Precautionary principal

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Chapter 12

Environmental Challenges

Amazon Rainforest, Brazil: Deforestation (or more accurately, conversion of natural or wild lands into human managed areas) has become a major environmental issue in the Amazon rainforest. This image of the rainforest reveals on one hand; the continual spread of environmental impacts from logging, ranching, road construction, and human settlement. On the other hand it is also documenting the spread of development, including roads, houses, farms and ranches jobs, cities. The Belo Monte Dam project is a great controversy right now. The Brazilian government needs to have an energy source to supply the energy infrastructure for their poor North East and Amazon regions. (These areas are about the same size as two thirds of the size of the USA ) Dams are renewable resources that supply relatively clean energy, but at a trade off to the local forests and indigenous peoples. Look up Belo Monte for the discussion. Most of the time the media plays it off as a dramatic controversy and struggle between bad development and suffering colorful people. Certain elements get all passionate and file lawsuits, the politicians get all dithery, and the dam costs many times what it should when it is eventually built. Hawaii had similar issue here with the H3 construction, and the Super Ferry project. They are now going at it over the rail system.

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Ecosystems

Terms

  • Environment
  • Ecosystems
  • Biodiversity
  • Biosphere

The above concepts are all related to an eco-centric worldview where the primary concern is for understanding the natural systems, the interrelatedness of all the physical and biological processes, and the amazing relationships and balances in the natural world.

Note that these concepts and related ones like Ecology, environmentalism and global systems approaches, ONLY DATE FROM THE 1980s. I took the very first ecology classes offered and they were revolutionary in that they derive from many disciplines such as geography, botany, zoology, The remote sensing data from satellites and the GIS systems, have allowed for mapping of all the surface of the Earth. Computers can now store the data and have programs to run simulations and make predictions and hopefully decisions for planning purposes.

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Ecological Concepts

Ecosystems (cont’d)

  • First Law of Ecology
  • Natural Capital
  • Renewable Resources
  • Non-Renewable Resources
  • Earth’s Biodiversity
  • Ecosystems

A resource is something of use to humans. Until we put a value on it and/or apply our economic activities to it; is just there. Or wait a minute, maybe just being there is enough. Ecological service is the concept that the elements of the natural world such as trees or fish are there because the system needs them. If we destroy the system it will degrade or even stop functioning. We can harvest to the point of destroying the biologically based resources and they will no longer be renewable.

We can may also be able to disrupt the essential physical processes of the globe to such a point that the whole thing goes blooey. This is clearly probable when you know of our nuclear warheads destructive capacity. The video you saw on GMO, and the issues of excessive or wasteful behaviors that are fueling the Global warming controversy are less clear. Now the precautionary principle sounds like a more rational, if still oddly reactionary, ideal.

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Ecosystems (cont’d)

Environmental Degradation

  • Definition
  • Anthropogenic
  • Environmental

Restoration

Human caused (anthropogenic) changes can affect both the quantity of an item and quality of the environment. (So can things like hurricanes.) We can also reverse some problems, like through the multi billion dollar governmental programs known as the Superfund. This targeted old industrial and waste sites for clean up. Wetland regulations and protection laws, restoration of degraded ecosystems, and conservation biology principles are all part of this.

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Ecosystems (cont’d)

Common Property Resources

  • Common Property Resources vs. Open-Access Resources

The basic issue here is who benefits directly from the resources. This is tied to makes the decisions and how the decisions are made. Private property owners make their own decisions up to a point, as governmental regulations exist for most every project. They have long required the zoning compliances, health Your home is still your castle so long as you do not build it in on the top of a mountain or in a wetland. (So much for strategic defense redoubts and moats.) Any large project or one that uses federal funds must have an Environmental Impact Statement. EIS which describes the ecological changes and proposes solutions to any issues.

Common property resources are often public resources and some level of government makes choices among various options. For example we have areas in our National or State level Forest Systems that are exclusively set aside as wilderness, for endangered species protection or watershed protection. Other areas are managed as productive forests for wood products, grazing, or mining and many contain reservoirs that supply electricity and water for irrigation. Still other lnds have ski resorts and recreational developments on the. This is called the multiple use concept where the highest and best use of the common property is considered including ecological limits, productive profits and demands and needs of the public. It is a question of trade offs and wise use.

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Nonrenewable Energy Resources

Oil

  • Future of Oil
  • Reserves to Production (R/P) Ratio
  • Oil Production and Consumption
  • OPEC
  • Cartel
  • Oil Embargo

Your book does not clearly state the difference between the two types of scarcity. One is where the resource is or is not found. The above map shows this. Note how big Saudi Arabia and the Mideast’s reserves are and also Venezuela, when compared to the USA. The situation may change as more reserves are found in places like Brazil, Russia, or Africa.

