Environment 1999-2000

, by Allen, John L.

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ISBN: 9780072284980 | 0072284986
Cover: Paperback
Copyright: 1/1/1999

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Supplemental Materials

To the Reader

Topic Guide

(2)

Selected World Wide Web Sites

(2)

UNIT 1 The Global Environment: An Emerging World View

Overview

(36)

A Special Moment in History

(14)

Bill McKibben

World population has grown more in the last 50 years than in the last 4 million years, and more people have been added to the world total in the 1990s than existed in 1600. This tremendous increase in population growth is the consequence of the industrial Revolution and the changes in public health that accompanied it The next few decades will determine the fate of the world through choices that people make in technology and lifestyle.

The Global Challenge

(4)

Michael H. Glantz

The world's atmosphere and oceans are truly global commons, shared by all nations and peoples. Because the two interlocked systems circulate freely around the globe, impacts on air and water quality produced by human action are also shared. The capacity of the global atmospheric and oceanic systems to withstand human modifications is being tested by increasing human demands.

Windows on the Future: Global Scenarios & Sustainability

(10)

Gilberto C. Gallopin

Paul Raskin

The construction of scenarios or glimpses of future alternative worlds provides a unique way to evaluate the impact of continued population growth on the global environment. Of all possible future worlds, only one scenario allows for transcending the industrial culture of the present without descending into chaos. That scenario requires the development of sustainability as the guiding principle behind the world's technological systems.

Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems

(6)

Peter M. Vitousek

Harold A. Mooney

Jane Lubchenco

Jerry M. Melillo

Human domination of the planet is measured by the facts that between one-third and one-half of the world's surface has undergone land transformation by humans, atmospheric change from increased carbon dioxide is under way, more than half of the available surface freshwater systems are used by people, and many plant and animal species have become extinct, with more to follow.

UNIT 2 The World's Population: People and Hunger

Overview

(24)

Before the Next Doubling

(7)

Jennifer D. Mitchell

Almost twice as many people inhabit Earth now as in 1960. At some point over the next century, the world's population could double again. When the doubling line of a population occurs in small time spans, the amount of time available to make the necessary adjustments in agriculture, housing, education, and other components of the global infrastructure becomes critically short.

How Much Food Will We Need in the 21st Century?

(5)

William H. Bender

Most of the recent debate over food scarcity has focused on the potential for increasing the food supply. Scientists are now growing concerned over the ways in which intensive land use and the heavy applications of agricultural chemicals necessary to grow more food have damaged environmental systems. The answer is ``low-fat'' agriculture with less reliance on animal products and more on grain.

Food Scarcity: An Environmental Wakeup Call

(5)

Lester Brown

The environmental deterioration that the world has undergone during the last few decades cannot continue without having serious consequences for the global economy. The most likely sector through which environmental decline becomes economic decline is the system of food production or agriculture. Future food security depends upon creating an environmentally sustainable agriculture.

The Myth of Global Hunger

(5)

Dennis T. Avery

The specter of a global food crisis may be a false one, created by what some perceive as shrinking food reserves but are really economic adjustments in the form of intentionally reduced agricultural production. While the amount of land farmed has risen only slightly in the last 50 years, food production has actually soared as the result of new, improved crop varieties. Coupled with stabilizing population growth, more productive crops should greatly reduce food insecurity.

UNIT 3 Energy: Present and Future Problems

Overview

(22)

Beam It Down: How the New Satellites Can Power the World

(5)

Martin I. Hoffert

Seth D. Potter

One of the most rapidly growing communications technologies is the low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite that can provide communication links to virtually every place on Earth. The fleets of these satellites that will soon be in place should be pressed into double duty as solar energy collectors that would relay uninterrupted beams of clean and cheap electrical power to Earth.

The End of Cheap Oil

(5)

Colin J. Campbell

Jean H. Laherrere

In the 1970s, sudden price increases for crude oil awoke the world to the dependence on this energy resource. Since global production of conventional oil will begin to decline significantly by 2010, the world's economy is in for another oil crunch. The world's industrial nations must face the end of abundant and cheap oil upon which their economic systems depend by investing more in energy research.

