Environmental Value Systems
Inputs of system: culture, education, religion, politics, socioeconomics, family, media
Processes: Evaluation, Thinking, Assimilating knowledge, agreeing or disagreeing
Outputs: Actions, choices, views, decisions
What is the Environmental value system?
a set of complex interactions between multiple interrelated parts.
What is a system?
"energy can neither be created nor destroyed"
what is the law of conservation of energy?
the management of the exploitation of resources that allows for replacement of the resources and full recovery of the ecosystems that may be affected by extraction
What is sustainability?
the addition of substances into the natural environment at a rate higher than they can be rendered harmless
What is pollution?
Nature is there to provide humans with benefit and we are there to manage sustainable global systems. This is often believed to be done through exploitation of natural capital for economic growth and regulated through legal agreements.
What is Anthropocentrism?
Both matter and energy can move in and out of...
What is an Open system
Point at which a system has been pushed to a new state of equilibrium
What is a tipping point?
Natural resources that produce sustainable natural income of goods and services
what is natural capital?
Pollution that comes from a single identifiable place
What is point-source pollution?
A global disaster that happened as a result of technocentric thinking about energy advancement and led to numerous global environmental policies and decision making.
What is the Chernobyl Disaster?
Examples: Percolation, Advection, Energy going up the food chain
What is a transfer?
promotes stability in a system as it reverses the change and returns the system to the original state of equilibrium
What is negative feedback?
the amount of land and water that is required to support a human population at a given standard of living
What is ecological footprint?
Pollution that occurs suddenly and in large quantities vs. long-term pollution at low concentrations
What is acute vs. chronic pollution?
Key thinker, poet, and philosopher who wrote about preservationism and living simply/in harmony with nature in his book Walden
Who is Henry David Thoreau?
Inputs: light, O2, rain, runoff, plants & animals
Outputs: heat, evaporation, plants & animals
Transfers: organisms, water flow
Transformations: evaporation, condensation, photosynthesis, cellular respiration
What is a lake?
an ecosystem's mechanisms that will maintain the system in a steady state during a disturbance vs an ecosystem's mechanisms that will return the system to a steady state after any disturbance
What is resistance vs resilience?
a formal process that is put into action before something major can be changed to identify impacts that may result
What is an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)?
An organic compound that is resistant to degradation and is toxic to human health
What is a persistent organic pollutant (POP)?
An oil project that was the subject of intense debate between all three EVS's, specifically for economic, and Ecological reasons. The project has since been stalled as a result of revocation of the permit by the US Government.
What is the Keystone XL Pipeline?
Proposed by James Lovelock in 1972, it suggests that all organisms on the planet interact with their biotic and abiotic surroundings to form a synergetic system.
What is the Gaia hypothesis?
A well known event in the US in the 1900s where a positive feedback loop of soil degradation and destruction of agriculture led to a tipping point
What is the dust bowl?
A 2001 UN evaluation that assessed the human impacts on the environment. It concluded that "humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time."
What is the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA)?
1962 book in which the author advocated against the use of DDT as an insecticide, and led to a new wave of conservationism that in part led to the creation of the EPA.
What is Silent Spring by Rachel Carson?