Breaking it Down: Final Review
Population Growth:
- Humans require more per capita resources than any other life forms
- Ecological Footprint-can apply to an individual, a city, a state, a country, or the entire planet. It is the area of productive land water and atmospheric ecosystems (biocapacity) required to produce resources that the human population (or individual) consumes and assimilate that wastes that this population produces. AKA natural capital
- Populations will grow exponentially until they encounter a limit to key resources that support the population. Carrying Capacity
- Rapidly growing populations will actually exceed their limits for a period of time because of a lag between the “overshoot” and the effects of carrying capacity.
- The greater the overshoot, the more likely the population will suffer a major collapse. Less the overshoot, the more likely it is that the population can be corrected and brought into line w/available resources both more rapidly & w/fewer adverse consequences.
- We overshoot beyond biocapacity around 1986. The longer the overshoot prevails the more likely a collapse scenario becomes reality.
- Goal of sustainability is to shift towards “correction” rather than “collapse”
- Exponential growth is typical of investment organisms that are not constrained by external factors…population growth curves of humans are exponential…(but aren’t we really constrained by external factors?)
- There is significant correlation between increased # of humans and their collective impact on the environment. Of concern isn’t just how much we grow , but how much we consume, how many wastes we produce, and how much we utilize our creativity and technology to minimize our ecological footprint.
- More developed nations consume more than less wealthy ones. Some of the poorest nations in the world are increasing their populations at a dramatic rate and thereby escalating the depletion and degradation of their local environmental resources.
- Wealthy and poor nations both add to it though. Poverty and high fertility rates cause increased pressure on the environment, but wealth also increases the levels of consumption and waste production despite the low fertility rates. Basically everyone is accountable for what is going on right now.
- International Conference on Population (Cairo 1994)- dangers of rapid population growth. Of greatest significance is the recognition that a key to population control is empowerment of women.
Me while reading for this class
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Walking around thinking about what terrible terrible people we are
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BUT then…I go to class and Professor Vasey says there may be light at the end of the tunnel!
Yay!
Mickey Grove Zoo
A few weeks ago we took my nephew to Mickey Grove zoo. It’s a pretty small zoo, but still had some interesting animals. I couldn’t help, but be super curious about what the animals status’ were (which I never would have thought about before I took this class). Some of the animals we saw included a southern bald eagle, swainson’s hawk, golden eagle, mountain lion, spider monkey, black and white ruffed lemur, radiated tortoise, scarlet lbis (they’re pretty cool cause they are bright red), yellow-knobbed curassow (they make a really weird noise), western turkey vulture (why they would have these in a zoo I don’t know cause they are creepy) and black tufted-ear marmoset.
The southern bald eagle was sooo sad. There was a sign by his habitat that said that he might be lying down and not to be worried because he had been shot and can’t be released back into the wild and that he also has a heart disease so sometimes he just gets tired and has to lay down.
Something else I found interesting about the birds that I saw there was how big they were…you can’t really tell from the picture above, but they’re pretty big it’s kind of crazy.
^ Near the radiated tortoise exhibit, they had a big fake one….my nephew was so sad when he realized it wasn’t real haha
Barbaric culture consumes all of its resources to support itself in the present, whereas a civilized culture preserves them for later generations.
We live in a world where evil exists, where the rich and complex live of individuals, neighborhoods, communities, entire species, and ecosystems are continually ravaged because of greed, callousness, ambition, and fear. Such destructiveness can’t be erased by wishing it away or giving it a politer name.
Roses are red, violets are blue, for Earth Day this year, let’s all plant a few.
It’s really an experiment….Wait, what?!?
Reading “Eaarth” and he’s talking about how when people were predicting global warming that they actually ended up being wrong. Because like he said “this was, a huge experiment. Twenty-five years ago almost nobody even knew the planet was going to warm at all, never mind how fast.” I get that they science and predications aren’t always right but to just call it an experiment isn’t to reassuring. I think saying it’s an experiment takes away from the seriousness of the situation at least in my eyes.
Just think about your grandchildren….
Reading “Eaarth” and it’s talking about how all the politicians use the thought of peoples grandchildren to try and persuade people to care about global warming… Clearly they didn’t get the message… Obviously that line doesn’t work on people, that and they as our lovely leaders aren’t really enforcing anything that helps with the issues. Not I mention like something was said in class, to stop the things are happening it’s going to take actual people to change, to actually want to change the way we live in order to help cut back in some of the things being done. Even then the this book says though it’s going to take years an years and years and years to get back to a decent place an the Earth will never be the same. I think that’s where some people stop caring cause we won’t be here years and years from now and they don’t care about their grandchildren or they do but it all just seems so far out if reach, but then again that’s what everyone says that’s why we have all these politicians talking about future generations when they should be talking about the present.
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