UNIT 4
COMPILATION
1. Energy
A. Energy Resources and Uses
1. How Energy is Used
B. Fossil Fuels
1. Coal
2. Oil (Domestic oil, Oil shales,
Tar sands)
3. Natural Gas
C. Energy Conservation
1. Smart Metering
2. Cogeneration
2. Environmental Health
A. Environmental
Health
1. Global Disease
2. Diseases
B. Toxicology
1. Toxic Effects on Humans
C. Movement, Distribution, and Fate of
Toxins
1. Movement and response to
toxins
2.
Bioaccumulation/Biomagnification
3. Persistent Organic Pollutants
(POPs)
3. Environmental Policy
& Sustainability
A. Environmental Policy & Law
1. Policy Making/Policy Creation
2. Cost-Benefit Analysis
B. Major Environmental Laws
1. National Environmental Policy
Act (1969)
2.
The Clean Air Act (1970)
3. The Clean Water Act (1972)
4. The Endangered Species Act
(1973)
5. The Superfund Act (1980)
C. How Policies are Made
1. Legislative Branch
2. Judicial Branch
3. Executive Branch
D. International Policies
1. Major International Agreements
A. CITES (1973)
B. Montreal Protocol
(1987)
C. Basel Convention
(1992)
D. UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change
(1994)
E. Kyoto Protocol
(1997)
E. What Individuals Can Do
1. Environmental
Education/Environmental Literacy
2. Citizen Science
ENERGY
To sustain our energy needs, much of it comes from fossil
fuels like petroleum, natural gas, and coal. Fossil Fuels are currently responsible for delivering close to 88%
of the world’s commercial energy needs, but these fuels can bring about several
problems. The amount of fossil fuels that are burned annually are creating
detrimental effects on the environment from water pollution to air pollution
and climate change. Because fossil fuels supply so much energy, we basically
cannot be without them in order to sustain life. Oil makes up about 37% of the
fossil fuel supply, natural gas about 24%, and coal about 23%; more
importantly, the world’s 20 richest countries consume a staggering 80% of
natural gas, 65% of oil, and 50% of coal! The use of renewable resources for
energy has begun to climb, but still accounts for less than 1% of the total U.S.
energy supply.
Energy is used in several different
ways depending on the people and business that use it. The largest amount of
energy is used by industries in the United States like mining, milling,
and smelting companies; the chemical industry is the second largest industrial
supplier of fossil fuels, although not all of it is used for energy purposes. In
the United States,
energy is primarily used for space heating, air conditioning, lighting and
water heating; petroleum is used to supply gasoline and diesel fuel for
automobiles and transportation is responsible for using about three-quarters of
transport energy. Electricity’s energy is one of the more efficient energy
sources because it is converted to useful work and does not pollute once it is
used.
Coal
is the largest and most abundant fossil fuel available throughout North
America, Europe and Asia, and the countries of the United
States, Russia,
and China.
The total resource of coal is estimated to be close to 10 trillion metric tons,
which all could in fact be extracted and give us a supply for several thousand
years. However, many environmentalists do not find full removal of use of all
the coal to be ideal and resourceful. Why? Because the action of coal mining is
a dirty, destructive, and dangerous activity, especially extraction from coal
mines where cave-ins and explosions are known to occur. Surface mines are
cheaper, but they leave large holes where coal has been removed, and huge piles
of discarded rock and soil are left at the site. Another concern of coal is
that it contains toxic impurities consisting of mercury, arsenic, lead, and
chromium, which is released into the air during combustion, thus causing large
amounts of air pollution.
Clean coal plants have been
implemented to prevent a lot of the air pollution that coal causes. One system
that has been enforced is the Integrated
Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC), which has the potential to produce
zero-emission electricity from coal. Electricity can be generated while
capturing and permanently storing carbon dioxide and other pollutants if this
cycle is used. The only downside of the IGCC is that it can be a lot more
expensive, but over time, it will eventually pay for itself.
