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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
An insightful and illuminating discussion of the impact humans have had on Earth In A Primer on Human Impacts on the Environment: The Conceptual Approach, distinguished environmental scientist Liam Heneghan explores the intricate relationships between humanity and Earth in an accessible and engaging style. Replete with real-world examples and drawing from classic and contemporary scholarship, the author adapts the fundamental conceptual models of the environmental disciplines to assess the risks human beings are taking with their home planet. The conceptual approach of this primer challenges readers to think across multiple disciplines to reveal the big picture that is all too often lost in the details of contemporary environmental studies. Readers will also find: * A thorough introduction to conceptual modeling, showing how systems models can be adapted and applied in a rapidly changing world * Comprehensive explorations of the human impact on the Earth, including an examination of possible ecological limits and planetary boundaries * In-depth evaluations of environmental risks, especially, though not limited to, climate change and biodiversity loss * A guide to contemplating catastrophic risk and the potential for societal collapse without inducing unnecessary anxiety * An interdisciplinary focus, emphasizing the role of the natural and social sciences, as well as the arts and humanistic disciplines in safeguarding the future Perfect for students of environmental science and environmental studies, A Primer on Human Impacts on the Environment will also earn a place in the libraries of graduate students working on environmental themes and practicing professionals in the environmental management community.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Preface: A Roadmap to the Book
