CAS GE 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Pesticide, Externality, Ecosystem Services
12 Sep 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Sustainable society: meets the needs of the present generation w/o compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Discovered by dutch (1722) after society collapsed. Change in hydrological cycle (cid:314) (cid:313) runoff (cid:314) dry soil. Rats eating roots/seeds from trees (cid:314) (cid:315) trees. A sustainable society does not use natural resources or produce waste faster than they are regenerated or assimilated by the environment or reduce the ability of ecosystems to provide essential services to society. Ecosystem services: natural processes that regulate conditions to make planet suitable for life. Natural resource: something gotten from the environment to meet biological/economic needs/wants. Best first principle: humans use the highest quality sources of natural resources first. Assimilative capacity: ability of environment to absorb, detoxify, and disperse wastes to make them less harmful. Decisions that promote sustainability are consistent with the fact that human society is a system that is part of a larger system, the natural environment.