The concept of economic scarcity refers to the ability to actually use or buy the resource. Thus much of the developing world cannot use their own oil to fund their own development at home, instead they sell it at higher prices. Countries like Venezuela have grand schemes and communistic bombast blaming their problems on external sources, but seem unable to actually bring their people out of poverty. Global politics revolves around protecting and profiting from the oil and arms industries.

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Nonrenewable Energy Resources

Oil

  • Future of Oil
  • Reserves to Production (R/P) Ratio
  • Oil Production and Consumption
  • OPEC
  • Cartel
  • Oil Embargo

The petroleum we are using is really the essence of past life concentrated and stored underground. Once we decide to use it, whether for plastics or pharmaceuticals, or building materials or clothing, it is not going to easily turn back into oil. When we burn hydrocarbons in our combustion engines we transform its chemical state and release the carbon and other chemicals back in to the atmosphere and biosphere. This is in essence releasing all the stored energy from the past into the present. It is uncertain what these additions will do to the current biosphere. Think of it as bringing all the food and canned goods and everything else you have had stored in the cupboards, the basement or the garage for years into you kitchen and using it all to make dinner.

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Nonrenewable Energy Resources (cont’d)

Coal

  • Coal Distribution and Consumption
  • Challenges of Coal
  • Mountaintop Removal (MTR)
  • Acid Rain

Coal is a main type of fuel for our modern society. Without the energy generated by coal we would not have electricity. Mining creates dramatic landscape alterations. We have many regulations on the extraction and burning of coal in the USA and thus little no pollution from those nasty old smokestacks.

Acid rain is not actually falling acid from the sky. It refers to the pH of water when it condenses in clouds around a nucleus of a larger molecule. For example, CO2.

Natural rain includes a relatively large normal range from basic to acidic. The rain here in Hawaii picks up particles from the escaping volcanic gases and always has an ACIDIC RAIN! from that on the Big Island (vog). At the same time sea breezes pick up Salt and carry it on land (SALT RAIN!) Calcium and other elements in the soils (or the lack of them in a particular place) help balance out these effects and eventually everything goes back to NEUTRAL! Or whatever the normal local conditions are. The problem is a higher acidity of the rain or a change in the rains acidity in an area where this was not usually happening, and any environmental impacts.

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Nonrenewable Energy Resources (cont’d)

Uranium

  • Nuclear Energy

Except for the problem with the disposal of the highly radioactive waste, and the vulnerability to human error (Chernobyl), natural disasters (like in Japan), or terrorism, nuclear energy is clean, renewable and cheap.

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Renewable Energy Resources

Biomass Energy

  • Biogas / Biofuel
  • Benefits
  • Drawbacks

An alternative to petroleum is to grow plants in monocultures and then just distill the sugars into alcohol to be burned in the gas tank. This may cause more natural ecosystems to be converted into industrial scale monocultures of sugar cane. This energy crisis only applies to the demand for energy in our industrial electrified and gluttonous consumer societies.

The real energy crisis on the planet has nothing to do with any of this oil and gas stuff. The real energy crisis is in the developing countries and has to do with wood. How can the poor women of the world cook their meals or heat their houses?

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Hydropower

Renewable Energy Resources (cont’d)

  • Large dams vs. Small Hydropower (SHP)

Q: Are SHP energy systems possible for large cities? Why not in downspouts?

Three gorges dam in China, Itaipu, Aswan, Hoover dam etc. These are the powerhouses behind our modern level of living. Yet they are very disruptive to the aquatic ecosystems.

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Solar and Wind Energy

Renewable Energy Resources (cont’d)

  • Passive vs. Active Solar Collection
  • Wind Farms

Totally passive and renewable, they do not alter the state of the planet, or diminish the resource when it is used to make energy. Wind farms have environmental impacts in terms of bird kills, and they visually impact the landscapes. Yet what would we think of Holland without its windmills?

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Geothermal Energy

  • Definition

Renewable Energy Resources (cont’d)

Alternative

Energy

This is a huge potential source of energy especially here in Hawaii.

Human-Environment Interactions (cont’d)

What a Geographer Sees:

Environmental Change

Why is this delta disappearing? Let me tell you a story about the ice ages and the huge flows that created it 10,000 years ago. That water flow with all its silt to build the delta has been turned into the trickle now known as the Mississippi River. No more input of materials into the system, means the natural forces of waves and storms will destroy the loosely consolidated soils. ALL of these are natural processes and have nothing to do with man.

Another reason for the accelerating disappearance of the delta is that the Army Corps of Engineers diverted the silt bearing water from the Eastern channels. Look at new mini-deltas being created in the western side in the Atchafalaya Region. New Orleans is sunk.

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Human-Environment Interactions (cont’d)

What a Geographer Sees:

Environmental Change

Natural processes cause immense changes. The recent photos from this years East or Gulf coast hurricane show how these outer barrier island can easily dissappear in one storm, only to be reformed elsewhere. I also mistrust this photo set. The one on the far right seems to have been taken at a higher altitude. Of course no governmental agency, academic institution or environmentalist activist would do such a thing to make their point. Right? Right….

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