Acknowledgments
Section One: Introduction to Primer
1 A Manifesto for Conceptual Thinking in Environmental Disciplines
1.1 The
Necessity
of a Conceptual Approach to Environmental Science
1.2 The
Necessity
of Adapting and Applying Standard Models to Novel Environmental Problems
1.3 The
Necessity
of Collaborative Approaches to Global Environmental Problems
1.4 The
Necessity
of Evaluating Risk
1.5 The
Necessity
of New Ways of Thinking about Environmental Education
1.6 A Note of Alternative Conceptual Framing for Environmental Disciplines
References
2 A Conceptual Approach to Environmental Science
2.1 Facts and Concepts: A Simple Environmental Example
2.2 The “World” as Concept
2.3 From Concepts to Models: Important Terminology
2.4 Components of Successful Conceptual Models
2.5 Coda
References
3 A Short Chapter on the Definition of Definitions
3.1 A Definition of Definition
3.2 Role of Definitions in Scientific Explanations
3.3 Coda
References
Section Two: The Concept of Systems
4 Everything Is Connected: The First Rule of Ecology
4.1 What Is a System?
4.2 Everything Is Connected
4.3 Events, Processes, and System Behavior
4.4 Everything Is Connected…but Some Things Are More Connected Than Others
4.5 Connectivity, System Stability, and Resilience
4.6 Coda
References
5 Complex Environmental Systems
5.1 Introducing Complex Adaptive Systems
5.2 System Boundaries
5.3 A Modular Hierarchical Universe
5.4 Holons and Disciplinary Specialties
5.5 The Regulation of Parts and Wholes
5.6 Emergent Properties
5.7 An Important Aside of Determining System Scale in Science and Policy Collaboration
5.8 Summary
References
Section Three: The Concept of the Environment
6 All or Nothing? Or, What, Exactly, Is an Environment?
6.1 Vague Definitions of the Environment
6.2 The Environmental Mandala
6.3 The Umwelt: The “self‐world”, as Environment
6.4 Human/Environment Interactions: Standard Models
6.5 Modifying the Basic Model: Social Ecological Models
6.6 Modifying the Basic Model: Planetary Sources and Sinks
6.7 Full World Versus Empty World
6.8 Summary
References
7 Life and Environment Are Indissolubly Linked
7.1 An Environmental Definition of Life
7.2 The Transformation of Local Environments
7.3 Can Living Things Transform the Globe? An Introduction to the Gaia Hypothesis
7.4 From Gaia to the Anthropocene
7.5 Coda: From Mandala to Human‐Dominated Planet
References
8 Gaia, the Noösphere, and the Anthropocene
8.1 From Biosphere to the Noösphere
8.2 The Geological Ages of Humankind
8.3 From Noösphere to Anthropocene
8.4 A “Golden Spike” for the Anthropocene
8.5 The Anthropocene Defined
8.6 Coda
References
Section Four: The Concept of Limits
9 The Anthropocene and the Concept of Limits
9.1 The Meaning of Limits: Malthus, Darwin, and Contemporary Ecology
9.2 Limits of the Perfectibility of the Human Being: Energy and Cultural Development
References
10 Modeling the Limits
10.1 Good Anthropocene/Bad Anthropocene
10.2 The Great Acceleration
10.3 Modeling the Limits
10.4 Calculating the Global Ecological Footprint
10.5 Limitations of Ecological Footprinting
10.6 Living in a Safe Place: Planetary Boundaries
10.7 Coda: The Complex Meaning of Limits
References
Section Five: The Concept of Crisis
11 Collapse and the Anthropocene
11.1 Collapse and the Great Silence
11.2 Are the Environmental Sciences Apocalyptic?
11.3 Not Apocalyptic but Catastrophic: Environmental Visions of Collapse
11.4 Definitions at the End of the World
11.5 Ecologizing the End
11.6 Coda: Human Extinction is Not Inevitable (in the Short Term)
References
12 How to Conceive of a (Climate) Crisis
12.1 Assessing Environmental Risk
12.2 Catastrophic Risk: The Doomsday Clock
12.3 Catastrophic Risk Assessment
12.4 Climate Change: A Brief Primer
12.5 Climate Change and Catastrophic Risk
12.6 Coda: A Note on Eco Anxiety
References
13 Risking Life: Basics of Biological Diversity
13.1 Why Is there Not Just One Species of Living Thing?
13.2 Diversity of Life
13.3 What Is a Species?
13.4 A Diversity of Species Concepts
13.5 How Many Species?
13.6 Biodiversity and Its Measurement
13.7 Coda
References
14 Is the Anthropocene Extinction a Global Catastrophe?
14.1 The Naturalness of Extinction: From George Cuvier to Charles Darwin?
14.2 So What, Exactly, Is Extinction?
14.3 What Are the Drivers of Extinction?
14.4 Identifying Mass Extinction
14.5 The Difficulty of Declaring Extinction in an Era of Mass Extinction
14.6 Estimating Extinction Rates during the Sixth Extinction
14.7 Is Biodiversity Loss Potentially Catastrophic?
14.8 Coda: A Role for Ethics
References
Section Six: Conceiving a Future
15 Conceiving a Future
15.1 Looking Back Before Contemplating the Future
15.2 The Anthropocene and the Noösphere
15.3 Ideas at the Interdisciplinary “Trading Zone”
15.4 Coda
References
16 The Three Futures
16.1 The Worst‐Case Scenario
16.2 The Best‐Case Scenario
16.3 The Most Likely Outcome
16.4 Fat‐Tailed Risk
16.5 Revolutionary Transformations
16.6 How to Hack the Future!
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Preface: A Roadmap to the Book
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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A Primer on Human Impacts on the Environment
The Conceptual Approach
Liam Heneghan
Department of Environmental Science and Studies
DePaul University
Illinois, USA
This edition first published 2023© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication DataNames: Heneghan, Liam, author. | John Wiley & Sons, publisher.Title: A primer on human impacts on the environment : the conceptual approach / Liam Heneghan.Description: Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2022053743 (print) | LCCN 2022053744 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119642657 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119642718 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119642619 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Nature–Effect of human beings on. | Global environmental change. | Environmental sciences.Classification: LCC GF75 .H44 2023 (print) | LCC GF75 (ebook) | DDC 304.2/8–dc23/eng20230203LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022053743LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022053744
Cover Design: WileyCover Image: © Everett Collection/Shutterstock
To my granddaughter Iphigenia Rosemary Heneghan who was born as I wrote this book: may she and her generation confront the challenges of their times with an alacrity of spirit and flourishing hearts.
To the 900 students who, over the past two decades, have conceptualized alongside me the human engagement with our beautiful if battered world.
Preface: A Roadmap to the Book
It is time to change from a society based on conquest to a society based on survival.
Winona LaDuke 1992 [1]
In the autumn quarter of 2015, I instituted changes in a course that I had been teaching continuously since the beginning of the millennium. Human Impacts on the Environment was developed for college students majoring primarily in environmental disciplines. The course had initially taken a survey approach to the topic. In it we enumerated, as best as could be managed in a single 10‐week quarter, all the major influences that humans – that most ubiquitous of primates – have had on life, atmosphere, water, rocks and soil, that is, upon the functioning of this planet Earth. After a decade and a half of pursuing an exhaustive approach to the material, five things had become apparent to me. Reflecting upon these resulted in a new presentation of the material.
This planet earth is the home upon which we rely for our sustenance, but it also serves as a sink for our wastes: both personal waste and the by‐products of our economic activity. The fragility of the planet and of the human situation in the face of stresses of our own making has long been a subject of rumination in literature, the arts, and in scientific investigation. (Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights (c.1500) by Hieronymus Bosch. Bosch's painting is from a triptych found in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain).
Source: Blankfaze / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.
As I will describe in more detail in the next chapter, the five considerations that refined my approach to thinking and teaching recognize that…
… what we know about the human impact on the biophysical processes of the planet is so extensive that taking a
conceptual approach
to teaching and thinking about global environmental problems is both an
efficient
way of presenting the material, but may be the only
feasible
way of learning about these issues in introductory courses;
…in addition to what we already know about human impacts on the planet, new information concerning the damage to earth systems accumulates so rapidly that you, as a student, will benefit from practice in applying fundamental concepts to novel aspects of environmental change. The priorities that you will likely encounter during the course of your career may change, but many of the conceptual frameworks will endure;
…the active role played by environmental scientists in policy and resource management decisions necessitates that you familiarize yourself with both the ecological and social context of environmental issues;
…furthermore your responsibilities as a future collaborator obligate you to cultivate excellent interdisciplinary skills. The problems presented by global environmental problems are larger than any one discipline;
…because of a growing consensus that the consequences of environmental change are potentially
catastrophic
– and that these consequences become ever more calamitous if solutions are not prioritized – a student will need a grounding in understanding and applying risk assessment frameworks.
Making the necessary changes provoked by these fivefold interrelated factors not only transformed my teaching, but this reflection has also resulted in this book. Although the book you are reading has evolved largely out of my experiences of teaching environmental science over more than two decades, it is written, nonetheless, to serve the needs of students taking a variety of courses. This primer is designed for those studying the fundamentals of environmental science and studies. It should also be helpful as a supplement for courses focused on ecological restoration, green architecture and design, as well as on environmental management and urban planning. Finally, the book will provide useful background for students in the environmental humanities. The book aims at providing a versatile text for students learning about the environment in both formal and informal settings, as well as being suitable for early career environmental professionals, those who wish to become engaged in environmental work in an avocational way, and even for all those desiring to become well‐informed global citizens.
