SCI1100 Basics in Environmental Science discussion General Instructions Topics: (1) Environmental Economics and Policy; (2) Human Populations. Question # | Homework Answers

SCI1100 Basics in Environmental Science discussion General Instructions

Topics: (1) Environmental Economics and Policy; (2) Human Populations.

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1.

Describe the primary differences between subsistence, capitalistic, and centrally planned economies. Explain how capitalistic and centrally planned economic societies tend to have greater effects on the environment than subsistence economies.

2.

Define renewable and nonrenewable resources in your own words. Give two examples of each in your answer.

3.

Describe the main differences between a cap and trade approach, and a carbon tax as methods to decrease industrial emissions of carbon dioxide.

4.

List the seven steps of the environmental policy process in order. Among the steps, where would you put most efforts to establish new policy? Why?

5.

How do birth rates and death rates affect population dynamics specifically? When do you see stable populations with regard to birth and death rates? What about growing and shrinking populations?

6.

Use your own words to describe an age-class diagram. What can you predict about the future for a population that has a triangular shaped age-class diagram?

7.

Explain how poverty affects the environment.

8.

Describe the role of women’s rights in population growth.

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Environmental
Economics and
Environmental Policy
Upon completing this chapter, you will be able to:
? Describe principles of economic theory and summarize their implications for the environment
S
A economics and ecological economics
? Explain the approaches of environmental
N and assess its societal context
? Describe the aims of environmental policy
? Discuss the history of U.S. environmental
F policy and identify major U.S. environmental laws
? Characterize the institutions involvedO
with international environmental policy and describe how nations
handle transboundary issues
R
? Outline the environmental policy process and evaluate its effectiveness
D process
? Discuss the role of science in the policy
? Contrast the different approaches to ,environmental policy
? Compare the concepts of economic growth, economic health, and sustainability
B
E
T
H
A
N
Y
1
3
5
3
T
S
Contaminated beach near
Tijuana River mouth
Essential Environment: The Science Behind the Stories, Fourth Edition, by Jay Withgott and Matthew Laposata.
Published by Benjamin Cummings. Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
M05_WITH2901_04_SE_C05.indd 87
8/7/11 5:47 PM
CENTR AL C A SE S TUDY
San Diego and Tijuana: Pollution Problems
and Policy Solutions
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world—indeed
it is the only thing that ever has.”
—Anthropologist Margaret Mead
“It is the continuing policy of the Federal Government . . . to create and maintain conditions
S
under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony and fulfill the social, economic,
A
and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans.”
N
F
he beaches south of San Diego boast O
some of the world’s best waves for surfing.
These days, however, most surfers avoidRthe temptation. For it is here that the heavily
D
polluted Tijuana River flows across the international
border from Mexico and empties
,
into the Pacific Ocean, disgorging millions of gallons
of untreated wastewater.
—National Environmental Policy Act
T
“When it rains, I call it the
apartments, shanties, and factoB
CANADA
sewage tsunami,” says surfer and
ries, as well as leaky sewage treatE
environmentalist Serge Dedina.
ment plants and toxic dump sites.
UNITED
San
“For 40 square miles, from ImRains wash pollutants from all
T
STATES
Diego
perial Beach to Coronado, there
these sources into the Tijuana RivH
Tijuana
Atlantic
is a brown plume as far as the
er and eventually onto U.S. and
Ocean
A
eye can see.”
Mexican beaches (FIGURE 5.1B).
MEXICO
Such incidents occur when
Although pollution has
N
heavy rains overwhelm the abiliflowed in the Tijuana River for
Y
Pacific
ty of sewage treatment plants to
decades, the problem grew
SOUTH
Ocean
AMERICA
worse in recent years as the reprocess wastewater. San Diego’s
gion’s population boomed, outcoastal waters receive stormwa1
stripping the capacity of sewage treatment facilities.
ter runoff when rains wash pollutants into local rivers.
3
As impacts intensified, people on both sides of the
Across the border in the Mexican city of Tijuana, the
5
border pressed policymakers for action. As a result,
aging, leaky sewer system becomes clogged with deMexico and the United States worked together to
bris, causing raw sewage to overflow into the streets
3
and, eventually, into the Tijuana River.
construct a wastewater treatment plant to handle exT
Winding northwestward through the arid landcess waste from Tijuana. The South Bay International
S
scape of northern Baja California, Mexico, the Tijuana
Wastewater Treatment Plant (IWTP) began operatRiver crosses the U.S. border south of San Diego (FIGing just north of the border in 1997 and treats up to
URE 5.1A). A river’s watershed consists of all the land
95 million L (25 million gal) of wastewater each day.
from which water drains into the river, and the Tijuana