Sunlight Brightens Our Energy Future

(5)

Randy Quinn

Solar energy has been the ultimate goal of those in search of the perfect energy source, largely because of its potentially inexpensive utilization and its nonpolluting character. New technologies are being developed tht could make solar power a conventional energy source within the next 5 to 10 years. The most promising technology is that based upon converting sunlight directly into electricity through photovoltaics.

Inherit the Wind

(5)

Harvey Wasserman

The use of wind power to generate electricity is the world's fastest-growing energy source. But in the United States, because of Americans' addictions to fossil fuel and nuclear power, uncertainty over public utility deregulation, and the media's tendency to downplay wind power as a viable renewable energy source, what once seemed to be a promising technology has faltered.

UNIT 4 Biosphere: Endangered Species

Overview

(44)

The Work of Nature

(5)

Yvonne Baskin

Global changes in land use and climate produce a reduction in plant and animal species and the diversity of ecosystems is threatened. Loss of natural biodiversity creates costly changes in water or nutrient cycles, fire regimes, rainfall, and soil vitality. It also threatens human health as emergent or resurgent diseases occupy opened ecological niches.

Strategies for Conserving Biodiversity

(8)

Walter V. Reid

International conventions on biological diversity have given rise to such research programs as the Global Biodiversity Assessment, an unofficial but effective set of studies that have pointed the way to the magnitude of the biodiversity crisis and ways to design effective ecosystem conservation strategies. Extinction rates are projected to remain at their highest levels in 65 million years, but there are some indications that policies can be developed to deal with the problem.

A. PLANTS

Old Growth for Sale

103

(3)

Douglas Gantenbein

In 1993, with great fanfare, a ``timber summit'' attended by President Clinton produced the Northwest Forest Plan that was intended to slash logging on federal lands by 85 percent and manage forests for wildlife, fish, and recreation. Five years later, thousands of trees in the Northwest's old growth forests, some of them as old as four centuries, continue to be cut.

Green Awakening in a Poor Country

106

(7)

Howard Youth

For generations, Honduras has endured slash-and-burn farming and rapid population growth, a lethal combination for the country's forest environment. But a new national park and the hope of ecotourism has begun to shape a home-grown social contract that could save the remaining Honduran tropical forests. The Honduran experiment tells us a great deal about the politics of conservation in other small and valuable places.

The Burning Season

113

(4)

Stephen Howard

Since the middle of 1997, large-scale forest fires have been reported in more than 10 countries, and at least 50,000 square kilometers of forest have been burned. Most of these fires were the primary agent of land clearance. The economic, social, and environmental consequences of such burning are profound. At worst, it is a catastrophic cycle of environmental deterioration, at best, a new move to husband scarce forest resources.

B. ANIMALS

Not in My Backyard

117

(5)

Anthony Brandt

Wildlife populations are rapidly encroaching on America's suburbs---and vice versa. Problems have ranged from damage to ornamental shrubs to the spread of diseases such as Lyme disease. No one is certain how to deal with the problems. Most of the big environmental battles have been fought over remote wilderness rather than suburban backyards and policy makers are ill-equipped to deal with problems much closer to home.

Wild Success

122

(10)

Karl Hess Jr.

For millions of African farmers who must compete with protected wildlife species for scarce resources, the idea of locking up large tracts of land in wildlife preserves is a threat to continued human existence in adjacent areas. In southern Africa, changes in conservation strategy give villagers an economic stake in wildlife preservation and could alter the way we think about and profit from natural resources.

UNIT 5 Resources: Land, Water, and Air

Overview

132

(48)

A. LAND

Asia Is Losing Ground

134

(7)

Gary Gardner

Throughout the Pacific Rim area of burgeoning economies, rapid development of industrialization is threatening land formerly used for forming. Since few of the ``Asian tigers'' are agriculturally self-sustaining, the loss of precious farmland is crucial. The need to import more food reduces many of the economic benefits of development and produces new national problems in the form of potential food shortages.

Oceanfront Battlefront

141

(5)

Jon R. Luoma

Along the Atlantic coast of the United States, a battle is being waged between private property interests and the natural forces of coastal erosion. By definition, beaches are dynamic areas that change with the cycles of calm and storm that characterize the coastal environment. Human intervention in natural processes, such as the building of seawalls, often creates more problems than it solves, including damaging coastal ecosystems that provide habitat to all kinds of wildlife.

