Environmental Extravaganza!

A Note to Start With

• Global Environmental Change is a term which is neutral in implication (ie not necessarily good or bad), because it is a process

– There has been tremendous environmental change throughout the history of the earth, as geology has taught us

– However, we have a lot of infrastructure invested in the way things are now so environmental change will = social/economic change

• Even in 1950’s little recognition of long term damage to the environment; now almost everyone recognizes it is happening

Geography and Environment

• Hazards – large scale, non-predictable events (like quakes, volcanoes, wildfires, drought, flooding, industrial accidents) that can potentially cause economic damage and injury/death

– Can be environmental (natural) or human-caused, but must effect humans

– Studying hazard is not just geophysics, but also looking at social responses as well

• Has increasingly become part of urban, regional planning in the form of preparedness

• Remote Sensing – Collecting data from a distance, often using aerial photography or satellites; important for tracking ground cover changes, environmental monitoring

• Environmental Modeling – Trying to reduce the number of variables to represent environmental processes, often for predictive purposes

– Used in Environmental Impact Studies (eg water quality, erosion, habitat loss)

Geography and Environment (cont.)

• Cultural Ecology and Political Ecology

– Cultural Ecology studied how subsistence patterns and cultures of rural groups are adjusted to local environmental conditions

• Similar to Anthropology in where studies were done, but focused on environmental impacts more

– Built on earlier environmental determinist school, which thought that people’s environment caused them to have certain types of societies

– Political Ecology emerged as term in the 1970’s to focus on the way environment became politicized

• Michael Watts, Rod Neumann (FIU Geography) are both prominent political ecologists

• Still focuses largely on rural, agrarian, third world, but uses critical theory to contextualize human-environment relations as part of uneven global processes (not just studying cultures, but studying pressing issues through cultures)

Geography and Environment (cont.)

– Critical theory is about highlighting unequal power relations, arguing against the status quo, and thinking of a better way

» Includes Post-Marxism, post-colonial theory, discourse analysis, feminism, actor-network theory

• Eco-feminism (linking environmental oppression with gender oppression); indigenous rights especially highlighted

• Research done to uncover the “hidden” geographies of commodities, especially food, from which we are alienated (often called commodity chains)

– Remind people of all the social, economic, political and environmental impacts of what they consume

• Discourses (way we think, write and speak) about nature also matter in nature

– For example, viewing the earth as a list of separate resources (coal, iron, water, fish) vs. an interconnected system would tend to produce very different treatments of the environment

Some religious discourses on the environment, which translated to different material treatments of the environment

• Judaism, Christianity, Islam – God created nature for people benefit from. People above nature, nature is a resource, but requires responsible stewardship.

• Taoism – Chinese Religion which sees nature as something to be contemplated and revered, and harmonized with

Religious Views of Environment

• Buddhism – Sees all of nature as related in a web, humans are part of nature, but are also caretakers as the only ones capable of conscious action

• Hinduism – Believes all beings (humans, cows, bugs) have role to play in universe and that if the balance is not upset, nature should provide.

• Animism – View that all natural phenomenon (trees, rocks, people) have spirit or consciousness

Global Environment Problems

• Defined as either impacting…

– A system which is global in scale: atmosphere and ocean

– In a significant way the total amount of a resource available: wetland, forest, soil fertility, biodiversity

• There is a problem in measuring impact

– Many statistics published outside peer reviewed journals, which would help guarantee quality of work

– Ecosystems are complex, and models have difficulty accounting for all variables

– Predictive theories require years to judge correctness

• Argument between those who want to prepare for the worst (even if it doesn’t happen) and those who think things will work out

• But in general, most agree human impacts are now as large as many natural process (eg sulfur, nitrogen, methane)

– Only been since industrial revolution this is so; mostly since 1950’s

Resources

• All but the least complex societies have taken more from the environment than they gave back

– This is the myth that earlier societies were by nature ecologically sound

• Much of the Mediterranean environment has been severely degraded over the centuries

– Now fertilizers, plow techniques, other technologies can slow the rate of fertility loss

• Just the tip of the iceberg?... rising populations all have rising expectations for living standards (more people wanting more stuff)

– This now includes most everywhere, meaning there are few places to pass the buck of environmental damage off to in order to get more resources

Resources (cont.)

• Still dependent on non-renewable resources

– Still have not reduced degradation of fish, forests, and water

• 60% of the world’s fisheries are in decline, at the same time world demand for fish is on the increase

– The only option is fish farming, which produces less nutritious fish and requires massive ecosystem change and use of antibiotics

– Even new “information” economy needs material (such as rare Earth minerals) for cables, chips, discs, monitors, etc.

• However, new finds mean that reserves for materials are larger than they were in 1950

– Also, if a price of resource gets too much, likely to see substitution or increased recycling (e.g. 50% of iron and steel in U.S.)