Unfortunately, the facility reached its capacity withRiver’s watershed covers 4,500 km2 (1,750 mi2) and is
in three years because Tijuana’s population grew
home to 2 million people of two nations. The Tijuana
so quickly, and excess wastewater began flowing
River watershed is a transboundary watershed (so
downriver.
named because it crosses a political boundary—in this
Since then, beach closures and pollution-related
case, an international border), with approximately 70%
health advisories have been commonplace. Garbage
of its area in Mexico. On the Mexican side of the borcarried by the river litters the beaches. “Every day I
der, the river and its tributaries are lined with farms,
find broken glass, balloons, or can pop-tops. I’ve
Essential Environment: The Science Behind the Stories, Fourth Edition, by Jay Withgott and Matthew Laposata.
Published by Benjamin Cummings. Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
M05_WITH2901_04_SE_C05.indd 88
8/7/11 5:47 PM
San
Diego
International
Wastewater
Treatment Plant
U.S.
MEXICO
Tijuana
Tijuana River
Watershed
(a) Map of the Tijuana River watershed
(b) Wastewater enters the ocean near Tijuana
S
A
N
F
lowers concentrations of dissolved oxygen, killing
O wastewater
economically valuable fish and shellfish. Pollution and beach
R closures reduce recreation and tourism both in Mexico and in
California, whose beaches each year host 175 million
D southern
visitors who spend over $1.5 billion. As a result, finding ways
, to reduce pollution will help the region economically.
FIGURE 5.1 ? The Tijuana River winds northwestward from Mexico into California just south of San Diego, draining
4,500 km2 (1,750 mi2) of land in its watershed (colored green in map) (a). Pollution entering the river affects people on
both sides of the border and sometimes creates a visible brown plume of wastewater entering the Pacific Ocean (b).
The photo shows an aerial view from the north, with Tijuana in the background.
even found hypodermic needles. It’s really sad,” one
resident of Imperial Beach told her local newspaper.
Mexican residents of the Tijuana River watershed
suffer more pollution because most live in poverty
relative to their U.S. neighbors. Close to one-third of
Tijuana’s homes are not connected to a sewer system,
and in poor neighborhoods such as Loma Taurina, river pollution directly affects people’s day-to-day lives
by contaminating water for drinking and washing and
by promoting risks of disease, especially when flooding occurs. The rise of U.S.-owned factories, or maquiladoras, on the Mexican side of the border also has
contributed to pollution, through the direct disposal
of industrial waste and by attracting thousands of new
workers to the already crowded region. In many ways,
economic inequities spanning the border region have
aggravated its problems with water pollution.
As we explore environmental economics and environmental policy in this chapter, we will periodically
return to the Tijuana River watershed and see how
people are making progress by using science and policy to help address the region’s pollution challenges. ?
ECONOMICS: APPROACHES AND
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPLICATIONS
Many environmental problems share the mix of impacts we
see in the Tijuana River watershed—harming human health,
altering ecological systems, inflicting economic damage, and
contributing to inequities among people. In the Tijuana River
watershed, pollution affects the region’s economies—while
economic inequities, in turn, worsen pollution. Sewage-tainted water carries pathogens (organisms that cause illness), posing health risks and leading to higher medical costs. Untreated
Economics is the study of how people decide to use resources to provide goods and services in the face of demand
B for them. By this definition, environmental problems are also
E economic problems that vary with population and per capita
resource consumption. Indeed, the word economics and the
T word ecology come from the same Greek root, oikos, meanH ing “household.” Economists traditionally have studied the
household of human society, while ecologists study the broadA er household of all life.
N
Y Several types of economies exist
An economy is a social system that converts resources into
goods , material commodities manufactured for and bought
1 by individuals and businesses; and services, work done for
3 others as a form of business. The oldest type of economy
is the subsistence economy. People in subsistence econo5 mies meet their daily needs by subsisting on what they can
3 gather from nature or produce on their own, rather than
working for wages and then purchasing life’s necessities.
T
A second type of economy is the capitalist market economy
.
In this system, interactions among buyers and sellers deS
termine which goods and services are produced, how much
is produced, and how these are produced and distributed.
Capitalist economies contrast with state socialist economies,
or centrally planned economies, in which government determines how to allocate resources. In reality, today’s capitalist and socialist economies have borrowed much from one
another and are in fact hybrid systems (often termed mixed
economies).
In modern mixed economies, governments typically intervene in the market for several reasons: (1) to eliminate unfair advantages held by single buyers or sellers; (2) to provide
