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�ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

“The world will no longer be divided by the ideologies of ‘left’ and ‘right,’ but by those who accept ecological limits and those who don’t.”

—Wolfgang Sachs

Dr. Sandeep Patil

Department of Chemistry

S. V. K. T. College, Deolali Camp, Nashik

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Chapter Outline

The Global Context: Globalization and the Environment
Sociological Theories of Environmental Problems
Environmental Problems: An Overview
Social Causes of Environmental Problems
Strategies for Action: Responding to Environmental Problems
Understanding Environmental Problems

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The Global Context: Globalization and the Environment�Introduction

Two aspects of globalization that have affected the environment are

The permeability of international borders to pollution and environmental problems.
Growth of free trade and transnational corporations.

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The Global Context: Globalization and the Environment�Permeability of International Borders

Environmental problems such as climate change and destruction of the ozone layer extend far beyond their source to affect the entire planet.

For example, toxic chemicals (such as polychlorinated biphenyls [PCBs]) from the Southern Hemisphere have been found in the Arctic.

Another environmental problem involving permeability of borders is bioinvasion; the intentional or accidental introduction of organisms in regions where they are not native.

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The Global Context: Globalization and the Environment�Permeability of International Borders

Bioinvasion:

Red fire ants, known for their painful sting, are an example of bioinvasion.
They came from Paraguay and Brazil on shiploads of lumber to Mobile, Alabama, in 1957 and have spread throughout the southern states.

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The Global Context: Globalization and the Environment� The Growth of Transnational Corporation and Free Trade Agreements

The World Trade Organization (WTO) and free trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) allow transnational corporations to pursue profits, expand markets, use natural resources, and exploit cheap labor in developing countries while weakening the ability of governments to protect natural resources or to implement environmental legislation.
Transnational corporations have influenced the world’s most powerful nations to institutionalize an international system of governance that values commercialism, corporate rights, and “free” trade over the environment, human rights, worker rights, and human health.

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Sociological Theories of Environmental Problems �Structural-Functionalist Perspective

Structural functionalism focuses on how changes in one aspect of the social system affect other aspects of society.
By 2020, an estimated 50 million people globally will be environmental refugees—individuals who have migrated because they can no longer secure a livelihood as a result of environmental problems.

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Sociological Theories of Environmental Problems �Structural-Functionalist Perspective

The structural-functionalist perspective raises our awareness of latent dysfunctions; negative consequences of social actions that are unintended and not widely recognized.
For example, the more than 840,000 dams worldwide provide water to irrigate farmlands and supply some of the world’s electricity.
Yet dam building has had unintended negative consequences for the environment.

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Sociological Theories of Environmental Problems �Conflict Perspective

The conflict perspective focuses on how wealth, power, and the pursuit of profit underlie many environmental problems.
To maximize sales, manufacturers design products intended to become obsolete. As a result of this planned obsolescence, consumers continually throw away used products and purchase replacements. Industry profits at the expense of the environment, which must sustain the constant production and absorb ever-increasing amounts of waste.

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Sociological Theories of Environmental Problems �Conflict Perspective

Industries also use their power and wealth to influence politicians’ environmental and energy policies as well as the public’s beliefs about environmental issues.

In 2009, oil and gas industries spent $175 million on lobbying—nearly eight times what pro-environmental groups spent.

The conflict perspective is also concerned with environmental injustice (also known as environmental racism)—the tendency for marginalized populations and communities to disproportionately experience adversity due to environmental problems.

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What Do You Think?

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Sociological Theories of Environmental Problems �Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

Focuses on how meanings, labels, and definitions learned through interaction and through the media affect environmental problems.
Large corporations and industries commonly use marketing and public relations strategies to construct favorable meanings of their corporation or industry.

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Sociological Theories of Environmental Problems �Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

Greenwashing: Refers to the way environmentally and socially damaging companies portray their corporate image and products as being “environmentally friendly” or socially responsible.
Although greenwashing involves manipulation of public perception to maximize profits, many corporations make genuine and legitimate efforts to improve their operations, packaging, or overall sense of corporate responsibility toward the environment.

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What Do You Think?

