This lesson provides an introduction to the course, and covers basic considerations for energy and sustainability. Given that one of the primary goals of this course is for you to be able to critically analyze claims made in contemporary materials, it is important that you have some baseline knowledge about energy and sustainability. Some of this may be review, but even if it is, it is to your benefit to go through all of the material to make sure you understand all of the concepts. If this is new to you and you find anything confusing, please don't hesitate to ask me, preferably by posting to the HAVE A QUESTION Discussion Forum.
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
Please note that the quiz can only be taken once. You have unlimited time to complete it prior to the deadline and can save your progress and pick up where you left off at a later time. See the Assignments and Grading section of the syllabus [1] for tips on how to do this. Once you submit the quiz, you cannot change answers. All saved answers will automatically be submitted at the deadline if you have not submitted them.
Requirement | Submission Location |
---|---|
Lesson 1 quiz | Modules tab > Lesson 1 |
Start posting to the Yellowdig discussion board | Modules tab > Lesson 1 |
OPTIONAL Extra Credit: Lesson 1 Extra Credit quiz | Modules tab > Lesson 1 |
If you have any general course questions, please post them to our HAVE A QUESTION discussion forum located under the Discussions tab. I will check that discussion forum regularly to respond as appropriate. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses and comments if you are able to help out a classmate. If you have a question but would like to remain anonymous to the other students, email me.
If you have something related to the material that you'd like to share, feel free to post to the Coffee Shop forum, also under the Discussions tab.
As noted in the Orientation, you will be using a discussion board application called Yellowdig. [2]For a review of these activities, see the syllabus [1]. You should start posting to the discussion board this week!
You will be making posts throughout the entire semester. I will periodically post prompts that you must follow, but you can make other comments, as long as they are relevant to the course content. The prompts will focus on the content for that week or lesson. This ongoing assignment (which is worth 25% of your grade!) serves a few purposes: First, thinking and writing about the content helps you internalize it better than reading about it. Second, it helps you learn to communicate these important sustainability issues to others. Third, it gives you an opportunity to have authentic interactions with fellow students.
Some of your posts will be graded using a specific rubric, but most of them are auto-graded by Yellowdig.
I hope you find this engaging, and who knows, maybe even fun! It's a great way to interact with your fellow students.
Please go to the Yellowdig discussion board link in the Lesson 1 Canvas module to read more details about how Yellowdig works.
All interactions on this discussion board and any other personal course interaction must follow the ESP Peer-to-Peer Participation Policy, which can be accessed Course Website [3]. I will be monitoring the board to make sure you adhere to these.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. After going through the content, check the boxes next to the questions/statements that you feel at least somewhat confident answering. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself. This is to help you reflect on important content and will help you prepare for this week's quiz. It will also help lay the foundation for future course content.
Considering that this course is called “Energy and Sustainability in Contemporary Culture,” let’s start by answering two fundamental questions:
Let’s tackle the second question first, since the answer is a little more straightforward, even if it’s not always easy to grasp: What, exactly, is energy?
The National Energy Education Development (NEED) Project [4] is a non-profit organization that provides a lot of useful (and free!) information about energy and energy issues. Please read the first two pages of their Introduction to Energy [5], which provides a good overview of energy. Hopefully, much of this will be a review for you! (Note that we will go over more up-to-date energy use data than the document has - i.e., more recent than 2009 - below.). You are welcome to read the rest, but it is not necessary. (It is helpful, though.)
Energy is most commonly defined as "the ability to do work." This is a useful technical definition, but from a practical perspective, the NEED Project's indication that energy is also "the ability to produce change" is helpful. A similar way to think of energy is that it "makes things happen." Energy is required to make a TV turn on, a car to move, the sun to generate light and heat, water to vaporize, plants to add biomass, a power plant to generate electricity, and for you to think about this course content as you read it. And even if these things are not actually happening, energy provides the ability to make them happen.
As indicated in the reading, the two categories of energy are potential (stored energy) and kinetic (energy in motion), each of which have several forms. (Note that the categories are listed in parentheses below because they can either be included or not, e.g., chemical energy can be referred to as "chemical" or "chemical potential" energy. Generally, "kinetic" or "potential" is not included.):
Energy efficiency and conservation of energy will be addressed later in this lesson.