1 What to Expect in this Book
In this book, we proceed as follows. In the first chapter of Section 1, the general philosophy adopted in this book – that is, placing the focus on concepts – will be justified (Chapter 1: A Manifesto for Conceptual Thinking in Environmental Disciplines). What, precisely, does it means to be conceptual in our thinking about the environment – how do conceptual models help frame the major problems, interrogate environmental mechanisms, and assist in envisioning solutions? These questions form the topics for Chapter 2: A Conceptual Approach to Environmental Science. Recognizing that much of the conceptual work that we plan to accomplish in this volume seeks to operationalize environmental concepts by defining them, the first section of the book concludes with Chapter 3: A Short Chapter on the Definition of Definitions.
This initial validation of a conceptual framing for the discipline is followed by a section presenting an overview of our basic models. Section 2 introduces the uniquely versatile and interdisciplinary tool of systems modeling. A variety of such models are applied in diverse fields (from economics, computer science, the social sciences to engineering, and, of course, they are widely used in environmental disciplines). We will introduce the general terms of these models in Chapter 4: Everything is Connected: the First Rule of Ecology. In this chapter we also evaluate the supposed central axiom of ecology that “everything is connected” and amend it. The specific details of the more significant environmental systems models are then assessed in Chapter 5: Complex Environmental Systems.
Although the term “environment,” as we shall see, has been criticized as vague and hard to operationalize – how can or should this term be used? – in Section 3 we examine a sequence of increasingly sophisticated models that make something more concrete of this concept. Chapter 6: All or Nothing? Or, What, Exactly, is an Environment? introduces the basic concept of the environment. Chapter 7: Life and Environment: the Indissoluble Link illustrates how no organism can adequately be understood without consideration of how it is shaped by an environment, as well as, simultaneously, how it reciprocally shapes an environment. A final chapter in this section (Chapter 8: Gaia, the Noösphere and the Anthropocene) presents one very significant contemporary environmental model – that is, the notion of the Anthropocene (a term used to describe the most recent period in Earth's history when humans have had a marked impact on planetary functioning). The chapter also discusses how this model is both related to and different from other similar‐seeming environmental models. These relatives of the concept of the “Anthropocene” are sometimes brushed aside as having little contemporary relevance; however, their utility may not have been fully exhausted. I try to show how they remain useful; we return to this theme in the final chapter of the book.
The idea of a “limit” is an especially important element of many environmental models. Section 4 of this book explores the concept of limits over the course of two chapters. The first of these chapters scrutinizes the consistent invocation of the notion of “limits” in environmental models (Chapter 9: The Anthropocene and the Concept of Limits). Positing a limit implies that in a finite world both population and economic growth must be bounded in some manner. Infinite growth, from this perspective, is not possible in a materially closed system. Several models propose that our contemporary global environmental problems emerge from our collective human enterprise now bumping up against the biophysical limits of the planet. This is the topic of Chapter 10: Modeling the Limits.
Will the breaching of environmental limits be catastrophic for humans and for the rest of nature? This is the topic of Section 5, which is the longest section of the book. The first of the four chapters in this section (Chapter 11: Collapse and the Anthropocene: Learning from the Past) examines the scholarship on the historical collapse of civilization(s). If there is an environmental component to the collapse of ancient civilizations, can this provide clues to our potential social vulnerabilities in the Anthropocene? Chapter 12: How to Conceive of a (Climate) Crisis illustrates the relevance of catastrophic risk assessment models for evaluating the potential consequences of global environmental problems. This chapter illustrates how risk models can be helpful in assessing problems associated with climate change. Risk models (both catastrophic and noncatastrophic) are regularly invoked in the work of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that is, the international body convened under the United Nations that collates scientific information on the causes and consequences of climate change, deliberates upon the significance of the results, and promotes international cooperation on climate action. After discussing climate risk, we evaluate risk associated with elevated species extinction rates, and the rapid decline in the ecosystem health of many key habitats on Earth – combined, these threats represent the potential unraveling of the fabric of life. The first of two chapters on biodiversity risk (Chapter 13: Risking Life: Basic Concepts of Biological Diversity) provides the necessary primer on biodiversity science; the second chapter (Chapter 14: Is the Anthropocene Extinction a Global Catastrophe?) applies specific risk models to contemporary extinctions rates.
It is, I think, worth pointing out here why considerable attention is devoted to biodiversity loss in this section of the book. There are two reasons. Firstly, more than ever before climate change and extinction risk are seen as deeply interrelated problems that need to be addressed together: I want to justify the immanent convergence of these agendas in these two chapters, as this decussation will influence that way in which we manage global environmental problems in the future. Secondly, we will take the opportunity in these chapters to provide many examples of how the conceptual approach adopted throughout the book can make complex problems more lucid than they might otherwise be. By the time you have reached these chapters you will be in a position to verify the strength of the conceptual approach, and will have developed some skill in applying the appropriate models.
In the concluding section (Section 6) we turn our focus more squarely on to the future, and interrogate how the conceptual modes discussed allow us to envision possible futures on this stressed planet. Chapter 15: Conceiving a Future: the Need for Interdisciplinarity provides tools to think about the future, and illustrates how all environmental disciplines lend an analytical power to conceiving the future. Chapter 16: The Three Futures presents three scenarios for the future: one is grim, another is highly desirable, and third – the likely future – falls between these two. Nudging our social and environmental future toward their ideal outcomes will require transformative visions. I end the book illustrating how you, the reader of this book, can be that oddest of all creatures, a butterfly whose wing‐beat results in profound and positive improvements to the conditions of the world.
