Unit 4 Pollution and Excess

4.1. Introduction and the story of stuff

What is pollution?

Pollution is the introduction of harmful materials into the environment. These harmful materials are called pollutants. Pollutants can be natural, such as volcanic ash. They can also be created by human activity, such as trash or runoff produced by factories. Pollutants damage the quality of air, water, and land.

Many things that are useful to people produce pollution. Cars spew pollutants from their exhaust pipes. Burning coal to create electricity pollutes the air. Industries and homes generate garbage and sewage that can pollute the land and water. Pesticides—chemical poisons used to kill weeds and insects—seep into waterways and harm wildlife.

All living things—from one-celled microbes to blue whales—depend on Earth’s supply of air and water. When these resources are polluted, all forms of life are threatened.

Pollution is a global problem. Although urban areas are usually more polluted than the countryside, pollution can spread to remote places where no people live. For example, pesticides and other chemicals have been found in the Antarctic ice sheet. In the middle of the northern Pacific Ocean, a huge collection of microscopic plastic particles forms what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Air and water currents carry pollution. Ocean currents and migrating fish carry marine pollutants far and wide. Winds can pick up radioactive material accidentally released from a nuclear reactor and scatter it around the world. Smoke from a factory in one country drifts into another country.

Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/pollution/

4.2. Ecological Footprints

Ecological Footprint

The Ecological Footprint is the only metric that measures how much nature we have and how much nature we use. The Footprint helps:

COUNTRIES- improve sustainability and well-being

LOCAL LEADERS - optimise public project investments

INDIVIDUALS- understand their impact on the planet

How the Footprint Works

Ecological Footprint accounting measures the demand on and supply of nature.

On the demand side, the Ecological Footprint measures the ecological assets that a given population requires to produce the natural resources it consumes (including plant-based food and fiber products, livestock and fish products, timber and other forest products, space for urban infrastructure) and to absorb its waste, especially carbon emissions.

The Ecological Footprint tracks the use of six categories of productive surface areas: cropland, grazing land, fishing grounds, built-up land, forest area, and carbon demand on land.

On the supply side, a city, state or nation’s bio-capacity represents the productivity of its ecological assets (including cropland, grazing land, forest land, fishing grounds, and built-up land). These areas, especially if left unharvested, can also absorb much of the waste we generate, especially our carbon emissions.

Both the Ecological Footprint and bio-capacity are expressed in global hectares—globally comparable, standardised hectares with world average productivity.

Each city, state or nation’s Ecological Footprint can be compared to its bio-capacity.

If a population’s Ecological Footprint exceeds the region’s bio-capacity, that region runs an ecological deficit. Its demand for the goods and services that its land and seas can provide—fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, wood, cotton for clothing, and carbon dioxide absorption—exceeds what the region’s ecosystems can renew. A region in ecological deficit meets demand by importing, liquidating its own ecological assets (such as overfishing), and/or emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If a region’s bio-capacity exceeds its Ecological Footprint, it has an ecological reserve.

Conceived in 1990 by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees at the University of British Columbia, the Ecological Footprint launched the broader Footprint movement, including the carbon Footprint, and is now widely used by scientists, businesses, governments, individuals, and institutions working to monitor ecological resource use and advance sustainable development.

4.3. Making Us Spend

What is consumerism?

While consumption is an act that people engage in, sociologists understand consumerism to be a characteristic of society and a powerful ideology that frames our worldview, values, relationships, identities, and behaviour. Consumerism drives us to consume and to seek happiness and fulfilment through consumption, serving as a necessary counterpart to a capitalist society that prioritises mass production and unending growth in sales.

Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/consumerism-definition-3026119

4.4. The Environment and Food Production

Effects of food production on the environment

We can survive without many things but we cannot survive without food, the production of which has become a serious environmental concern. Rapidly growing world’s population requires increased food production which is of the greatest causes of environmental degradation throughout the world. Of particular concern is meat production as modern practices of animal raising directly contribute to water and air pollution and increase carbon dioxide emissions, while crop production for animal feed and the use of land for grazing threaten biodiversity and wildlife species.

Source: https://www.landroots.org.uk/

4.5. A Plastic Ocean

A Plastic Ocean is a new award-winning feature length documentary brought to you by a group of dedicated scientists, film-makers, social entrepreneurs, scholars, environmentalists and journalists, that explores the fragile state of our oceans and uncovers alarming truths about the consequences of our disposable lifestyle.

A Plastic Ocean documents the global effects of plastic pollution and highlights workable technologies and innovative solutions that everyone - from governments to individuals - can do, to create a cleaner and greener ocean.

A Plastic Ocean has been selected for screenings at international conferences and festivals around the world including at the Smithsonian Institute and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, where the film was seen by former US President Barack Obama and environmentalists Sylvia Earle and Jane Goodall.

Source: http://www.aplasticocean.movie/

4.6. Summative Assessment