The gentleman in this video (4:35 long) also provides useful information regarding energy and illustrates many of the concepts from the reading above. (In case you are wondering, yes, he is this excited all the time. He also has a number of really good videos regarding many topics. His YouTube channel [6] has over 6,000,000 subscribers, so he must be doing something right!). Please note that you can open this video in YouTube by clicking on the title of the video in the window below.
Okay, so if you ask a physicist or energy expert what energy is, she will likely tell you that energy is the ability to do work. This sounds straightforward enough, but you may be thinking, “what is work?” Ask the same (or another) expert, and you will likely hear: “Work is the transfer of energy.” The video below from Kahn Academy (3:16) is optional but does a good job of explaining what this means. If you are still a little confused after watching it, you may want to read through the rest of the energy lesson, then go back to it. The formulas are not important for this course, but the concept of how work is related to energy is important. One thing to note: the narrator uses the term "Joule" a lot in this video. A Joule (J) is the international unit of energy and is simply a way to quantify energy. (More on quantifying energy shortly!)
Work as the transfer of energy from the Khan Academy (3:17 minutes)
In order for an object to gain or lose energy, work must happen. If you pick up a book from the ground and put it on a table, the book gained gravitational (potential) energy. You performed work on the book, and the amount of work is equal to the amount of potential energy gained. When you pull your car or bike out from a parking spot, the car/bike has motion energy, but when it was parked had none. That energy gain is the result of work done by the car engine (then drivetrain and wheels) or your legs (then pedals, chain, and wheels), and you can figure out the work done by considering the velocity and mass of the moving object. When the vehicle stops, the bike/car performs work on the road and tires, resulting in them heating up.
The sun is constantly generating massive amounts of radiant energy. That energy is provided by hydrogen atoms fusing together into helium and releasing nuclear energy. The amount of radiant energy generated in this process is equal to the amount of work done by the hydrogen atoms on the sun. When this sunlight hits your skin (or any object), it performs work on it, resulting in a gain in thermal energy. This gain in thermal energy is equal to the amount of work done.
I could go on and on, but the key thing to remember is that energy transfer requires work. Any time energy is transferred from place to place or from one form to another, work must be done, and the amount of work is equal to the amount of energy gained or lost.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. After going through the content, check the boxes next to the questions/statements that you feel at least somewhat confident answering. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself. This is to help you reflect on important content, and will help you prepare for this week's quiz. It will also help lay the foundation for future course content.
It can be easy to get bogged down by the formulas used to calculate how much work is done, when, by whom, and to whom. Since this is not a physics class, let’s not dwell on those. As described on the previous page, a somewhat simplified, but very useful way to think of energy is that “energy makes things happen.”
Take a few minutes to look around you. Based on what you know about energy and what you learned in the reading and videos, what is energy “doing” where you are right now? (Seriously, take a look.)
We could go on and on. But as you probably know, these are all examples of kinetic energy, or “energy of motion.” As stated in the reading and video, there are also a number of types of potential energy. Think of some examples of potential energy around (and in) you right now. You are able to move and think because of chemical (potential) energy inside of your body. In fact, everything around you has chemical potential energy. Any object on the wall, on a table, attached to the ceiling, or just above the ground has gravitational (potential) energy because it is above the ground. There is also nuclear (potential) energy in all matter because all matter has at least one nucleus. Again, we could go on and on, but the point is that everything around you has potential energy - nuclear if nothing else - and thus has the ability to do work, i.e., “to make things happen.”
One of the foundational concepts in the understanding of energy – and something that is very important in the context of this course – is the First Law of Thermodynamics. The simplest way to put the First Law of Thermodynamics is that “energy cannot be created or destroyed – it can only change forms.” This is often referred to as the “Law of Conservation of Energy,” for obvious reasons. Practically speaking, this means that all energy came from somewhere else, and that it does not disappear when it is “used.”
All of the examples of energy that were noted above came from somewhere else. The light coming from a light bulb is converted from electrical energy running through a wire. The heat radiating from non-living things around you was absorbed from another source such as sunlight or the heating system of the building. The motion and electrical energy your body has right now comes from the chemical energy inside of your body. The gravitational energy of things around you came from motion energy required to lift the objects. And so on. And recall that each time energy was transferred, work was done.
NASA defines thermodynamics [11] as "the study of the effects of work, heat, and energy on a system." Thermodynamic principles are relevant to many applications, including things as diverse as nanotechnology, health sciences, refrigeration, climatology, manufacturing, space travel, and much, much more. If you are interested, here are some thermodynamic resources: Kahn [12]Academy [12] and Hyperphysics [13] (from Georgia State University) [13].