2 Some Features of the Book
This book's aspiration is to emphasize foundational concepts rather than offer an exhaustive account of each facet of environmental change – that is, the book serves as a primer – the chapters that follow are therefore written as concisely as possible. That being said, the text contains extensive references to both contemporary scientific literature as well as interdisciplinary classic texts from the history of the discipline. To facilitate the reader taking a deeper dive into the research literature, all references for each topic are provide at the end of each chapter (rather than being compiled in a single bibliography at the end of book). The reader is encouraged to browse these reference lists and follow up by reading more extensively on each topic, using, for example, Google Scholar – an accessible search tool that indexes scholarly literature. Many (though alas not all) of the resources can be found in a freely available form: you should also seek assistance from public and institutional libraries in tracking down other papers. If in doubt: ask a librarian!
The book is designed for accessibility: it should be relatively easy to read even for the novice environmental thinker. However, I also have made an effort to incorporate the extensive technical vocabulary of the environmental disciplines into the text. To balance approachability of the text with technical correctness in terminology I have provided a suite of explanatory boxes with glossaries, definitions, simple clarification of key concepts, occasional questions to ponder, and various other interventions that may be helpful to the reader. These will appear on the pages when they are immediately relevant rather than being assembled at the end of the book in a technical glossary section. The book contains a wide variety of figures: often these directly amplify the text on the pages on which they occur (and will be alluded to in the text). At other times, the material for figures is chosen to extend the concepts under discussion; they provide biographical information on leading conceptual thinkers, or refer to books and ideas from adjacent disciplines that will help illuminate your broader understanding of a topic. Though the text has a presentational priority, you should see figures and images in these boxes as important in amplifying the themes on each page.
This primer emphasizes the insights of the environmental sciences (both the natural and relevant social aspects of these disciplines), but in recognition that environmental issues are to some extent the intellectual terrain of nearly all intellectual endeavors, I have incorporated the perspectives of the humanities when this seems helpful. References are made, when it seems useful to do so, to philosophy, literature, history, and even, occasionally, to elements of pop culture.
Most of the chapters of this primer are accompanied by fine‐art images. It is possible to justify the inclusion of art by resorting to elevated claims about the similarities and contrast between art and natural objects, or perhaps by pointing to the role of esthetics in our intellectual lives (for an impressive introduction to art and the life of the mind see Ross, Stephen David, ed. [1994] Art and its Significance: An Anthology of Aesthetic Theory. SUNY Press.) However, I argue for the inclusion of these images on a simpler basis: they are chosen to provoke an emotion, stimulate a thought, or offer a caesura – that is, a pause for reflection. The accompanying captions often provides a distillation of the topic of the chapter, or offers a thought or question to ponder. Think of these as being rather like a window out of which you might peer onto the world beyond the words on a page. Indeed, perhaps after reflecting on the images and text, look up from the book and gaze out upon the world asking Tolstoy's question: “What is to be done?”
Reference
1
LaDuke, W.,
From Resistance to Regeneration
, in
The Nonviolent Activist
1992.
Acknowledgments
Writing books is the most sociable of all the lonely pursuits. When taking up the pen, the writer occupies the isolating center of a mandala but it’s a center that radiates out from the desk towards an environing and very garrulous world. This book is based upon the ruminations of half a lifetime during most of which time I was out and about in the world and, as often as not, both working with, and talking to, people. The preceding pages reflect these influences to a tremendous degree.
It been my good fortune to work within an extraordinary community of scholars, thinkers, and teachers at DePaul University. It is an institution that privileges the classroom – that most sacred of secular spaces – and one that acknowledges the possibilities for intellectual growth that emerge when a seasoned teacher, a host of bright young minds, and a set of difficult ideas are brought together (for 10 weeks at a time!). This Primer is a product, first and foremost, of discussions in the classroom, where we grappled with texts and ideas and contemplated the human engagement with the natural world. I thank all of these students sincerely, especially the many hundreds who have taken my Human Impacts course. As they learned the foundations of their discipline, I have learned a lot from their responses to the material. It is fitting, I think, to acknowledge those students who served as early readers of the book, and who commented upon, or copyedited, individual chapters or, in some cases, the entire volume: thanks to Caley Koch, Angela Stenberg, Jade Aponte, and Lizette Arroyo.
There have been many colleagues across the university whose willingness to put up with an interloper pillaging insights from their disciplines is appreciated. I am particularly thankful for colleagues in the philosophy department, especially Sean Kirkland, Rick Lee, and Will McNeill for their willingness to act as a sounding board for my interpretation of texts with which they are more intimately familiar. As for my home discipline in ecology and in the environmental sciences, I am very appreciative of my colleagues in the College of Science and Health where I have felt very well supported. My friends and collaborators in the Department of Environmental Science and Studies have been steadfast intellectual comrades over the past 25 years. Their insights are reflected in every page.
The number of colleagues outside my university who have helped me over the years are too many to name without risking forgetting someone. Rather than thank them all individually I will buy each of you a pint at an appropriate moment (upon presentation of short summary of a relevant chapter). I will mention one colleague and friend however: Dr. David Wise, emeritus professor of ecology in University of Illinois, Chicago, has been my ideal interlocutor over the years; I thank him and wish him well in his very active retirement.
I appreciate the support and hard work of all those at Wiley publishing who played a role in getting this book finished and out the door. The writing started in earnest during lockdowns associated with the COVID‐19 pandemic, which was an arduous time for all of us in ways great and small. I feel fortunate to have been supported by Wiley both on the content editing side (especially Rosie Hayden and Frank Weinreich), but also during the production editing phase (with thanks to Shiji Sreejish and all her team, including Sivasri Chandrasekaran).
It’s possible that this book would have been written whether or not I spent a few hours a week editing in the taproom of Sketchbook Brewing, in Evanston, Illinois, but would the process have been as enjoyable? The answer is no. Many big decisions about the manuscript were made in a contemplative corner of that establishment. Thanks to the staff for the community that they have fostered there.