Environmental Economics and Environmental Policy
Tijuana
River
CHAPTER 5
Pacific
Ocean
89
Essential Environment: The Science Behind the Stories, Fourth Edition, by Jay Withgott and Matthew Laposata.
Published by Benjamin Cummings. Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
M05_WITH2901_04_SE_C05.indd 89
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social services, such as national defense, medical care, and
education; (3) to provide “safety nets” for the elderly, victims
of natural disasters, and so on; (4) to manage the commons
(p. 3–4); and (5) to reduce pollution and other threats to
health and quality of life.
Economies rely on goods and services
from the environment
90
Economies receive inputs (such as natural resources) from
the environment, process them in complex ways that enable human society to function, and then discharge outputs
(such as waste) into the environment. Although these interactions between human economies and the nonhuman
environment are readily apparent, traditional economic
schools of thought have long overlooked the importance of
these connections. Indeed, most mainstream economists
still adhere to a worldview that largely ignores the environment (FIGURE 5.2A)—and this worldview continues to
drive most policy decisions. However, modern economists
belonging to the fast-growing fields of environmental economics and ecological economics (pp. 93–94) explicitly
recognize that human economies are subsets of the environment and depend crucially upon it for natural resources
and ecosystem services (FIGURE 5.2B).
Economic activity uses natural resources (pp. 2–3), the
substances and forces we need to survive: the sun’s energy,
the fresh water we drink, the trees that provide us lumber, the
rocks that provide us metals, and the fossil fuels that power
our machines. We can think of natural resources as “goods”
produced by nature.
Environmental systems also naturally function in a manner that supports economies. Earth’s ecological systems purify
air and water, form soil, cycle nutrients, regulate climate, pollinate plants, and recycle the waste generated by our economic
activity. Such essential processes, called ecosystem services
(pp. 2, 36), support the life that makes our economic activity
possible.
While our environment enables economic activity by
providing ecosystem goods and services, economic activity
can affect the environment in return. When we deplete natural
resources and generate pollution, we often degrade the capacity of ecological systems to function. In fact, the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment (p. 16) concluded in 2005 that 15 of 24
ecosystem services its scientists surveyed globally were being
degraded or used unsustainably. The degradation of ecosystem services can in turn disrupt economies, as we see along the
Tijuana River, where pollution depresses people’s economic
opportunities. Ecological degradation is harming poor people
more than wealthy people, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. As a result, restoring ecosystem services
stands as a prime avenue for alleviating poverty.
Adam Smith proposed
an “invisible hand”
When economics began to develop as a discipline in the 18th
century, many philosophers argued that individuals acting in their own self-interest would harm society (as in the
tragedy of the commons, p. 3–4). However, Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790) believed that self-interested
behavior could benefit society, as long as the behavior was
constrained by the rule of law and private property rights and
operated within fairly competitive markets. Known today as
a founder of classical economics, Smith felt that when people are free to pursue their own economic self-interest in a
competitive marketplace, the marketplace will behave as if
guided by “an invisible hand” that leads their actions to benefit society as a whole. Smith’s philosophy remains a pillar of
free-market thought today.
Neoclassical economics incorporates
psychology and cost-benefit analysis
SEconomists subsequently adopted more quantitative approaches as they aimed to explain human behavior. NeoclassiAcal economics examines the psychological factors underlying
Nconsumer choices, explaining market prices in terms of consumer preferences for units of particular commodities. In
Fneoclassical economic theory, buyers desire the lowest possiOble price, whereas sellers desire the highest possible price. As
a result of this conflict, a compromise price is reached, and
Rthe “right” quantities of commodities are bought and sold.
DThis balance is often phrased in terms of supply, the amount
of a product offered for sale at a given price, and demand, the
, amount
of a product people will buy at a given price if free to
do so (FIGURE 5.3).
an action or decision, neoclassical economists
BoftenTouseevaluate
cost-benefit analysis. In this approach, economists
Etotal up estimated costs for a proposed action and compare
Tthese to the sum of benefits estimated to result from the action. If benefits exceed costs, the action should be pursued; if
Hcosts exceed benefits, it should not. Given a choice of alternaAtive actions, the one with the greatest excess of benefits over
costs should be chosen.
N This reasoning seems eminently logical, but problems
Yoften arise because not all costs and benefits can be easily