Oil
consumption has steadily increased over the years in most parts of the world,
especially parts of China, India, and Brazil. China’s energy demands have nearly
tripled in the past 35 years and they believe another doubling of energy
demands within the next 15 years. Economists and environmentalists alike have
found it difficult to create conservation practices, strategies and renewable
technologies because global oil prices have not been consistent. One of the
largest oil catastrophies in history occurred back in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico when the well being drilled reached a
large oil deposit and a bubble of explosive methane gas made its way up the
drill pipe and erupted into a large fire. The huge oil spill threatened beaches
along the eastern Gulf
Coast, creating a harmful
disruption of life for several bird colonies, endangering aquatic life, as well
as some the world’s most wealthy fishing grounds. The danger the oil spill
created raised demands for a ban on offshore drilling and converting to
renewable energy sources instead.
The World Energy Council estimates
that oil shales, tar sands, and other oil deposits contain ten times as much
oil as their liquid reserve counterparts. Tar
sands are made up of sand and shale particles that are coated with bitumen,
which is a tarlike mixture of hydrocarbon chains. These sands are excavated and
mixed with hot water and steam to remove the bitumen, and then used to make
useful products. The largest and most accessible tar sand resources are located
in Canada and Venezuela, but
there are detrimental environmental effects that come along with producing this
type of oil. An average plant producing oil releases up to 5,000 tons of
greenhouse gases, and consumes/contaminates billions of liters of water each
year. Oil shales are fine-grained
sedimentary rock rich in solid organic material called kerogen; the kerogen can
be heated and then pumped out like tar sands. Oil shales, like tar sands, use
large amounts of water and release much more carbon dioxide, thus creating a
huge amounts of waste.
Natural
gas is the world’s third largest fossil fuel, but produces only half as much
carbon dioxide per energy unit as coal. The country of Russia is second behind the Middle
East for natural gas reserves and accounts for about 35% of total
global production. Natural gas consumed by the world is increasing by about
2.2% per year, which is must faster than coal or oil; much of this increase is
in the developing world.
One of the best and most effective
ways to avoid energy shortages or other catastrophies is to simply use less of
it then we are now. A lot of the energy we use is wasted without even knowing
it, so it’s important to understand how we can save and conserve as much energy
as we can. Many home appliances have begun experimenting with smart metering, where a household gets
information not just on how much energy a particular appliance is using, but
also identifies the energy source and how much the cost is. People can take
other measures to conserve energy within their homes by installing LED lights
instead of regular light bulbs, building extra-thick and insulated walls and
roofs, and arranging windows to let natural sunlight in to generate heat and
light. Among the fastest growing new energy sources is cogeneration, which is the simultaneous production of electricity
and steam/hot water within the same plant. When two types of energy are used in
the same plant, they energy yield increases up to 50%. While this type of
energy source is not being fully utilized by many, there has been an increase
in curiosity of cogeneration and how it is used.
Some simple ways that people can
work to conserve energy and save money are to minimize driving whenever
possible, run fans instead of thermostats, turn off appliances and electronics
when they are not being used, recycle, and buy fewer items that are disposable.
ENVIRONMENTAL
HEALTH
Environmental
health is an ongoing global issue that focuses on factors that cause disease,
including natural, social, cultural and technological elements in the world
around us. The World Health Organization oversees these issues and state that
environmental factors have caused 24% of global diseases and 23% of premature
mortality.
The burden of global diseases can be
calculated by the disability-adjusted
life years (DALYs). Health agencies use this by combining premature deaths
and loss of a healthy life due to illness or disability in an attempt to
determine the total cost of disease and not just how many people die from it.
According the World Health Organization, in the year 2020, heart disease will
be the number one killer worldwide and lung disease is expected to rise as
well. In addition, obesity is on the rise and has become a worldwide epidemic,
making it the second cause of death among Americans; it is expected to overtake
tobacco within a short period of time and become the single largest health risk
in several countries.