– However, many of the new finds are lower quality and harder to extract, meaning environmental costs of getting at them is higher

• Benefits tend to go to wealthy areas; problems to poorer extraction areas

Water

• Many commentators feel that fresh water scarcity will be the issue (more than oil scarcity, and at least equal with sea level rising)

– Already a major stumbling block in Arab/Israeli negotiations; a tension between states in U.S. West

• Much of the world’s fresh water goes into agriculture, which allows agriculture to be productive

– However, richer you are, more water you use

• Because of water demands 2/3 of people by 2025 will live in water stressed areas

– 160 million cubic meters of pumped from aquifers than replaced annually

• Right now, there are a no close substitutes except for desalinized seawater, which is ridiculously expensive

– Used primarily in Persian Gulf

– Burns so much fossil fuel, electricity production or aluminum smelting is often a by-product

Irrigation

• More than anything else, has allowed humans to expand their environment

• Earliest civilizations (Tigris/Euphrates, Nile, Indus) grew up around irrigated agriculture

– Some think bureaucracies grew to manage irrigation, not that irrigation designed by bureaucracies

• The Central Valley of California, the most productive agricultural area in history of world, entirely dependent on irrigation

Hot Spot: Aral Sea

• The most prolonged, intentional ecological disaster

• Soviet Planning tried to develop cotton industry in very dry central Asia

Aral Sea (cont)

• 25% of water which once flowed into Aral Sea now reaches it

• Has split into two parts, lost 90% of volume

– Kazakhstan building a massive dam to save northern part

• Destroyed caviar industry, led to increased TB, lung disease

Food

Some argue that ‘the West’ has entered a new Food Regime (a specific set of links that exist among food production, consumption and marketing)

– No longer based mostly on wheat and cattle

• Although this regime is growing in popularity in ‘non-West’

– Rising importance of fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as “local” and “organic”

– Rising consumption of cocoa, coffee

– Increasing importance of fish and poultry

• Factory chicken and hog farming are involve incredible pollution, done as far from the eyes of regulators as possible

– Philippines has become an increasingly important location

Food and Bio-resources

• New revolution in crops based on bio-engineering

– Large corporations used genetic modification to improve color, taste, size, longevity, maturation rate

• Combining fish DNA with tomatoes to improve shelf life

– Might decrease dependence on fertilizer and pesticides

– Might have unforeseen consequences for bio-diversity

– Seeds more expensive

– Crops don’t provide seed, some have terminator gene which requires purchase of chemical from seed manufacturer in order for seed to grow.

• Many companies patenting genetic codes for traditional medicines, possibly parts of the human genome

– Question about knowledge belonging to all or to companies

Forests

• ½ of all wood cut burned for fuel

– In Sub-Saharan Africa, 90% of population does this

• 1/5 of wood used for paper

– Most of this comes from managed forests in U.S. and Europe

• Often these forests aren’t as biodiverse as old growth

• Many Tropical Forests are lost to cropland and fuel wood collection, not just hardwood harvesting

– Brazil had begun a more effective crackdown on cutting in its rainforest, problem of hardwood cutting beginning to shift elsewhere in Amazon basin to SE Asia

– Soy Beans, however, are threatening the rainforest as more is chopped down to make room for fields.

Pollution

• Geographers are interested in pollution b/c displays spatial variations in source and impact, and is about human/environment interaction

• Pollution is substances introduced into the environment by human activity (manufacturing, farming, transport, sewage) that damage it from a human perspective

– Natural contamination is introduction of substances through processes like volcanoes and mineral springs; human contamination is like pollution, but not damaging

• Becomes an issue when supply of contamination exceeds ability of air, ground or water to disperse or convert the pollutant

– Often acute (quick severe) forms of pollution get more attention than chronic and continuous (slow building) issues

Pollution (cont.)

• In developing world, pollution often dumped on land with no clear title

– In the U.S., Appalachia and the Mountain West often home to the worst environmental offenses, like mountain top removal and mine chemical contamination

• Even well controlled activities which normally “leak” very little pollution, can, if faced with crisis, turn into a catastrophe (eg Kuwaiti oil wells, Bhopal, Chernobyl)

• Acidification (from ammonia and sulfur emissions) has been a major problem associated with industrialization in the Northern Hemisphere

– Changes soil pH, which changes what can grow (in Eastern Europe, killed trees)

– Melts marble, putting many monuments are at risk

• Hope in the case of Ozone depleting products: businesses and governments helped force a switch to comparable, but less harmful, substitute chemicals

Sustainable Development

• Again it is “meeting the needs of this generation without jeopardizing those of future generations”

• Sustainable Development proponents divided into techno-centric (green tech, better planning) and eco-centric (radical change to society) approaches

– But, like Geography, is at the intersection of environment and social/political/economic issues

• Most official approaches have included science, wildlife conservation, multilateral economic agreements, and technology solutions

– Proposals for radical change rarely get much “official” policy traction

– Wildlife focus comes from powerful U.S. NGO’s like WWF, Sierra Club

– Developing countries feared multilateral agreements would hamstring their attempts at economic development

• That’s why the term “sustainable development” is so appealing – has something for everyone

Sustainable Development (Cont.)