May you be as lucky as I am in having a family that humors your foibles; mine are a center of gravity. Vassia Heneghan, the love of my life, my axis mundi, and who, for considerably more than half of my life, has been my first thought in the morning and my last thought at the end of each day: thank you, my love. Each page of this book is, in its own way, a (dense and inscrutable) love letter to you. Our boys, Fiacha and Oisín, are shimmering constellations. My thanks to them for reading endless texts consisting solely of draft paragraphs from this book: I impressed that that have not muted me. Thanks also to Sarah Heneghan, my beloved daughter‐in‐law, for providing several illustrations for this book.
My parents, Mary and Paddy Heneghan, provided the sort of childhood that allows a naturalist to develop; that is to say, I was governed with a mixture of a loose rein, exposure to the wilds, and much forbearance. My father passed away while I was writing this book. I don’t know that he would have loved it but he would have loved showing it off. He was a great naturalist, and a man about whom many great stories will continue to be told. My mother remains the lodestar in our lives. Her great love of books, her indefatigable energy and entrepreneurial esprit remains a joy.
Finally, my gratitude to my granddaughter Iphigenia. Though only three months old she is an inspiration: every day she wakes up knowing her limitations and strives with every fiber of her being to overcome them, or at the very least to adapt to them. I have great confidence that her generation will find ways of flourishing in our tarnished world, and, indeed, may find ways of repairing and sustaining it.
Section OneIntroduction to Primer
1A Manifesto for Conceptual Thinking in Environmental Disciplines
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.
Aldo Leopold, 1949 [1]
While this book was in preparation, an urgent and cautionary report was published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body responsible for advancing knowledge on human‐induced climate change. Upon the release of the more than 3000‐page report – the most comprehensive of the IPCC's climate reports yet – Hans‐Otto Pörtner, a marine ecophysiologist and the lead editor of the report, stated that “the scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future” [2]. If you are reading this book after the year 2023, the window will be narrower still. This tone of urgency – a livable planet is at stake – and the recognition that further delay in climate change action may well be catastrophic, echo similar expressions of concern over several other global environmental challenges. For example, when in 2019, the Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – the international organization convened to connect the best available biological diversity science and policy action – released its comprehensive report (Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), the chair of IPBES, Sir Robert Watson – a distinguished environmental chemist – stated: “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide” [3, 4].
Humans have always had to endure bad weather: it has dictated plans, caused havoc, and even inspired contemplation and art. Long‐term and irrevocable changes in the climate – the patterns of weather experienced over a long period – are even more difficult (and expensive) to adapt to.
The IPCC sixth assessment report published in 2022 warns of increased heatwaves, droughts, and floods that are already causing great harm: lives lost, damage to infrastructure, and devastation for ecological communities.
Long‐term changes in the climate will make extremes more pronounced. These changes will expose millions of people to food and water insecurity, and will often afflict those economic regions with the fewest resources to adapt to the change
Image: Ships at Sea during Storm (1830 / 49), Artist (assumed to be) Jules Dupré (French, 1811–1889), Art Institute of Chicago (designated as Public Domain).
There are several implications for the teaching of human impacts on the environment that can be gleaned from these reports as well as from the many thousands of scientific articles published on this topic each year. Global environmental problems are complex in their causes, immense in scope, drastic in potential consequences, and require large interdisciplinary networks of researchers and policy makers to address them. It should also be clear that global damage of this magnitude cannot be tackled independently of one another: loss of biodiversity, for example, is driven by a variety of factors, including climate change, and declining biodiversity can, in turn, have implications for carbon sequestration, which, in its turn, may exacerbate changes to the climate. Environmental challenges clearly cannot be tackled singly: if our response to the challenges needs to coordinated, then our thinking about the environment itself will need a set of coordinating principles – that is, they need a strong conceptual foundation. It is precisely this conceptual foundation – one that can facilitate clear thinking about distinct problems, but allows us to coordinate our responses at a global scale – that this primer seeks to provide.
Carbon sequestration refers to the transfer of some carbon dioxide (CO2) out the atmosphere (where, as a greenhouse gas, it is a driver of climate change) and into other long‐lived global carbon pools including those in the oceans, soil, geological strata, and living things. Increased sequestration in vegetation can therefore reduce the net rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 (it is currently 418 parts per million [ppm] compared to pre‐industrial levels of 278 ppm).
This introductory chapter sets out the case for a particular style of thinking (and teaching) about the environment that takes precisely this coordinated approach. In what follows I set out a case – let us call it a manifesto – for a conceptual education on environmental impacts.
A manifesto is a written document that forcefully proclaims a theory or cause, and often promotes a radical change in thinking or lifestyle.
1.1 The Necessity of a Conceptual Approach to Environmental Science
It has become quite evident that even if a course on human impacts on the environment is delivered over an entire academic year, or even two, there is simply too much information on the anthropogenic transformation of all aspects of earth systems to squeeze comfortably into such short period of time. After all, we have accumulated considerable information concerning those human impacts on the environment that have undoubtedly occurred since deep antiquity (see, for example, Charles Redman's book, Human impact on ancient environments published in 1999, which provides several case studies of human impacts that occurred in ancient times [5]) and there are allusions to the human modification of landscapes stretching back to the writings of the classical world. For example, references to ecological problems occur in the late Socratic dialogue Critias, where Critias and Timaeus (both of whose identities as historical figures are debated) are in conversation with Socrates (and with the Syracusan general Hermocrates making a cameo appearance); Critias remarked on the landscapes of Attica:
But in the primitive state of the country, its mountains were high hills covered with soil, and the plains, as they are termed by us, of Phelleus were full of rich earth, and there was abundance of wood in the mountains. Of this last the traces still remain, for although some of the mountains now only afford sustenance to bees, not so very long ago there were still to be seen roofs of timber cut from trees growing there, which were of a size sufficient to cover the largest houses; and there were many other high trees, cultivated by man and bearing abundance of food for cattle.