Communicable diseases are still
among the top culprits of all disease-related mortalities. Environmental
conditions have made diseases more prominent, especially in poor countries of
the world where water is not clean and living conditions are dirty. Pathogens are disease-causing organisms
that afflict humans and include viruses, bacteria, protozoans, parasitic worms,
and flukes. The greatest disease-caused death toll in history from a single
disease occurred in 1918 during the influenza pandemic, where at least one third
of all humans living during this time were infected and 50 to 100 million died
from it. Foodborne illnesses occur every year in the United States and about 76 million
cases appear, resulting in half a million people being hospitalized and 5,000
deaths being accounted for. Bacteria and intestinal protozoa cause these
illnesses and are spread from feces through food and waste.
Nearly 2 million people will experience a
suffering from worms, flukes and other internal parasites; they can be very
harmful, but death is not a common factor. Emergent
diseases are diseases that have not been previously known or have been
absent for a span of at least 20 years. Emergent diseases have appeared at an
alarming rate again, including the incredibly deadly fevers Ebola and Marburg, which appear the most common in parts of Central Africa. Other types of emergent diseases include
West Nile Virus and HIV/AIDS. The World Health Organization now estimates that
close to 33 million people have become infected with HIV and 3 million die
every year from AIDS.
Ecological
diseases occur
when domestic animals and wildlife experience sudden and widespread epidemics,
such as Ebola fever, which also kills humans. Two parasites called Dermo and
MSX have taken the lives of billions of oysters in the Chesapeake
Bay. Other diseases that have affected animals are the Chronic
Wasting Disease (CWD), which is most common among deer and elk in the regions
of North America. It is caused by a protein
and is part of a family of irreversible, degenerative neurological diseases
that are known as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSE). Conservation medicine is a newly
emerging technique to understand how the environmental changes around us affect
our health as well as that of the natural communities on which we rely so
heavily on for ecological services. It’s begun to gain recognition from several
funding sources like the World Health Organization, and the U.S. National
Institutes of Health.
Toxicology is the study of the adverse effects of
external factors on an organism or a system that includes factors like
environmental chemicals, drugs, diet, radiation, UV light, and electromagnetic
forces. It also studies the rate at which poisons move in the environment,
routes of entry into the body and the effects that occur upon exposure to them.
Toxics can affect us in several ways and can present themselves in different
forms, like allergens, whose
substances affect the immune system and sometimes act directly as antigens, which means that they are recognized
as foreign by white blood cells and arouse the production of certain
antibodies.
Neurotoxins are a special class of
poisons that attack nerve cells specifically and disrupt body activities,
making these toxins especially harmful. Heavy metals like lead and mercury kill
nerve cells and cause long-term, permanent neurological damage. Other
neurotoxins like anesthetics and chlorinated hydrocarbons disrupt the nerve
cell membranes that are vital for nerve action. Mutagens are agents that damage or alter the DNA in cells and can
lead to birth defects if it occurs during embryonic or fetal growth. Damage
that occurs in cells can be passed on to later generations, but some cells have
the ability to repair themselves; some changes may also be hidden, and therefore
the cells cannot be restored or repaired. Carcinogens
are substances that cause cancer, which is often uncontrollable and results
in malignant tumors. Cancer is now the second-leading cause of death among
humans in the United States,
and nearly 500,000 victims die from different types of cancer.
Toxins and other hazardous chemicals come from
several different sources within the environment and each chemical may come
from a different route or method of exposure. There are a few factors that are
important to consider when determining toxicity of a certain substance: the
amount, route of entry, timing of exposure, and sensitivity of the organism. One
of the most important factors to consider when determining how a toxic
substance travels through the environment is its solubility. There are two
groups that chemicals can be divided into; 1) those that dissolve more readily
in water and 2) those that dissolve more readily in oil. Chemicals that
dissolve easily in water move at a quicker rate through the environment and
have greater access to most cells in the body due to the water solution.
Chemicals that dissolve easily in oil often times need support of a carrier to
move through the environment and into the body; once they enter, they move into
tissues and cells easily since the cells are made of oil-soluble chemicals. It’s
also important to look at the exposure and susceptibility of toxic chemicals to
determine how we respond to them. There are airborne toxics that cause more ill
health than any other form of exposure because we breathe the air everyday and
it enters our immune and lung systems quite easily. The largest source of
exposure to toxics can be found in industrial settings where workers can
experience doses a hundred times higher than anywhere else. The toxin’s
condition and timing of exposure can also have a strong impact on its toxicity;
young children tend to be more prone to exposure of toxic chemicals because
their immune systems have not yet fully developed to protect them against various
toxins.