Of course, this also means that all of the previous forms of energy also came from somewhere else. Where do you think the electricity used to generate the light coming from the screen came from? It almost certainly came from a power plant somewhere. But where does the power plant get its energy from? If you live in the U.S., chances are it came from either coal, natural gas, or nuclear material (about an 80% chance nationally [14], but it depends on where you live).
Let’s assume the electricity in question is from a natural gas-fired power plant. If so, the electricity used to generate the light on the screen you are looking at right now was originally chemical (potential) energy stored in the molecules of natural gas. Note that before it was converted to electricity, it went through a number of conversions, including being burned (thermal and radiant energy), and spinning a turbine (motion energy). But let’s not stop there. Where did the natural gas get its energy? Before we answer this, please read the short readings below.
Knowing where to get reliable information is an important skill to have. If you want U.S. energy data, there is no better source than the U.S. Energy Information Administration [15] (US EIA, or simply EIA). The US EIA is an outstanding source of information, from specific energy use data to general energy information. For the energy geeks among us <raising hand>, there is so much interesting (and reliable) information that hours can be spent perusing, reading, and watching videos. Please read the following pages before moving on. You are, of course, welcome to explore the rest of the website, but at least read the links below:
Natural gas is formed from the remains of living organisms over millions of years, as are coal and oil. Most of this is from photosynthetic organisms, such as plants and phytoplankton [21](e.g., diatoms [22]). If so, then the energy came from the sun. If it was an animal that formed the gas, then the energy came from what the animal ate to gain that energy, i.e., a plant or another animal. If it ate a plant, then that energy originally came from the sun, but what if it ate another animal? That animal either got its energy from a plant or another animal.
What this boils down to is that no matter how you slice it, all of the energy in natural gas came from the sun. The implications are kind of mind-boggling (and let’s face it, awesome): The light energy coming from the screen you are looking at right now probably started out as sunlight that hit the earth millions of years ago!
Coal, oil and natural gas are considered fossil fuels because they are derived from remains of ancient organic material. They are also all hydrocarbons (technically, oil and natural gas are made of multiple hydrocarbons), which indicates that they are made primarily of carbon and hydrogen. You will often see coal, oil, and natural gas referred to by either name - fossil fuel or hydrocarbon.
Again, we could go through innumerable examples of energy, and most of them would require tracing multiple steps to find their original source. Almost all sources (aside from some nuclear energy and some geothermal energy) can be traced back to the sun, whether it’s recent or ancient sunlight. But more importantly in the context of this course is that:
As the saying goes, “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” In other words, when we “use” energy, that energy must come from somewhere else, and it does not disappear, it is converted to another form.
Almost all of the energy used on earth came from the sun, but where does the sun get its energy? Sunlight is nuclear energy released when atoms of hydrogen fuse to form helium, in a process called fusion. This reaction releases a HUGE amount of energy - the surface of the sun is nearly 6000 °C (more than 10,000 °F), and the core is more than 20 million degrees C [25] (36,000,000 °F)!
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. After going through the content, check the boxes next to the questions/statements that you feel at least somewhat confident answering. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself. This is to help you reflect on important content, and will help you prepare for this week's quiz. It will also help lay the foundation for future course content.
It should be clear by now that energy can take many different forms and is often converted from one form to another. Though different forms of energy cannot always be used the same way (ever tried to watch TV by plugging into a lump of coal?), you can always express the amount of energy present in different forms using the same units by using unit conversions. There are many energy units, but the most common unit you’ll see in the U.S. is the British Thermal Unit or Btu. Joules are considered the international unit of energy (you may see these from time to time in the U.S.), but since we like to make things difficult for scientists in the U.S. by using English units instead of metric, we’ll stick mostly to Btus in this course.
A Btu is defined as the amount of heat required to heat up one pound of pure water one degree Fahrenheit. To give you some perspective, a single match releases about one Btu if it is allowed to burn entirely.
The following are examples of commonly used energy equivalencies, i.e., unit conversions:
These are but a few examples - you can pick any amount and any form of energy, and it can be converted to Btus or any other energy unit. The US EIA has a useful unit converter [27].