(Critias[6]),
Plato (approx. 424–348 BCE) was a philosopher of the classical age. Though not usually thought of as an environmental writer in the contemporary sense, nonetheless, like many writers of antiquity his writings, especially in the dialogues of Socrates can be mined for information about the changing landscapes of the ancient world.
Source:[7] Nicholas Roerich 1893 / Public Domain
Despite the land's former excellence, Critias regrets the destruction of the Attic landscape over the course of his lifetime; these losses he attributes to complex causes, both natural and human. Although Plato's legacy as an ecologist is contentious, he is, without doubt, one of the earliest environmental writers in the Western tradition (though the anonymous author of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, written in the second millennium BCE – that is, more than a millennium before Plato – might also qualify as an early contributor to this tradition of thought [8].)
Setting aside such occasional mentions of the human stewardship of the landscape – or lack of it – in Plato, and more generally in the literature of antiquity, the first relatively modern treatment of the topic is by George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882). Marsh was an American polymath who published Man and Nature, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action in 1864 [9]. Since that time, the field of environmental studies has burgeoned: environmental investigations have become highly technical, relying upon the use of sophisticated equipment to undertake sensitive measurements and employing vast computing and imaging power. By now, considerable amounts of information have been gleaned about most habitats on earth and from every region of the globe. As a result, the task of concentrating on even one small aspect of environmental change is challenging. To illustrate: accumulating information about those aspects of the environment relevant for the research I conduct along with my students – that is, on biodiversity loss, the invasion of species into new geographical locations under human influence, and the restoration of degraded ecosystems – has been the work almost of a lifetime. It should be clear, then, that no single book (or university course) could possibly do justice to the immensity of the task of describing human impacts on the environment from antiquity to the present day. In response to the enormity of the undertaking, it seems preferable and more efficient to place a stress on the presentation of the conceptual foundations upon which all thinking about environmental change is based, rather than merely providing an exhaustive list of all the problems we are faced from ancient times until our present moment. These foundational concepts include, although are not restricted to, notions of environment, system's thinking, models of growth, rates of change, environmental thresholds and limits, disturbance, risk assessment, resilience, and a suite of concepts developed to capture our understanding of a planet transformed by human action. These latter conceptual models include the notion of the Anthropocene (and its predecessors) – the proposed term that denotes our present geological epoch where planetary metabolism is arguably regulated largely by human affairs and for human needs. The meaning of these conceptual terms will become apparent in the following chapters.
George Perkins Marsh, 1801–1882, a polymath with extensive knowledge of languages and other branches of knowledge wrote one of the earliest monographs in the English language on irreversible impacts of humans on the natural world. The volume: Man and Nature, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (1864).
Source: Brian0918 / Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain.
In sacrificing aspects of a universal survey of the major environmental impacts now the core concepts are succinctly presented and illustrated along with a suite of relevant and detailed case studies. An overview of these core concepts can be accompanied by accounts of the oftentimes complex processes required to understand environmental impacts. In this way, the relevance of the core concepts are underscored by appropriate examples; the case studies, in their turn, reinforce an understanding of the concepts. Upon this conceptual foundation, students can develop a well‐informed approach that reflects upon and informs action to address the major issue of our times, that is, the human transformation of the planet upon which we rely for resources, for ecosystem services, and as a source for inspiration and beauty.
By illustrating concepts with examples, students still engage with a multiplicity of facts, explanations of processes (all accompanied by the relevant vocabulary), but now instead of navigating a barrage of disconnecting facts, students will develop a unifying conception of how diverse problems are interrelated.
1.2 The Necessity of Adapting and Applying Standard Models to Novel Environmental Problems
A second, and related, motivation for the changes I introduced into my long‐running course on human impacts – reflected in the chapters that follow – is in recognition of the accelerating pace with which damage to environmental systems is being discovered. Not only does the pace of discovery continue to accelerate, but the rate of environmental change under human influence is greater than ever before. That is, matters are getting worse faster. The last 50 years have seen the swiftest pace of anthropogenic change of earth systems in history [10]. The burgeoning scientific literature, along with both scientifically‐informed journalism and increased public scholarship all have had the effect of creating a deepening sense of urgency among policy makers and the informed public. Increased public concern and policy attention has meant that research emphasis is placed upon key environmental problems (especially, though not exclusively, those related to climate change and biodiversity loss). This, in turn, has intensified the speed of further discovery in these research areas [11].
Environmental education must respond in a variety of ways to the accelerating pace of discovery. Not only do environmental professionals need comprehensive familiarity with the key conceptual frameworks of their discipline, they also need the acumen to apply generalized models flexibly to novel environmental situations. This is especially important as environmental change become more apparent. Research foci inevitably change as new aspects of environmental degradation come into view. In recent years, for example, we have witnessed an amplification of wildfire severity (often on vast scales) [12], an intensification of regional droughts [13], tropical storms that seemingly are becoming more intense, and undoubtedly more destructive [14, 15], greater levels of coral reef bleaching and destruction [16], an increase in marine acidification and eutrophication (nutrient pollution) [17], rapidly melting Antarctic ice [18], and so on. All of these examples serve to illustrate some of the emerging priorities for new investigation. Despite the rapid accumulation of this information, a resourceful environmental thinker should find themselves comfortably able to apply their conceptual training to these ever more complex situations. This is because new concepts generally evolve at a pace slower than the rapidly accumulating database of new instances of damage. The frameworks you glean from this book will be applicable in wider contexts.