Bioaccumulation and biomagnification increase
chemical concentration in several ways. Bioaccumulation
is the selective absorption and storage of a wide variety of molecules, and
it allows them to gather nutrients and vital minerals while sometimes absorbing
and storing harmful substances through the exact mechanisms. Biomagnification occurs when a large
number of organisms at a low trophic level is accumulated and concentrated by a
higher trophic level predator. Because organisms like phytoplankton at the
lower trophic level take up heavy metals and/or organic molecules through water
or sediments, the higher trophic level organisms such as fish-eating birds or
humans can therefore take in the high toxic levels.
Persistent
Organic Pollutants (POPs) are now becoming more widespread than ever and often gather in
food webs and reach toxic concentrations in long-living major predators such as
humans, sharks, bears and swordfish. There are several concerns that have
recently come up that environmentalists have addressed and the chemicals that
may be posing a threat to the environment. Among those is the waterborne
contaminant called perchlorate that is left over from propellants and rocket
fuels; nearly 12,000 sites used by the military in the United States
showed traces of perchlorate. If it enters the body, this toxin can interfere
with the thyroid gland, thus disrupting adult metabolism and childhood
development. Phthalates are commonly found in cosmetics, deodorants, and many
plastics that are used for food packaging, children’s toys and medical devices.
It can cause kidney and liver damage and some cancers, as well as low sperm
numbers and decreased sperm mobility in men. Atrazine is the most commonly used
herbicide in America
and more than 60 million pounds of this material is applied every year mostly
on corn and cereal grains. It is known to disrupt hormone functions in mammals
resulting in low birth weights and neurological disorders; it has also been
found in drinking water in areas of the Midwest.
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY &
SUSTAINABILITY
A policy is a rule or decision regarding how to
act or deal with problems and complications. An environmental policy involves rules and regulations that are
designed to protect the environment and well being of the public.
Policy making is primarily driven by
power and influence and public interest groups can strongly influence the
decision of lawmakers to enforce certain policies. Public citizenship is among
the most important and vital component in a democratic government, and citizen
movements/environmental protests also play a major role. Regarding
environmental protection, the public seems to be ready and willing to make
sacrifices if it meant that the environment would be safer and cleaner.
Overall, 83% of people agreed that lifestyle changes would have to be made to
reduce the amount of climate-changing gases that they produce. In Russia,
only 40% said they were willing to make changes in their lifestyle to avoid
global warming in comparison to a whopping 90% of Canadians.
Policy creation often follows a
cycle that leads issues onto the public stage for debate. The cycle of policy
creation begins with a problem, then an agenda is set; proposals are developed,
support of those proposals are built, and the law or rule is enacted; the
policy is then implemented and the results are evaluated to determine its
effectiveness, then changes are made if necessary. Sometimes laws expire after
a prolonged period of time, which in turn makes it necessary to re-enact it and
continue it.
Another important factor in public
decision making is the idea of cost-benefit
analysis, which is a comparison of costs to benefits; in an ideal
situation, the overall benefits should outweigh the costs. This type of
approach also allows lawmakers and the public to identify and quantify costs
and benefits in an effective and fair manner so that the importance can be
evaluated. Cost-benefit analysis can be a very effective tool but it has to be
used in the correct manner and needs to be well documented; it also must allow
for input from a variety of participants so that it will not be used only to
justify plans that are established in advance.
There
are several important environmental laws that we rely on to protect our
environment and each of them serves a specific purpose in regard to most of the
elements in the environment.
The
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
was established in 1969 and controls public oversight. This policy does
three important things: 1) it establishes the Council on Environmental Quality
and the oversight board for general environmental conditions; 2) it directs
federal agencies to take environmental consequences into account when making
decisions; 3) it requires that an environmental
impact statement be published for every federal project that may have an
effect on the quality of the environment. The NEPA always requires that
agencies publicly state the activities that they are going to do, even if some
of those activities are destructive at times.