This is useful in many ways, one of them being that it is possible to tally up all of the energy “used” by a given person or group of people – including a city, state, country, continent, or even planet – and convert that number to a single quantity to see how much energy is being used. Further, it is often possible to separate total energy use into categories to compare uses. This can provide a nice snapshot of energy use and can tell you a lot about the energy regime in an area, including how much is being wasted.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is part of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government. According to whitehouse.gov [28]: "The mission of the Department of Energy (DOE) is to advance the national, economic, and energy security of the United States." The DOE is another excellent source of information (the US EIA is run by the DOE). In addition to providing information, the DOE funds a lot of research, much of which is performed by people in the national labs. There are 17 national labs [29] in the U.S., each with a different research focus. The national labs host some of the top researchers in the U.S., and because they are funded by taxpayers, all of the non-sensitive information is published for free. These are great sources of reliable and cutting-edge information. (Feel free to browse the national labs [30]' website.)
Apropos to our discussion of energy use, Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) [31] in California publishes annual energy use data for the U.S. and often for U.S. states. The image below (click on it to see a larger version) shows the most recent estimate of energy use in the U.S., divided by source. IMPORTANT: LLNL uses quads as their fundamental unit. As mentioned in a previous reading, a quad is a quadrillion Btus, which is 1,000,000,000,000,000 BTUs, or 1 x 1015 Btus. (Side note: This is one of my favorite charts! I appreciate the amount of information it provides and the ease with which it can be interpreted. It tells a robust - and important - story about energy use in the U.S. I can't be the only one that has favorite charts, can I? Anyway, moving on...)
You can click on the chart to open a larger version in a new window.
he "blocks" on the left are energy sources (also called primary energy), the pink blocks on the right are end-use sectors (note that electricity is NOT an end-use sector), and the grey blocks to the far right indicate whether or not the energy was successfully used ("Energy Services") or wasted ("Rejected Energy"). All of the numbers in the chart indicate total energy flows or uses. Think of this as a flow chart - follow the lines from left to right to see how energy is used in the U.S.
Let's look at coal as an example. (Find coal on the left side of the chart, then follow the lines coming from coal on the chart and observing the numbers associated with those lines.):
You can see where each energy source was "used" by following the chart. Oil is mainly used in the transportation sector but is used in all others as well. Natural gas is used in many sectors too. Nuclear is only used for electricity generation. All of this can be seen by following the energy sources on the left to the end uses on the right of the chart.This type of diagram is called a Sankey diagram and can be used for any number of purposes. Lawrence Livermore creates Sankey diagrams for each state, and many countries have diagrams as well. There are even some used to describe water and carbon flows in the U.S. At any rate, it is a useful tool for analyzing energy and other resource flows.
Answer the following 2 questions.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. After going through the content, check the boxes next to the questions/statements that you feel at least somewhat confident answering. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself. This is to help you reflect on important content, and will help you prepare for this week's quiz. It will also help lay the foundation for future course content.
Explain what it means when an appliance is 40% efficient, in terms of input and useful output.
Though many forms of energy can be converted to many others, it is important to consider how efficient the conversion process is. Energy efficiency is the percentage of "useful" energy that is converted from another form.
For example, have you ever thought about what it means to have an "efficient" light bulb, like a light emitting diode (LED)? Think about it - the purpose of using a light bulb is to provide light. Seems obvious enough, but did you know that about 90% of the energy used by an incandescent light bulb is actually converted to heat? Only about 10% is converted to light, which means that incandescents are about 10% efficient. If you are still using these old-style light bulbs, you are wasting about 90% of the money you spend on the electricity used, unless you are purposefully using them to heat your house (this is a very expensive way to heat your house, by the way). This is one reason why CFLs have become so common, and now LEDs ("light emitting diodes") - both of them are around 40% - 45% efficient, which is 4 - 4.5 times as efficient as an incandescent.
Consumers have a wide array of energy efficient lamps available to them. In addition to using electricity more efficiently, CFLs last about 10 times longer than incandescents, and LEDs around 25 times longer.
Efficiency considerations can be made for anything that uses energy. An efficient car is one that gets a lot of miles (useful "output") per gallon (energy input). An efficient home heating system, such as an electric heat pump, releases a lot of heat energy (output) for each kilowatt-hour of electric input. TVs, cell phones, airplanes, refrigerators, you name it - all have a certain efficiency. It can be used in other contexts as well. If you are efficient at work, you get a lot done (output) in a short period of time (input). In an efficient outing by a baseball or softball pitcher, not many pitches (input) were required to retire the batters (getting outs is the useful output).