• Ideas first put forth in World Conservation Strategy (1980), then Our Common Future (1987); argued at Rio Earth Summit 1992

• Rio saw some movement in some areas, but has been woefully under-funded

• Government Sustainability actions

– Public regulation of pollution

• Includes regulations proposed by multilateral treaties like Convention on Biological Diversity

– Tax penalties for polluters

– Subsidies for new greener technology

Market Environmentalism

• An individualistic, anthropocentric idea that environmental management will get better the more parts of it that get assigned a value

– The idea is that in the rush to development, the true cost of environmental damage is not figured in; so it is important to do so

• Groups that do not like regulation tend to like this approach

– Central concept is that the environment provides natural capital, which includes goods (fish) and services (breathable air) which are central to economic activity

• So ideally, that if natural capital has a real price put on it, a project like a mine would either have to offset by creating natural capital elsewhere, or by investing in human capital (water treatment, clinics) near the mine

– Is very attractive b/c it avoids the “tragedy of the commons” by making big users actually pay for their use

• Some environmentalists are less enthusiastic, saying 1) some “natural” things cannot be substituted for 2) we don’t know at the time the true harm that is being done, so we cannot price assets properly and 3) it gives incentives to dump pollution on poor places that will inevitably price their nature more cheaply

– Also, after the last few years, people are less enamored with markets in general

Carbon Trading

• CO2 trading is by far the most advanced of these priced environment schemes (even though its only about 7 years old)

• How it works:

– Caps (ie Limits) for Carbon Emitters (both countries and private entities) are set

• In EU, other Kyoto signatories it is mandated by legislation

• In U.S., it is currently voluntary nationally, although the NE states are moving quicker to make it mandatory within their borders, forming the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for a power plant cap and trade system

– If you make it your cap target, great. If you go over…

• You get a Carbon Offset (eg Certified Emissions Reduction).

– Some countries, like Russia, have lots of territory and thus come way under their caps. They can trade their surplus

– They can also buy future Carbon Offsets from a Carbon Exchange (like Chicago Climate Exchange or European Climate Exchange) which takes that money and distributes it to projects being run (mostly in the developing world) to capture carbon

Carbon Trading (cont.)

• There have been some kinks:

– In Europe, where these are mandated, caps have been set too high, so not as much buying of the futures is being done as one would think

• These markets only work if you force entities to buy credits, high caps defeat that purpose

– A lot of projects have been certified, meaning there is an oversupply

– Thus the price for offsets is low (it should be about 35 Euros to really be punitive and make projects viable), as of today, it was 14 (and was actually 1 2008)

• The problem is that prices should be so high that companies find it cheaper to use green technology themselves and stop buying credits

– Although the company that manages the market did turn a profit for the first time on increased trading volume

Biofuels

• The idea is that you can get fuel (biodiesel, aircraft fuel) from recently living organisms instead of long dead ones (ie oil, natural gas, coal)

– For automobiles, what was looked to is ethanol (essentially grain alcohol) from crops like wheat, sugarcane, corn, sugarbeats

• Its advantages included: it is renewable (always grow more), for the U.S. we don’t get it from politically messy states, it doesn’t emit other pollutants like gasoline does (carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxide); and the plants absorbed CO2 in growing (no net gain)

• Now countries are mandating cars to be flex-fuel (that they can run on ethanol or gasoline) helping increase production (w/ high gas prices)

• Problem: not all crops are equal – ie, you get more ethanol cheaper from sugar than corn

– Great for Brazil, which is the ethanol leader with its sugar industry

» Except this is leading to rapidly expanded farming, which is leading to Rainforest being cut

– In the U.S., we continue with less efficient corn b/c it politically pleases Great Plains states

» Problem: It makes corn more expensive, both human corn and animal feed corn, leading to food price inflation

» Also, little carbon savings b/c of tractors, ethanol refining

Biofuels (cont.)

• But there are other options…

– Second generation biofuels

• Getting them from non-crop plants like prairie grass, or leftover material like corn stocks

– Better because leftover is already harvested, restoring the parries improves biodiversity (though still requires harvesting and refining), can be grown on more marginal land, won’t drive up food prices

– Algae based methods

• Using algae (which grows anywhere) to produce ethanol

– It photosynthesizes much more efficiently with less water than any plant crop

» It can even thrive in salty water; can be used in a closed system where the CO2 is fed by a power plant smokestack

– Enzyme based methods

• Turn anything with organic (carbon) material into ethanol

– This includes old tires, plastic, sewage

• Coskata is one company that does this, GM has invested heavily in them.

– These will become more viable as regulations require not just ethanol, but non-food ethanol

• Also wind, tidal (especially in S. FL), geothermal, solar, hydrogen fuel cell being looked at

– Likely in the future, no more than 25% of energy will be from anyone source

• Relying on diverse sources is probably a good thing for security