The Clean Air Act of 1970 was established to
regulate air emissions in the atmosphere. This act provides nationally
standardized rules in the United
States to identify, monitor and reduce air
contaminants. It also regulates seven major conventional
pollutants, which include sulfur oxides, lead, carbon monoxide, nitrogen
oxides, dust, volatile organic compounds, and metals. 
The Clean Water Act of 1972 was established to protect surface water and one its
main goals was to make the nation’s waters clean, fishable and swimmable and
low in contaminants for them be safe for recreational purposes. Another goal of
this act was to identify source pollutants, discharges from factories, sewage
treatment plants, and other water sources. The Clean Water Act has also been useful
in promoting watershed-based planning so that communities and agencies together
can reduce contaminants in their own surface waters. Also, they provide funding
to help support projects that control pollution. 
The Endangered Species Act of 1979 was established to protect and conserve wildlife as
well as provide a list of species that are vulnerable, threatened or
endangered. The ESA regulate and updates a worldwide list of endangered species
and the list in 2010 included 1,969 threatened/endangered species. When a
species is listed as endangered, the Endangered Species Act sets forth rules
for protecting it and its habitat to make recovery a possibility. The ESA has
encountered some controversies, like when land developers want to build housing
in scenic areas where small amounts of a species still remains. To solve this
controversy, the ESA provides land-use assistance and grants and also
guarantees rights to landowners when a habitat conservation plan has been
established.
The Superfund Act of 1980 was established to list
hazardous sites and makes them available to the public. The act is responsible
for taking care of emergency spills and uncontrolled contamination, as well as
addressing orphan sites. The Superfund Act allows the EPA to establish liability,
making polluters partly responsible for cleanup. This act was mainly
established to cover the costs of cleanup, which can sometimes reach billions
of dollars. The Superfund program has cited more than 47,000 sites that visibly
need cleanup and the most serious ones are put on a National Priorities List;
the number of serious cleanups is about 1,600.
The
environmental laws mentioned above exist at the local, national and
international levels. Within the United States,
environmental laws can be put in place in each the three branches of the U.S.
government: legislative, judicial, and executive. Each branch serves a specific
function and purpose within the establishment of a new law; the Legislative
Branch is responsible for establishing laws that are enacted by Congress and
then signed by the president to become official. The Judicial Branch is
responsible for resolving legal disputes that may occur and they do this in
three ways: first, they decide what the exact meaning of a law is; second, they
decide whether or not laws have been broken, and third, they decide whether a
law violates the Constitution. It’s important for those in the Judicial Branch
to interpret every law they encounter so that they can comprehend what the law
really means and be able to gain a greater understanding of it so they can make
the right legal decisions.
The Executive Branch is responsible for overseeing
administrative law, in this case environmental laws, and they set rules, decide
disputes, and investigate any misconduct that is seen or reported. The
Executive Branch contains more than 100 federal agencies, including the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whose main obligation is to protect the
environment and make it a safe place for people; also included is the Department
of Agriculture (oversees forests and grasslands and agricultural issues), and
the Department of the Interior (oversees public lands and national parks).
International policies have also been enforced and
negotiated among different nations to help preserve and protect the global
environment. These kinds of policies are made to regulate international
activities among nations such as hazardous waste, deforestation, trade in
endangered species, global warming, and wetland protection. There are several
major international agreements that have been made and serve as an important
element in keeping the global environment safe and clean. The Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species (CITES, 1973) was an agreement that stated that wild
flora and fauna are very valuable and irreplaceable, and have been threatened
by human interaction. To protect these valuable species, CITES maintains and
regulates a list of threatened and endangered species that could potentially be
affected by trade. The Montreal Protocol (1987) was established to
protect stratospheric ozone by having signatories phase out the use and
production of several chemicals that are harmful to the ozone in the
atmosphere. It also stated that signatory nations may not purchase CFCs or products
derived from them; this is one reason why this agreement has been very
effective and successful.
The Basel Convention (1992) was established to
regulate and restrict the shipment of hazardous waste materials across
boundaries in an effort to protect the peoples’ health and the environment.
