: supporting breast cancer awareness even as the company uses or produces chemicals which are linked to cancer.
III.ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS: AN OVERVIEW
A.Ecosystems: the complex and dynamic relationships between forms of life and the environments they inhabit
1.Over the past 50 years, humans have altered ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any other comparable period of time in history.
B.Energy Use Worldwide: An Overview
1.Most of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels, which include petroleum (or oil), coal, and natural gas.
b.The major environmental problems facing the world today—air, land, and water pollution, destruction of habitats, biodiversity loss, global warming, and environmental illness are linked to the production and use of fossil fuels.
2.After fossil fuels, energy come from hydroelectric power (6.2%) and nuclear power (5.7%).
a.safety of nuclear power has been called into question.
C.Depletion of Natural Resources: Our Growing Environmental Footprint
1.Humans have used more of the earth’s natural resources since 1950 than in the million years preceding 1950.
2.Water supplies are being consumed by agriculture, by industry, and for domestic use.
a.By the year 2030, nearly half the world’s population will be living in areas of high water stress.
3.The demand for new land, fuel, and raw materials has resulted in deforestation—the conversion of forest land to non-forest land.
a.Consequences of deforestation include displacement of people and wild species from
their habitats; soil erosion, which can cause severe flooding; global warming; desertification.
4.Desertification: the degradation of semiarid land
5.The demands humanity makes on the Earth’s natural resources is known as the environmental footprint. A person’s environmental footprint is determined by the patterns of production and consumption in that person’s culture.
D. Air Pollution
1.Transportation vehicles, fuel combustion, industrial processes (such as the burning of coal and processing of minerals from mining), and solid waste disposal have contributed to growing levels of air pollutants, including carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, mercury, and lead.
a.In the United States, 6 out of 10 people live in counties where they are exposed to unhealthful levels of air pollution.
2. Indoor Air Pollution
a.Indoor air pollution from burning wood and biomass for heating and cooking is a significant cause of respiratory illness, lung cancer, and blindness in developing countries.
b.More than half of the world’s population cook food and generate heat by burning dung, wood, crop waste or coal on open fires or stoves without chimneys.
c.Even in affluent countries, much air pollution is invisible to the eye and exists in our homes, schools, workplaces, and public buildings, in the forms of lead dust (from old lead-based paint); secondhand tobacco smoke; by-products of combustion (e.g., carbon monoxide) from stoves, furnaces, fireplaces, heaters, and dryers; and other common household, personal, and commercial products.
3.Destruction of the Ozone Layer
a.The ozone layer of Earth’s atmosphere protects life on Earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.
b.The ozone layer has been weakened by the use of certain chemicals, particularly chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used in refrigerators, air conditioners, spray cans, etc.
4.Acid rain
a.Air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, mix with precipitation to form acid rain.
b.Polluted rain, snow, and fog contaminate crops, forests, lakes, and rivers.
E.Global Warming and Climate Change
1.Global warming refers to the increasing average global air temperature, caused mainly by the accumulation of various gases that collect in the atmosphere.
2.Causes of Global Warming
a.The prevailing scientific view is that greenhouse gases—primarily carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—accumulate in the atmosphere and act like the glass in a greenhouse, holding heat from the sun close to the earth.
b.Most scientists believe that global warming has resulted from the marked increase in global atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases since industrialization began.
c.Despite scientific evidence that global warming is caused by human activity, one-third of U.S. adults believe it is caused mostly by natural changes in the environment.
d.Even if greenhouse gases are stabilized, global warming will continue for hundreds of years because global warming that has already occurred contributes to further warming of the planet – a process known as a positive feedback loop.
3.Effects of Global Warming and Climate Change
a.Global warming and climate change are projected to affect regions in different ways.
i.Climate change kills 30,000 people per year.
b.Effects of global warming include the following:
i.Melting Ice and Sea-Level Rise
ii.Flooding and Spread of Disease
iii.Threat of Species Extinction
iv.Extreme Weather
v.Forest Fires
b.As temperature increases, some regions will experience heavier rain and other regions will get drier.
c.Global warming results in shifts in plant and animal habitats and the extinction of some species.
d.Regions that experience increased rainfall may face increases in waterborne diseases and diseases transmitted by insects.
e.As global warming melts glaciers and permafrost (soil at or below freezing temperature for 2 or more years), sea levels will rise.
f.In urban areas, flooding can be a problem where storm drains and waste management systems are inadequate, resulting in:
F.Land Pollution
1.About 30% of the world’s surface is land, which provides soil to grow the food we eat.
2.Nuclear Waste
a.Nuclear waste contains radioactive plutonium, which is linked to cancer and genetic defects.
b.The U.S. has waste stored in 121 temporary sites in 39 states with no long-term repository in the U.S.
c.Recognizing the hazards of nuclear power plants and their waste, Germany became the first country to order all of its 19 nuclear power plants shut down by 2020.
3.Solid Waste
a.In1960, each person in the U.S. generated 2.7 lbs. of garbage each day; this figure increased to 3.7 pounds in 1980 and 4.3 pounds in 2009.
b.About one-half of solid waste is recycled or composted; the rest is taken to landfills.
c.Solid waste includes discarded electrical appliances and electronic equipment, known as e-waste.