To illustrate the idea that concepts evolve at a relatively stately pace, consider, for example, the continued relevance of General Systems Theory. This is an idea with ancient roots that was formalized in the middle of the twentieth Century, and which continues to provide, as we shall soon see, some of the primary conceptual tools for environmental analysis [19]. A systems thinker identifies the component parts of any given entity, evaluates the ways in which these components can interact, and assesses the manner in which the behavior of the whole emerges from multifaceted interactions among these parts. Systems analysis thus forms the basis for much hypothesis formation, experimentation, and data evaluation in the environmental disciplines [20]. Because the basic models of systems theory are formulated at a relatively low level of generality, a well‐trained systems thinker can thus identify in newly emerging problems commonalties with previously familiar issues. A global structure may change and yet the student will be able to apply prior knowledge to these new situations in well considered and practical ways.
Despite the durable nature of many important conceptual models, such models can and, of course, do evolve. Ecosystem analysis, hierarchy theory, chaos theory, cybernetics, information theory, game and decision theory, resilience thinking, theories of combinogenesis, and most sustainability models, as we shall see, are merely elaborations of a more general systems theory.
1.3 The Necessity of Collaborative Approaches to Global Environmental Problems
As a result of recent cycles of discovery, growing public attention to an environmental problem, and a subsequent redoubling of focus on environmental research, students of the environment are no longer “living alone in a world of wounds.” Contrary to the famous epigram quoted at the beginning of this chapter from wildlife ecologist and eco‐philosopher Aldo Leopold (1887–1948), environmental students step out of their classroom and into a world in which environmental problems are frequently discussed. Deliberations over our environmental future are no longer confined to specialist communities of scientists and policy advocates, they are now vigorously discussed in magazines, newspapers, across social networks, in movies and popular shows, as well as in settings as various as church groups, public houses, and even around the family dinner table. Because of the greater levels of public awareness of environmental change, environmental professionals now have a responsibility for engaging with eclectic communities, often with varying levels of environmental literacy: this both presents opportunities and creates challenges for environmental scientists.
As a result of this, environmental practitioners often play an enhanced role in policy deliberations concerning our shared environmental future. Environmental scientists find themselves engaging in professional activities that are concerned with minimizing environmental risks to human health and well‐being, as well as those contributing to sustaining economic prosperity. The distinction between disinterested science, applied research, and public action – which has traditionally been a vexed matter for the environmental disciplines (ecological scientists had often been encouraged to steer clear activism and politics [21]) – has been largely resolved in favor of environmental scholars playing prominent advisory roles in governance and management settings. Input from environmental scientists is necessary on scales from local communities all the way up to intergovernmental organizations.
A grounding in concepts is necessary when environmental specialists contribute to policy debates and governance processes. In addition to providing a way of framing environmental science, as we have already seen, conceptual models – often, though not always, based upon systems theory – have often been adapted for use in the environmental social sciences and in framing policy responses [22]. That is, conceptual tools are effective collaborative tools. It should not surprise us that forms of systems thinking provide a bridge between the natural sciences and social theory – endeavors that might formerly have seen themselves as distinct – since interdisciplinarity and public engagement had always been an aspiration of the architects of general systems theory [19]. For example, the theoretical biologist and systems theorist Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) in his influential book, General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications (1968), calls quite explicitly for a unity of the heretofore disparate sciences [23]. Unsurprisingly, Von Bertalanffy's work explicitly identifies “air and water pollution” along with social problems such as urban blight, juvenile delinquency and organized crime as problems that call for systems' based solutions.,
Margaret Mead (1901–1978). Mead was a renowned anthropologist who in 1972 served as President of The International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), which is one of the oldest interdisciplinary organizations devoted to understanding complex systems. Some of her systems' interests focused on the need for clearer communication among scientists, but also between scientists and the public. Mead wrote, “And we shall need still newer kinds of instrumentation – macroscopes that can simplify without distorting the complexity of our knowledge of the biosphere and the cosmos within which a recognition of all disciplined human endeavor must now take place” [24].
Source: Smithsonian Institution / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.
The work of anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901–1978), who served as President of The International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) in 1972, emphasized the role of systems theory in collaboration. She stressed the significance of system theory in facilitating communication between scientists. The collaborative act of developing and applying systems models to a range of situations can in itself be understood and analyzed as a system process in its own right (this insight is sometimes referred to as the “cybernetics or cybernetics”). In this way, environmental students become part of the systems in which they participate when they begin to undertake the task of accurately depicting problems and are engaged in devising solutions. In doing so, however, they must ensure the consistency of policy formation with the best available science.
Although environmental education often focuses primarily on an academic training, students must, additionally, learn to be effective collaborators. This is especially important as policy makers, and often the general public (when policies are opened up for community comment), will often share a direct role in developing research questions and agendas [25, 26].
1.4 The Necessity of Evaluating Risk
Consistent with the ambition of most intellectual endeavors – the essence of which was first articulated by Aristotle (384–322 BCE) in his claim that “all human beings by nature desire to know” – environmental scientists, like other scientist, seek to provide “an organized account of whatever knowledge we can obtain about the universe” [27]. However, in addition to organizing our account of knowledge, science also helps us in evaluating future uncertainty. This application of knowledge to managing risk has become a central undertaking of the environmental sciences.