They also require that signatories make sure there are safe disposal facilities
within their boundaries where waste can be discarded properly. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
(1994) was established to allow governments to share data on climate
change, develop national plans to help control greenhouse gases, and to
cooperate in planning for climate change adaptation. Coincidentally, the Kyoto Protocol (1997) was established to set
binding targets for signatories to decrease greenhouse gas emissions to levels
less and 1990 by the year 2012. Only a few countries, including Sweden, have
been able to accomplish this goal, while many other countries are falling
behind and coming short of this goal. Industrialized countries are among those
not achieving this goal because they are responsible for almost 90% of GHG
emissions, which is making it more difficult.
With all these goals set in place, it’s primarily
up to the countries to enforce them depending on how much they really care
about their international environmental image. Most countries want to appear on
top of their game, so they strive to meet all of the international and local
agreements as best they can.
While law-making at the federal, global and state
level are important factors in environmental policy, individuals can also make
a difference and play as big of a role as those higher up. The individuals are
the ones who decide to commit their energy and knowledge to causes that they
find important; anyone can participate in the formation of a policy and even
more importantly, do things to help protect the environment.
One important thing that individuals can do is to
become environmentally educated in order to better support their environment
and society as a whole. Just how important is environmental education? Congress
believes it’s extremely important, so they established the National Environmental Education Act (1990), in which they deemed
environmental education as a national priority. The act worked to put two
important goals in place: (1) to improve public understanding of the
environment, and (2) to encourage postsecondary students to pursue
environmental careers. Environmental education aims to emphasize specific
learning objectives, such as environmental awareness and appreciation, being
familiar with a broad range of current environmental issues, and gaining
experience in problem-solving skills and critical thinking skills. Environmental Literacy is another term
used in environmental education that simply means having the adequate knowledge
of the environment and its many systems.
Another way for individuals to get involved in
taking care of and preserving their environment is through citizen science, which is a collaboration among scientists and
individuals to answer real scientific questions as they relate to the
environment. This can occur in a lab, or in the environment, such as conducting
field work to find the answers to specific questions.
As humans, we consume mass amounts of resources
and waste on a daily basis, and if we do not dispose these materials properly,
it will wreak havoc on our environment and the earth as a whole. At times, we
will buy things we may not need or want just to have the satisfaction, or try
and impress someone; in fact, the average American now consumes twice as many
goods and materials as they did in 1950! The average is house is now twice as
big, yet the average family has half as many people as it did 50 years ago.
These are some eye-opening facts, which is why it’s more important now than
ever for us to choose the most effective and beneficial strategies to keep our
environment and earth clean and prospering. There are several simple things
that we can do to reduce our negative impact on the earth, such as purchasing
less and not buying more than we need, conserving energy, saving water,
avoiding disposable items and reducing excess packaging. Just these small steps
can and WILL make a huge difference and we will be on our way to keeping the
earth the beautiful place it is, and should be as long as we are creatures
here!
Image URLS
Save Energy: http://www.swgasliving.com/sites/default/files/styles/content/public/images/iStock_000007207032Large.jpg
Environmental Health: http://www.smchealth.org/sites/default/files/pictures/CHS/medium_Lab_iStock_000017803354XSmall.JPG
Environmental Policy: http://www.cadmus.com/Collateral/Images/Common/Planet%20on%20Leaf.jpg
NEPA: http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRMhJCxcdMMN3ZjZwik0iv2ANys3q4j1tHI6r43ONvzwEQ7qW0FFC7C23L-
Clean Water Act: http://www.epa.gov/region6/6en/w/creek.jpg
Endangered Species Act: http://www.exploringnature.org/graphics/endangered_species/Header_ESAct.jpg
U.S. Branches: http://www.valdosta.edu/~adfranklin/branches.jpg
Environmental Education: http://cdn.earthday.advomatic.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/campaign_banner/EducationBanner_1.jpg
Protecting Environment: http://www.eurodix.com/images/environment_pic.jpg
Beautiful Environment: http://www.beach-backgrounds.com/urban-images/tiki-huts-wallpaper-1920x1200.jpg
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