Class Notes (1,100,000)
CA (630,000)
UTSC (30,000)
Environmental Science (1,000)
EESA01H3 (100)
Carl Mitchell (80)
Lecture
Department
Environmental ScienceCourse Code
EESA01H3Professor
Carl MitchellThis preview shows half of the first page. to view the full 2 pages of the document.
L01 - Major global issues
- Global climate change: carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere, overall increase in
the world/global temperature
- Loss of global biodiversity: things we are doing to affect habitat, organisms. Genetically
modified foods and agriculture, mutations in the environment as a consequence of
environmental degradation - wildlife, people, biolife
- Ozone layer depletion: O3; what blocks out UVD radiation
- Natural disasters: occurrence of severe weather
- Global pollutant dispersal: mercury moves around in the environment (atmospheric
pollutant)
- Water security: regional, rain, freshwater resources (strains)
- Alberta oil sands: energy
- National economic dependency on natural resources: oil, forestry, minerals drive our
economy - how to make it something we can continue to do or make changes
Toronto issues
Waterfront development:
Smog: pollution on top of the city affecting climate conditions
Tragedy of commons
- Carrying capacity
- Open up resource - high likelihood for users to pull up resources for as long as they can
as MUCH as they can Æ how our environment works, policies, consequences –
psychological urge to grab as much/quickly as they can
- Leaving nothing left rather than to use slowly
- Unregulated
- Sustainability
- Solutions? Government regulation (permits, quota), co-op agreements (self regulate
over a long period of time)
e.g. Rapa Nui - used every resource possible to survive on the island without any regards
for sustainability or perpetuity
- nothing can be completely right - only “right” until it is proven wrong
- No Absolute Truth in science, “a natural phenomenon that has been proven to occur
invariably whenever certain conditions are met.”
- Manipulative/natural experiment
- Environmental science - biology, chemistry, atmospheric science, oceanography,
geology, geography, anthropology archeology, sociology, history, political science,
engineering, economics, ethics, ecology
- Ecological footprint - quantitative measure for a person to live the way they do
African/southern countries - do not have the ability/resources to live the way we do
Cornucopian - do whatever we want to do, and humans will come up with a way to fix it
Cassandras - nothing we can do
- in between
Practical solutions Æ require money Æ might work temporarily but not long term
www.notesolution.com
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