4.Pesticides
a.Pesticides are used worldwide in the growing of crops and gardens, outdoor mosquito control, the care of lawns, parks, and golf courses, and indoor pest control.
b.Pesticides contaminate food, water, and air and can be absorbed through the skin, swallowed, or inhaled.
c.Many pesticides are considered potential carcinogens and neurotoxins.
d.Even when a pesticide is found to be hazardous and is banned in the United States, other countries from which we import food may continue to use it.
G.Water Pollution
1.Our water is being polluted by pesticides, vehicle exhaust, acid rain, oil spills, and industrial, military, and agricultural waste.
2.Water pollution is most severe in developing countries, where more than 1 billion people lack access to clean waters.
3.In the U.S., one indicator of water pollution is the number of fish advisories issued that warn against the consumption of certain fish caught in local waters because of contamination with such pollutants as mercury and dioxin.
4.Pollutants also find their way into the water we drink.
5.Fracking, used in the production of natural gas, poses methane risks.
H. Chemicals, Carcinogens, and Health Problems
1.Prevalence of potentially hazardous chemicals in human’s blood
a.During a 2004 World Health Organization convention, 44 different hazardous chemicals were found in the bloodstream of top EU officials.
b.In a study of umbilical cord blood of 10 newborns, researchers found an average of 200 industrial chemicals, pesticides, and other pollutants.
2.Prevalence of hazardous chemicals in the environment
a.In the U.S., the EPA has required testing on only about 200 of the more than 80,000 chemicals on the market.
b.Long-term exposure to substances found in common household, personal, and commercial products can affect the nervous system, reproductive system, liver, kidneys, heart, and blood.
c.Children are more vulnerable than adults to the harmful effects of most pollutants.
6.Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Disorder (MCS), also known as environmental illness
a.A condition whereby individuals experience adverse reactions when exposed to low levels of chemicals found in everyday substances (vehicle exhaust, fresh paint, housecleaning products, perfume and other fragrances, synthetic building materials, and numerous other petrochemical-based products).
b.Symptoms of MCS include headache, burning eyes, difficulty breathing, stomach distress/nausea, loss of mental concentration, and dizziness.
I.Environmental Injustice (also called “environmental racism”)
1.Environmental injustice: the tendency for socially and politically marginalized groups to bear the brunt of environmental ills.
2.Environmental Injustice in the United States
a.In U.S., polluting industries, industrial and waste facilities and transportation arteries (that generate vehicle emissions pollution) are often located in minority communities.
b.More than half (56%) of people living within 3 km (1.8 miles) of a hazardous waste site are people of color.
3.Environmental Injustice around the world
a.Environmental injustice affects marginalized populations around the world, including minority groups, indigenous peoples, and other vulnerable and impoverished communities, such as peasants and nomadic tribes.
b.These groups are often powerless to fight against government and corporate powers that sustain environmentally damaging industries.
c.Minority populations and indigenous peoples around the globe are facing massive degradation of their environments that threatens to irreversibly alter, indeed destroy, their ways of life and cultures.
J.Threats to Biodiversity
1. Biodiversity refers to the enormous variety of life, which consists of an estimated 8.7 million species on earth.
2. Biodiversity provides food, medicines, fibers, and fuel; purifies air and fresh water; pollinates crops and vegetation; and makes soils fertile.
3.In recent decades we have witnessed mass extinction rates of diverse life forms: on average, one species of plant or animal life becomes extinct every 3 hours.
4.Human activity is the primary cause of disappearing species today.
K.Light Pollution
1.Light pollution refers to artificial lighting that is annoying, unnecessary, and/or harmful to life forms on Earth.
2.Light pollution at night contributes to sleep disorders, depression and other mood disorders and may even be related to breast cancer.
3.Light pollution has adverse effects on the migration, feeding and reproductive patterns of many animal species.
IV. SOCIAL CAUSES OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
A.Population Growth
1.The world’s population is growing by about 80 million people a year.
2.Population growth places increased demands on natural resources and results in increased waste.
3.However, population growth itself is not as critical as the ways in which populations produce, distribute, and consume goods and services
B. Industrialization and Economic Development
1. Industrialized countries consume more energy and natural resources and contribute more pollution to the environment than poor countries.
2.The relationship between level of economic development and environmental pollution is curvilinear, rather than linear.
a.Industrial emissions are minimal in regions with low levels of economic development,.
b.Industrial emissions are high in the middle-level development range as developing countries move through the early stages of industrialization,.
c.At more advanced industrial stages, industrial emissions decline, because heavy-polluting manufacturing industries decline and cleaner service industries increase and because rising incomes are associated with a greater demand for environmental control and cleaner technologies.
3.However, a positive linear correlation has been demonstrated between per capita income and national carbon dioxide emissions.
4.In less developed countries environmental problems result from poverty and the priority of economic survival over environmental concerns.
C. Cultural Values and Attitudes
1. Individualism
a.A characteristic of U.S. culture, it puts individual interests over collective welfare.
b.Individuals engage in countless behaviors that provide enjoyment and convenience at the expense of the environment: long showers, use of dishwashing machines, recreational boating, frequent meat eating, air conditioning, driving gas-guzzling SUVs, etc.
2.Consumerism