identified, defined, or quantified. For example, it may be
easy to tally up the costs of installing equipment to reduce
1pollution, yet difficult to assess the effects of pollution on
health or lifestyles. Moreover, monetary values
3people’s
can often be assigned more easily to economic benefits
5(such as jobs created by a factory) than to environmental
(such as long-term health impacts of the factory’s pol3costs
lution on a community), so economic benefits tend to be
Toverrepresented in cost-benefit analyses. As a result, enviSronmental advocates often feel these analyses are biased in
favor of economic development and against environmental
protection.
Neoclassical economics has profound
implications for the environment
Today’s capitalist market systems operate largely in accord
with the principles of neoclassical economics. These systems
have generated unprecedented material wealth for our societies. Alas, four fundamental assumptions of neoclassical economics often contribute to environmental degradation.
Essential Environment: The Science Behind the Stories, Fourth Edition, by Jay Withgott and Matthew Laposata.
Published by Benjamin Cummings. Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
M05_WITH2901_04_SE_C05.indd 90
8/7/11 5:47 PM
FIGURE 5.2 ? Standard neoclassical economics focuses on processes of production and consumption between households and
businesses (a), viewing the environment only as a “factor of
production” that helps enable the production of goods. In
contrast, environmental economics and ecological economics
each view the human economy as existing within the natural
environment (b), receiving resources from it, discharging waste
into it, and benefiting from various ecosystem services.
Agriculture, industry, business
Wages
Products
(goods and
services)
Labor
Payment
for
products
Households
(a) Conventional view of economic activity
Recycling
Natural resources
(ecosystem goods)
Households
Economy
Waste acceptance
(ecosystem service)
CHAPTER 5
Agriculture, industry, business
B
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T
H
A
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Environmental Economics and Environmental Policy
S
A
N
Ecosystem services
(e.g., recreation, pollination of crops, etc.)
F
O
R
D
,
91
Natural recycling: Climate regulation,
air and water purification,
nutrient cycling, etc.
(ecosystem services)
1
3
5
3
T
S
(b) Economic activity as viewed by environmental and ecological economists
Are resources infinite or substitutable? One assumption is that natural resources and human resources
(such as workers) are either infinite or largely substitutable
and interchangeable. This implies that once we have used up
a resource, we should be able to find a replacement for it. Certainly it is true that many resources can be replaced. However,
some cannot. Nonrenewable resources (such as fossil fuels)
can truly be depleted, and many renewable resources (such as
forest products) can also be used up if we exploit them faster
than they are replenished.
Should we discount the future? Second, neoclassical
economics grants an event in the future less value than one
in the present. In economic terminology, future effects are
Essential Environment: The Science Behind the Stories, Fourth Edition, by Jay Withgott and Matthew Laposata.
Published by Benjamin Cummings. Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
M05_WITH2901_04_SE_C05.indd 91
8/7/11 5:47 PM
Supply
Price
Market
equilibrium
Demand
Quantity
FIGURE 5.3 ? In a supply-and-demand graph, the demand
curve indicates the quantity of a given good (or service) that
consumers desire at each price, and the supply curve indicates
the quantity produced at each price. The market automatically
moves toward an equilibrium point at which supply equals
demand.
“discounted.” Short-term costs and benefits are granted more
importance than long-term costs and benefits, causing us to
ignore the long-term consequences of policy decisions. Many
environmental problems unfold gradually, and discounting
causes us to downplay the impacts on future generations of
the pollution we create and the resources we deplete today.
92
Are all costs and benefits internal? A third assumption of neoclassical economics is that all costs and benefits associated with an exchange of goods or services are
borne by individuals engaging directly in the transaction.
In other words, it is assumed that the costs and benefits
are “internal” to the transaction, experienced by the buyer
and seller alone. However, many transactions affect other
members of society. For example, pollution from a maquiladora along the Tijuana River can harm people living
downstream. In such a case, members of society not involved in producing the pollution end up paying its costs.
When market prices do not take the social, environmental,
or economic costs of pollution into account, then taxpayers bear the burden of paying them. Costs of a transaction
that affect people other than the buyer or seller are known
as external costs (FIGURE 5.4). External costs commonly
include the following:
? Human health problems
? Property damage
? Declines in desirable features of the environment, such as
fewer fish in a stream
? Aesthetic damage, such as from air pollution or
clear-cutting
? Stress and anxiety experienced by people…
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