The four subcomponents of the earth system include the atmosphere (the gaseous envelope overlying the solid and liquid surface of a planet), lithosphere (the Earth's crust and a portion of the upper mantle), hydrosphere (the Earth's fresh and saline water): water can occur in a liquid, solid or gaseous state, and the biosphere (the sum of all of life forms on earth).
As their most basic task, the environmental disciplines pursue knowledge about earth systems. These sciences aim to provide a holistic account of how the four subcomponents of the earth system – atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere – interact to produce the phenomena that collectively constitute that entity sometimes referred to as “Gaia” (that is, the co‐evolving nexus of the living and nonliving elements that comprise the planet) [28]. By holistic is meant the tendency of many entities, natural ones in particular, to function as an integrated whole. More, however, than just organizing our knowledge about the natural world, the environmental sciences also try to predict how earth systems may change in the future. Predictions about the future state of the environment are made in order to evaluate the risks that humans and other living beings will face. Interrogations about the future are poised at the intersection of the environmental disciplines and the discipline of risk assessment.
Recognizing the potential social significance of environmental forecasting, as well as contemplating those changes that might have be taken to avert a catastrophe, requires a sophisticated approach to conceptual and mathematical modeling in environmental disciplines. To illustrate this complexity, consider, for example, those models that are often used to determine the future of climate, such as General Circulation Models (GCMs). GCMs are computationally intricate: they cast a conceptual grid over the planet with a horizontal spatial resolution of only a few hundred kilometers while also, on the vertical scale, evaluating as many as 30 slices of atmosphere over each spatial plot. Models of the behavior of these three‐dimensional “pixels” are then combined in order to determine expected temperature changes for the entire earth. In general, predictions from environmental models, such as these GLMs, integrate detailed knowledge of the relevant environmental processes with information about the possible responses of a system to modifications in key driving variables (for example, how are global temperatures modified by the altered gaseous composition of the atmosphere or how might an ecosystem respond to the loss of critical species?). Outputs from the models are then extrapolated out from the short‐term to many decades away in order to create plausible scenarios about the future [29].
Weather refers to short‐term changes in atmospheric conditions: often measured in hours, days or weeks. In contrast, climate refers to weather conditions in a particular region measured over a period of many years (typically over 30‐years). Climate can be thought of as the average patterns of weather in a given region.
From our daily lives, we are familiar with how forecasting influences our decisions: a glance at the weather forecast in the morning can determine our wardrobes for the day and even help us in deciding if and when we should leave our homes at all (and if we do, if we need to bring an umbrella). On vaster, and typically more consequential, scales, forecasting long‐term environmental trends can (and should) determine socially significant planning. Climate predictions, for example, are relevant to the design of innovative national infrastructure and to disease abatement strategies [30, 31]. The act of forecasting can also shape the very future being predicted – we might call this a hazard uncertainty principle (that is, when a risky future is avoided by policy decisions made to avert that particular future). For this reason, environmental models are typically offered as a range of possible scenarios. A good environmental model presents a view of possible futures, ones that must be internally consistent with our knowledge about the dynamic behavior of the system. In forecasting more than one possible future, these scenarios provide a suite of alternative futures where our collective exposure to future loss or damage can be determined and assessed, and to which we must formulate a response.
Scenario development using quantitative models is only one way in which ecologists evaluate our potential risky future. Other ways of evaluating new and emerging risks include “horizon scanning” accompanied by expert evaluation of “what if” questions, along with the maintenance of risk registers. In a risk register, a catalog of potential calamities can be generated along with some provisional determination of management strategies in the face of an emerging risk [32].
A combination of scenario development, horizon scanning, and registration of risk invites us to ask: what sort of future are we likely to inhabit? What sort of future do we want to inhabit? What sorts of risks for life and well‐being are associated with difference policy actions or inaction? How should these risks from environmental change best be measured? In order to address such questions as these, environmental students, more than ever, need the tools to think about risk: how is risk characterized, how are potential consequences assessed, how likely are the different outcomes? This framework whereby risk is characterized and evaluated forms the basis not just of environmental risk, but of all risk estimation.
1.4.1 Catastrophic Risk
In a now seldom read essay by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) entitled “Aes Triplex” (1878), the writer, more famous for his later stories Treasure Island (1883) and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), wrote about the way in which we navigate the inevitable risks of being alive:
We have all heard of cities in South America built upon the side of fiery mountains, and how, even in this tremendous neighbourhood, the inhabitants are not a jot more impressed by the solemnity of mortal conditions than if they were delving gardens in the greenest corner of England. … It seems not credible that respectable married people, with umbrellas, should find appetite for a bit of supper within quite a long distance of a fiery mountain; ordinary life begins to smell of high‐handed debauch when it is carried on so close to a catastrophe; and even cheese and salad, it seems, could hardly be relished in such circumstances without something like a defiance of the Creator. (“Aes Triplex”, published in Virginibus Puerisque, 1881)
Robert Lewis Stephenson (1850–1894), best known for his gripping adventure stories was also an essayist: his best known essay is “Aes Triplex” (1878). In this essay Stephenson encourages us all to live our lives to the fullest and not to cower in the face of risk. He himself died young, turning to his wife as he was uncorking a bottle of wine saying, “What's that…does my face look strange?” After this he collapsed and was dead at age 44.
The question that this great essay poses for us is this: can we on the one hand objectively evaluate our risk and yet live with the sort of cheerful optimism that characterized that writer's demeanor?
Source: Stevenson / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.
Stevenson – perhaps not coincidentally still a young man when he wrote this – cautions all of us against tepid living. He warns us as follows: “So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the
