October 26 •Managing natural resources that allow them to be used but not destroyed for future generations is defined as sustainability •Practicing sustainability maintains natural processes such as nutrient cycling and climate systems •Antropocene “anthro” means human. This is the human impact epoch •Anthropologists have begun to identify the anthropocene by the presence of plastics •Using resources to survive modifies the environment, which may affect complex system relationships •Humans use ecosystem services such as oxygen, water, and energy to survive •Environment cycles nutrients, breaks down waste, and provides a climate conducive to our survival •We do not understand all of the ecosystem services on Earth •A healthy ecosystem can withstand damaging natural and human caused events •Coastal cities, such as New York after Superstorm Sandy, are now preserving shoreline ecosystems that will help resist •Aldo Leopold- influential environmental writer •The rightness or wrongness of the action is determined by a balance of good and bad consequences; the end has greater moral weight than the means. •Animal rights fall under biocentrism •By 2020 onshore wind and solar pv will be less expensive source of new electricity than the cheapest fossil fuel alternative •Cap and trade was one of the most cost effective program in US history •Create policies to solve problems October 28 •The tragedy of the commons • People took advantage of the commons (how it became a tragedy) • Commons are made of people who talk to each other • You can set up a group of people to make the decisions or everyone gets property rights • Enclose the commons and split it up the land • Garrett Hardin’s paper was influential and showed there can be no public resources •Societies most often generate rules for use of commons-this is what it means to be living in society. •Conditions on managing the commons • Monitoring-cheap and easy • Outsiders can be excluded-cheap and easy • Communities maintain frequent social contact ( social capital ) • Users support monitoring and rule following • Change occurs slowly •If users do not have equal power or say management schemes may not be enforced •Commons are based on exclusion which if power dynamics are unequal cam lead to bad outcomes •Ultimate question: can commons be scaled up beyond face to face interactions? •We are exhausting our ecosystems •We depend on biodiversity and ecosystem services •We are in the sixth mass extinction • Since the dawn of industrialization we have increased extinction rates by 1000 times • Could loose 60% of earth species •Ecosystem services allow us to attempt to put a dollar value on nature •Ecosystems services are considered to be very anthropocentric because it is adding human value •Captive breeding is expensive and lack genetic diversity •Challenges of ecological restoration include scale, cost, timeframe, loss of other uses
November 2 •We are able to innovate out of limits that are set (but at what cost?) •
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