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A Story . . .
According to this story, King Shihram was a tyrant who oppressed his subjects.
One of his subjects, a wise man named Sissa ibn Dahir, invented the game of
chess for the king to play, to show him that a king needed all his subjects and
should take good care of them. King Shihram was so pleased that he ordered
that the game of chess should be preserved in the temples, and said that it
was the best thing he knew of to train generals in the art of war, a glory to
religion and the world, and the foundation of all justice.
Then King Shihram asked Sissa ben Dahir what reward he wanted. Sissa
answered that he didn't want any reward, but the king insisted. Finally Sissa
said that he would take this reward: the king should put one grain of wheat on
the first square of a chessboard, two grains of wheat on the second square,
four grains on the third square, eight grains on the fourth square, and so on,
doubling the number of grains of wheat with each square (an exponential rate
of growth).
"What a dummy!" thought the king. "That's a tiny reward; I would have given
him much more." He ordered his slaves to bring out the chessboard and they
started putting on the wheat. Everything went well for a while, but the king was
surprised to see that by the time they got halfway through the chessboard the
32nd square required more than four billion grains of wheat, or about 100,000
kilos of wheat. Now Sissa didn't seem so stupid anymore. Even so, King
Shihram was willing to pay up.
But as the slaves began on the second half of the chessboard, King Shihram
gradually realized that he couldn't pay that much wheat - in fact, to finish the
chessboard you would need as much wheat as six times the weight of all the
living things on Earth.
(London, 1843-1871, Biographical dictionary of Ibn Khallikan, vol. III, p. 71).
http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/islam/literature/chesswheat.htm
Exponential Growth
Defn: quantity increases by a fixed percentage per unit of time – it’s
deceptive!!!
Lecture 1
Introduction
Environment: “environner” – to surround
consider biotic & abiotic factors
Environmental Science: interdisciplinary study
of how humans interact with other living
organisms and the nonliving environment
Major Fields of Study Related to
Environmental Science
A Brief Historical Perspective
Environmental Science:
• Discovery of carbon dioxide accumulation in
the atmosphere, 1957 - Roger Revelle and
Charles Keeling
• Publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson,
Sept. 27, 1962 –
• Discovery of atmospheric ozone depleting
chemicals, 1974 -- F. Sherwood Rowland and
Mario J. Molina
Man-made Disasters:
• Fukushima Daiichi, March 11, 2011
• Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform, Gulf of Mexico, April 20, 2010
• Coal ash disaster, Tennessee, United States, Dec. 22, 2008
• Exxon Valdez oil spill, Alaska, United States, March 24, 1989
• Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Ukraine, April 26, 1986
• Love Canal, 1976
• Three Mile Island, 1979
• Minimata "disease," Japan, May 1, 1956
• Leaded gasoline, Oct. 29, 1924
Leadership
• John Snow (1813 - 1858)
• Alice Hamilton (1869 - 1970) - Radium Girls
• John Muir (1838 - 1913)
• George Washington Carver (1865 - 1943)
• Ken Saro-Wiwa (1941 - 1995)
Sustainability
The Central Theme
• Natural capital: supported by solar capital
– Natural resources
– Natural services
• E.g., nutrient cycling
• Degradation of natural capital through human activities
• Scientific solutions
• Trade-offs/compromise
Environmentally Sustainable Societies
Protect Natural Capital and Live off Its Income
• Live off natural income
(HW exercise)
• Human activity and its affect on the earth’s natural
capital
Think of natural capital as money. You inherit $1,000,000 (natural
capital). You earn 10% annual interest at the bank ~ $100,000 your
income. However . . . You use $200,000 each year. How long before you
run out of natural capital?
1,000,000
+
100,000
= 1,100,000
-
200,000
900,000
+
90,000 =
990,000
-
200,000
790,000
+
79,000 =
869,000
-
200,000
669,000
+
66,900
=
735,000
-
200,000
535,000
+
53,500
=
588,000
-
200,000
388,000
+
38,000
=
426,800
-
200,000
226,800
+
22,680
=
249,480
-
200,000
49,480
+
4,948
=
54,428
Terms: (add to notes)
• Renewable Resources
• Sustainable yield
• Environmental Degradation
Overexploiting Shared Renewable Resources:
Tragedy of the Commons
• Three types of property or resource rights
– Private property
– Common property
– Open access renewable resources
• Tragedy of the commons
– Solutions
Tragedy of the Commons
• Therein is the tragedy. Each
man is locked into a system
that compels him to increase
his [input] without limit – in a
world that is limited. Ruin is
the destination toward which
all men rush, each pursuing
his own best interest in a
society that believes in the
freedom of the commons
(Hardin, 1968, p. 1244).
Terms
• Nonrenewable resources
• Reuse
• Recycle
Consumption of Natural Resources
Our Ecological Footprints Are Growing
• Ecological footprint concept
– Biological capacity
– Ecological footprint
Natural Capital Use and Degradation
For everyone to live as Americans?
Case Study: China’s New Affluent
Consumers
•Leading consumer of various foods and goods
Wheat, rice, and meat
Coal, fertilizers, steel, and cement
•Second largest consumer of oil
• Two-thirds of the most polluted cities are in China
• Projections, by 2020
– Largest consumer and producer of cars
– World’s leading economy in terms of GDP PPP
Pollution Comes from a Number of Sources
• Sources of pollution
– Point
• E.g., smokestack
– Nonpoint
• E.g., pesticides blown into the air
• Main type of pollutants
– Biodegradable
– Nondegradable
• Unwanted effects of pollution
Experts Have Identified Five Basic 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
• Insufficient knowledge of how nature works
Poverty Has Harmful Environmental and Health
Effects
• Population growth affected
• Malnutrition
• Premature death
• Limited access to adequate sanitation facilities and clean
water
Prices Do Not Include the Value of Natural
Capital
• Companies do not pay the environmental cost of resource use
• Goods and services do not include the harmful environmental
costs
• Companies receive tax breaks and subsidies
• Economy may be stimulated but there may be a degradation
of natural capital
We Can Learn to Make Informed
Environmental Decisions
• Scientific research
• Identify problem and multiple solutions
• Consider human values
Steps Involved in Making an Environmental
Decision
Individuals Matter: Aldo Leopold
• 5–10% of the population can bring about major social change
• Aldo Leopold: environmental ethics
– A leader of the conservation and environmental
movements of the 20th century
• Land ethic
– Wrote: A Sand County Almanac
Solutions For Environmental or
Sustainability Revolution
Nature has sustained itself for billions of years by using solar
energy, biodiversity, population control, and nutrient cycling—
lessons from nature that we can apply to our lifestyles and
economies.