Two major environmental challenges that are faced by society are a high rate of resource
consumption and finding a sustainable way of providing food for all the world’s population
without destroying biological communities. These two very closely hand in hand.I felt that I
had a decent understanding overall of the three chapters, but can stand to always expand
and learn more. One section that I hand less understanding in was 1.4. “ describe the steps
that provide a frame work for addressing environmental problems.” I was actually surprised
that I did not have more knowledge in this area. That what I appreciate about the testing
your knowledge ability. It gives me an idea of the areas that I need to spend more time
studying that I may have other wise skimmed more loosely in my studies.A piece of this
that was new to me was the IPAT Model. This describes the relationship between
environmental impacts and the forces that drive them. The equation for this is I=PxAxT. To
me the break down of this made logical sense and could lead to many helpful pathways in
finding possible solutions so environmental issues.I was very surprised at how little I did
know about the environment. I often hear about renewable energy and non renewable
energy in the news. I had no Idea of what either of those meant. This weeks reading really
opened my eyes into some of the challenges we face when it comes to the resources we
use. I think that one of the environmental challenges we face is the over use of our
resources. As our population grows and the fact that people are living longer the use of non
renewable energy sources will continue to become depleted. Those sources such as coal,
natural gas, and oil, do not renew . The United States is considered a highly developed
country and we consume a lot of the earth resources. In such abundance that even the
renewable energy sources don't have enough time to renew itself. During the reading I
learned about sustainable consumption. The idea of voluntary simplicity made me think of
all the things we feel we need but really could live without.My "Build Your Proficiency"
was not as good as I would like them to be, upon answering the questions, I felt like there
were a lot of information that I had no knowledge of. Science have always been my best
subject, but I am thinking that because it is environmental that I have a lot of reading and
studying to do. My scores were 39%/40% and 50%, I planned to do a lot of studying. I feel
that mu results showed a great deal of lack in understanding the challenges.The two major
environmental challenges that I feel society is faced with is first "Air Pollution" there is so
much carbon in the air, that decreases the air quality, In the state of Texas, when an
individual must have their vehicle inspected, they now do an emission test, this test checks
the level of air pollutants emitted from the exhaust motor of the vehicles. In the small town
where I lived not all inspections places does this test, which goes against the rules. Those
vehicles that cannot pass the emission test, the owners take their cars there, causes more
increase of air pollutants in the air and increase in air pollution. The second major
environmental challenges that society faces, I think is resources depletion, I saw this due to
recent shortage of oil, it has been a while, but when a resource is used faster than it can be
replenish cause problems for society. When there was a shortage of oil, this caused the gas
prices to go up high, individuals that work in oil and gas salary can decrease, due to not
drilling as much. One of the new information that I learned so far this week is how
unsustainable resources use impact our environment. The unsustainable resources that
come from the earth are not reusable and once they are gone it is done. Other new
information was the comparing how conservation and preservation affect natural resources,
all this information was new to me, but very informational and educational.