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Sociological Theories of Environmental Problems �Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

Pinkwashing: the practice of using the color pink and pink ribbons and other marketing strategies that suggest a company is helping to fight breast cancer, even when the company may be using chemicals linked to cancer.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview

Ecosystems are the complex and dynamic relationships between forms of life and the environments they inhabit
Over the past 50 years, humans have altered ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any other comparable period of time in history.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Energy Use Worldwide

Until we experience a prolonged power outage, most of us take the availability of electricity for granted, and don’t think about how dependent we are on energy.
Most of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels, which include petroleum (or oil), coal, and natural gas.
The next most common source of energy is hydroelectric power (6.2 percent), which involves generating electricity from moving water; while it is considered clean and renewable, it is criticized for affecting natural habitats.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Energy Use Worldwide

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Energy Use Worldwide

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Depletion of Natural Resources:

Freshwater resources are being consumed by agriculture, by industry, and for domestic use.
More than 1 billion people lack access to clean water
The demand for new land, fuel, and raw materials resulted in deforestation, the conversion of forest land to nonforest land.
Desertification is the degradation of semiarid land, which results in the expansion of desert land that is unusable for agriculture.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Air Pollution

Transportation vehicles, fuel combustion, industrial processes (such as burning coal and processing minerals from mining), and solid waste disposal have contributed to the growing levels of air pollutants, including carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, arsenic, nitrogen dioxide, mercury, dioxins, and lead.
Air pollution, which is linked to heart disease, lung cancer, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and asthma, kills about 3 million people a year.
In the United States, about half of the population lives in areas where they are exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Air Pollution

Indoor Air Pollution

Exposure to this indoor smoke increases risk of pneumonia, chronic respiratory disease, asthma, cataracts, tuberculosis, and lung cancer, and is responsible for up to 1.6 million deaths a year (World Health Organization 2010).
Exposure is particularly high among women and children, who spend the most time near the domestic hearth or stove.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Air Pollution

Indoor air pollution is a serious problem in developing countries.
As this woman cooks food for her family, she is exposed to harmful air contaminants from the fumes.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Air Pollution

Indoor Air Pollution

Exposure to this indoor smoke increases risk of pneumonia, chronic respiratory disease, asthma, cataracts, tuberculosis, and lung cancer, and is responsible for up to 1.6 million deaths a year (World Health Organization 2010).
Exposure is particularly high among women and children, who spend the most time near the domestic hearth or stove.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Air Pollution

Destruction of the Ozone Layer

The ozone layer of the earth’s atmosphere protects life on earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.
Yet the ozone layer has been weakened by the use of certain chemicals, particularly chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used in refrigerators, air conditioners, spray cans, and other applications.
The depletion of the ozone layer allows hazardous levels of ultraviolet rays to reach the earth’s surface and is linked to a variety of problems.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Air Pollution

Acid Rain

Air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, mix with precipitation to form acid rain. Polluted rain, snow, and fog contaminate crops, forests, lakes, and rivers.
For example: As a result of the effects of acid rain, all the fish have died in a third of the lakes in New York’s Adirondack Mountains.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview�Global Warming and Climate Change

Global warming refers to the increasing average global air temperature, caused mainly by the accumulation of various gases (greenhouse gases) that collect in the atmosphere.
Causes of Global Warming: The prevailing scientific view is that Greenhouse Gases, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide, accumulate in the atmosphere and act like the glass in a greenhouse, holding heat from the sun close to the earth.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview�Global Warming and Climate Change

Effects of Global Warming and Climate Change Climate change kills an estimated 30,000 people per year, mostly in the developing world (Global Humanitarian Forum 2009).
The majority of these deaths are attributed to crop failure leading to malnutrition and water problems such as flooding and drought.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview�Global Warming and Climate Change

The effects of global warming and climate change also include the following:

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Environmental Problems: An Overview�Global Warming and Climate Change

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Land Pollution

About 30 percent of the world’s surface is land, which provides soil to grow the food we eat.
Increasingly, humans are polluting the land with nuclear waste, solid waste, and pesticides.
In 2011, 1,287 hazardous waste sites (also called Superfund sites) were on the National Priority List.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Land Pollution

