ENVS195 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Temperatures Rising, Carbon Footprint, Millennium Summit
23 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
Humans are forcing change on the environment and endangering society: natural systems change over time but humans have forced rapid change. Increases in human consumption of resources has affected the environment. Both human population growth and unsustainable consumption from developed world are putting stress on earth. Canada as a high carbon resource producing country has an important role with its policies on the use of the resources. It is important to examine the indicators and understand what they mean. Environment includes atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere and biosphere. Some consider resources as only resources when they are useful to humans: ex: coal and copper were not resources until we figured out how to use them, this is the anthropocentric view. Others view resources as existing independent of our needs and are valuable no matter what: they view them as biocentric or ecocentric.
