Environmentally Significant Consumption Research Directions (1997) / Chapter Skim
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1 CONSUMPTION AS A PROBLEM FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
1 CONSUMPTION AS A PROBLEM FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
Pages 1-11
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From page 1... ...
Sweeney For over two decades, the same frustrating exchange has been repeated countless times in international policy circles. A government official or scientist from a wealthy country would make the following argument: The world is threatened with environmental disaster because of the de pletion of natural resources (or climate change, or the loss of biodiver sity)
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From page 2... ...
, and the limited role played in the discussions by scientific analysis of human-environment interactions. In contrast to the major international efforts that have been mounted to understand the biogeochemical processes that account for global climate change, acid deposition, ozone depletion, loss of biodiversity, and other environmental threats, relatively little scientific attention has been given to understanding the economic, social, cultural, and institutional processes that set such anthropogenic environmental changes in motion.
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From page 3... ...
With these caveats in mind, treating environmentally relevant human activity as a mathematical product is intuitively appealing because it reduces the analytic problem to two factors: numbers of people (population) , and the impact of the average person on the environment (sometimes referred to as the impact of consumption)
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From page 4... ...
Mining and processing of metals, especially toxic heavy metals, pollutes water and threatens human health and ecological systems. Agricultural practices such as fertilization, irrigation, and the use of pesticides pollute water and alter the nitrogen and fresh water cycles.
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From page 5... ...
But air pollution also consists partly of sulfur oxides, for which individual action bears little responsibility. Sulfur oxides come largely from coal combustion, which in the United States is mainly an activity of large industrial organizations, especially electric utility companies.
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An obvious one is the price of energy, which is affected, in turn, by public policies of energy taxation and utility regulation, the competitiveness of energy industries, advances in the technology of energy production and distribution, and perhaps the history of national energy production -- in the United States a long history of energy self-sufficiency may help explain the strength of the political forces that have for two decades stymied efforts to raise oil prices to help meet environmental objectives. Energy use is also affected in indirect but important ways by the standard practices of the home construction and appliance manufacturing industries, by local building codes, and by the practices of home mortgage lenders, which may or may not offer financial benefits to the buyers of energy-efficient homes that cost less to maintain.
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From page 7... ...
From a policy perspective, this question provides a sufficient motive for asking all the previous ones: if decision makers must contemplate changing environmentally disruptive activities, they need to understand the nature and causes of those activities. Knowing how to change environmentally significant activity, however, requires more than an understanding of the causes.
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From page 8... ...
The book is intended for people who want to improve understanding of the human activities that constitute environmentally significant consumption: scientists in fields that can build this understanding and the organizations that might support their scientific work. It shows that, in addition to the knowledge that is already being developed, there are many critical questions that have barely begun to be addressed and, accordingly, that there are major opportunities to build useful knowledge.
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From page 9... ...
The reports in Chapter 3 address issues of measuring and tracking flows of materials and energy that are affected by human consumption activities; those in Chapter 4 concern the driving forces of environmentally significant consumption. The reports indicate some promising directions for research; in addition, each one includes numerous citations that can direct an interested reader farther into the particular domain of study.
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From page 10... ...
Ehrlich 1974 Human population and the global environment. American Scientist 62:282-292.
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From page 11... ...
1994 Assigning Economic Value to Natural Resources. Papers presented at the Workshop on Valuing Natural Capital for Sustainable Development, July 1993.
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