B. WATER

Dam Fools

146

(8)

James V. DeLong

Federal water management primarily has meant the construction of dams across free-flowing rivers, producing reservoirs for flood control, irrigation, or power generation. But many doms built in the 1950s and 1960s are unnecessary and ecologically unsound, disturbing river flows and altering the balance between a stream and its valley. Environmentalists are suggesting that many dams in the western United States should be removed before the damage they have done becomes irreversible.

The Deep Green Sea

154

(14)

Edward Carr

For millenia, the ocean has seemed boundless in its resources and infinite in its capacity to withstand human interference. Now, the sea is suffering from overfishing and pollution. Scientific ignorance and the sea's lack of natural boundaries frustrate efforts to design institutions to manage the world's marine environments, which would all respond favorably to policies that would stop subsidizing marine destruction and would limit human access to marine resources.

C. AIR

The Great Climate Flip-Flop

168

(8)

William H. Calvin

The popular understanding of climate change is an enhanced greenhouse effect that, predictions say, could cause coastal flooding and severe weather. But paradoxically, the global warming brought on by an accelerated greenhouse effect could also lead to abrupt cooling. A change in ocean currents in the North Atlantic that would accompany a drastic cooling trend would pose massive problems for Europe.

Warming Up to Kyoto

176

(4)

Bill McKibben

In December 1997, an international conference on global warming was held in Kyoto, Japan. This marked the beginning of efforts to define the necessary limits of human enterprise and was the first step in a political process that may last into the next century. Two central facts emerged: the United States is still unwilling to come to grips with the problem of climate change by limiting carbon dioxide emissions, and there is an enormous gap in attitude between the rich and poor nations.

UNIT 6 Pollution: The Hazards of Growth

Overview

180

(35)

Nowhere to Hide: The Global Spread of High-Risk Synthetic Chemicals

182

(9)

Jennifer D. Mitchell

The world production of synthetic organic chemicals has risen exponetially in this century. The risks of exposure to these chemicals through accidental contact, biological accumulation, and unpredictable synergistic effects are increasing as well, with unfavorable consequences that are only now becoming known. Unfortunately, the burden of proof as to whether a chemical compound may be released for sale is often the responsibility of regulatory agencies rather than the chemical manufacturers.

Recycling Human Waste: Fertile Ground or Toxic Legacy?

191

(7)

Gary Gardner

Recycling of human waste is not anything new. For thousands of years farmers in the Orient have used ``night soil'' on their fields to maintain fertility. Unfortunately, modern farming methods and sewage treatment systems have greatly complicated the risks of using our most obvious fertilizer, since human wastes often mix freely with heavy metals, pesticides, dioxins, petroleum products, and other toxic wastes, making it unusable even after treatment.

Earth's Last Gasp?

198

(3)

Daniel A. Lashof

Scientists have been observing the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere for decades and have become increasingly concerned over the potential for global warming that such an increase portends. If atmospheric pollution is not controlled, the average rate of warming over the next century will probably be greater than during any period in the last 10,000 years.

Our Real China Problem

201

(10)

Mark Hertsgaard

The price for the enormous growth of the Chinese economy is a vast degradation of the environment that has planetary implications. Chinese rates of coal use are the highest in the world and this dirty fuel adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than any other. Although the Chinese government is aware of the need for environmental protection, it is also wary of doing anything to stifle the growth that promises to raise millions of Chinese out of object poverty, which would be political suicide.

Chemical Chokehold

211

(4)

Gordon Feller

The collapse of the Soviet Union left in its wake a number of newly independent countries that have severe pollution problems. Typical in many ways is the new republic of Azerbaijan, home of one of the world's worst hotspots of industrial chemical pollution. Cleanup of toxic wastes and renovation of the country's industrial base will require huge capital investments and significant international aid.

Environmental Information Retrieval

215

(6)

Glossary

221

(4)

Index

225

(3)

Article Review Form

228

(1)

Article Rating Form

229

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Environment 1999-2000

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials

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Environment 1999-2000

Table of Contents

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