About 30 percent of the world’s surface is land, which provides soil to grow the food we eat.
Increasingly, humans are polluting the land with nuclear waste, solid waste, and pesticides.
In 2011, 1,287 hazardous waste sites (also called Superfund sites) were on the National Priority List.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Land Pollution

Nuclear Waste: Nuclear waste, resulting from both nuclear weapons production and nuclear reactors or power plants, contains radioactive plutonium, a substance linked to cancer and genetic defects.
Radioactive plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, meaning that it takes 24,000 years for the radioactivity to be reduced by half.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Land Pollution

Solid Waste: In 1960, each U.S. citizen generated 2.7 pounds of garbage on average every day.

This figure increased to 3.7 pounds in 1980, and to 4.3 pounds in 2009.
This figure does not include mining, agricultural, and industrial waste; demolition and construction wastes; junked autos; or obsolete equipment wastes.
Just over half of this waste is dumped in landfills; the rest is recycled or composted.
E-waste: Discarded electrical appliances and electronic equipment.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Land Pollution

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What Do You Think?

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Water Pollution

Our water is being polluted by a number of harmful substances, including pesticides, vehicle exhaust, acid rain, oil spills, sewage, and industrial, military, and agricultural.
In the United States, one indicator of water pollution is the thousands of fish advisories issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that warn against the consumption of certain fish caught in local waters because of contamination with pollutants such as mercury and dioxin waste.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Water Pollution

Water pollution also affects the health and survival of fish and other marine life. In the Gulf of Mexico, as well as in the Chesapeake Bay and Lake Erie, there are areas known as “dead zones” that—due to pollution runoff from agricultural uses of fertilizer—have oxygen levels so low they cannot support life.
In recent years, there has been increasing public concern about the effects of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”—a process used in natural gas production that involves injecting at high pressure a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals into deep underground wells to break apart shale rock and release gas.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Chemicals, Carcinogens, and Health Problems

About 3 million tons of toxic chemicals are released into the environment each year.
Chemicals in the environment enter our bodies via the food and water we consume, the air we breathe, and the substances with which we come in contact.
The 12th Report on Carcinogens lists 240 chemical substances that are “known to be human carcinogens” or “reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens,” meaning that they are linked to cancer.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Chemicals, Carcinogens, and Health Problems

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What Do You Think?

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Chemicals, Carcinogens, and Health Problems

Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), also known as environmental illness, is a condition whereby individuals experience adverse reactions when exposed to low levels of chemicals found in everyday substances (vehicle exhaust, fresh paint, housecleaning products, perfume and other fragrances, synthetic building materials, and numerous other petrochemical-based products).

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Chemicals, Carcinogens, and Health Problems

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Chemicals, Carcinogens, and Health Problems

Many personal care products contain chemicals with known or suspected adverse health effects.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Threats to Biodiversity

There are an estimated 8.7 million species of life on earth (some scientists believe the number is much higher), 1.3 million of which have been named and catalogued.
This enormous diversity of life, known as biodiversity, provides food, medicines, fibers, and fuel; purifies air and freshwater; pollinates crops and vegetation; and makes soils fertile.

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Environmental Problems: An Overview� Light Pollution

Light pollution refers to artificial lighting that is annoying, unnecessary, and/or harmful to life forms on earth.
The United States, like much of the rest of the world, has become increasingly “lit up” with artificial light.
Almost all people in developed societies use artificial light, reducing the natural period of darkness at night.

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Social Causes of Environmental Problems�Population Growth

The world’s population is growing; in 2011 world population reached the 7 billion mark.
Population growth places increased demands on natural resources and results in increased waste.

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Social Causes of Environmental Problems� Industrialization and Economic Development

Many of the environmental problems confronting the world are associated with industrialization and economic development.
Industrialized countries, for example, consume more energy and natural resources and contribute more pollution to the environment than poor countries.
The relationship between level of economic development and environmental pollution is curvilinear rather than linear.

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Social Causes of Environmental Problems� Industrialization and Economic Development

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Social Causes of Environmental Problems� Cultural Values and Attitudes

Cultural values and attitudes that contribute to environmental problems include

Individualism
Consumerism
Militarism

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