This leads us to one aspect of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A full explanation of the 2nd Law goes beyond the scope of this course, but you are welcome to watch the video below (9:29) from the Kahn Academy for a short explanation. One application of this law is that it is impossible to convert energy into a more dense, useful state without adding energy to the system. As Dr. Eric Zencey of the University of Vermont describes it, "the capacity of the energy to useful work is diminished" whenever it is transformed from one form to another (source: Is Sustainability Still Possible? p. 73). In other words, when energy is converted from one form to another, it is impossible to convert all of it. Some is "wasted" in another form, usually heat.
Let's continue with the lighting example to illustrate this. When using a light, electrical energy is converted almost entirely to light and heat (there may be a little sound energy thrown in there, but not much). Electrical energy is relatively dense, useful, and easy to control. You can store electrical energy in a battery. It is relatively easy to transport across distances without losing much. It can be used for many different things. But what about light and heat? Both of them are relatively diffuse and difficult to control. Neither is particularly useful for converting to other forms. It is very difficult to convert heat or light into another form with any kind of efficiency. Sure, you can convert heat back into electricity. In fact, this is exactly what happens in a typical power plant. But this process is very inefficient. Going further back, it is impossible to convert light, heat, or electricity back into coal (or oil, natural gas, or nuclear energy). Fossil fuels are very energy dense, and the molecules and atoms are neatly organized. Once the bonds are broken and the energy is released, there is no way to put it back together. That's the 2nd Law in action.
The video below provides a very good explanation and animation of how a coal-fired power plant works. Think it's as easy as dumping a bunch of coal into a furnace and turning a turbine? Watch the video to find out. (9:28 minutes)
The second law can be confusing, but the narrator in the video below does a pretty good job of explaining some aspects of it. Watch the Second Law of Thermodynamics (12:40 minutes) from Kahn Academy.
Here is another optional link regarding the 2nd Law [39].
Clearly, a lot of engineering goes into building a power plant. Despite the technical prowess required to convert coal into electricity, the process is extremely inefficient, as are all of the major forms of electricity generation in the U.S. and the world. Take a look at the chart below to see just how inefficient this process is for different fuels.
As you can see, as the most efficient fuel, natural gas-fired power plants are just above 40% efficient on average. Coal is closer to 30%. This, of course, means that around 70% is wasted as heat. 70%! And this does not take into consideration the losses associated with transporting the electricity across long power lines, which in the U.S. averages around 5%.
Power plants are not alone in their inefficiency. The typical internal combustion engine of a car only provides around 20% - 25% of the energy from gas to move the car. New natural gas furnaces are very efficient (95%+), but many older ones operate at lower than 80% or even 70% efficiency. This is all poor energy management in principle - it's just plain wasteful - but it is also important for a couple of other reasons, one in particular. Specifically, there is a limited amount of all of these sources, and yet they are essential for modern society. In other words, coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear are non-renewable energy sources. (To be fair, all indications are that the world will not run out of coal, natural gas, oil, or nuclear energy terribly soon, but no one knows when it will become too expensive to use. More on that later.)
One last note before moving on to renewable and non-renewable sources. Energy efficiency is sometimes referred to as the "fifth fuel." Why do you think that is? (Hint: coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear are the four primary fuels used globally, though that is changing as renewables are used to a greater extent.)
Increasing efficiency reduces the use of other sources of energy. Efficiency is on the demand side of energy use because it affects energy demand (think of this as how much energy is "demanded" for use.) Energy sources are the supply side of energy use because they supply the energy. By reducing demand through energy efficiency, you reduce the need for supply, which is almost like having more supply, to begin with. Hence, it is sometimes referred to as the "fifth fuel." There are tremendous opportunities for energy efficiency improvements worldwide.
Some energy efficiency advocates refer to efficiency as the "first fuel," because they feel that it should be the top priority in terms of energy management. There is some strong validity to this. Consider that a report [42] from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy found that it is cheaper to reduce energy use through efficiency than it is to supply energy by any other source. Very interesting reading, if you are so inclined (and only a few pages long).
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. After going through the content, check the boxes next to the questions/statements that you feel at least somewhat confident answering. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself. This is to help you reflect on important content, and will help you prepare for this week's quiz. It will also help lay the foundation for future course content.
What is the difference between renewable and non-renewable energy?
Knowing whether a source of energy is renewable or non-renewable is important when considering energy and/or sustainability. Renewable energy is defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency thus: “Renewable energy includes resources that rely on fuel sources that restore themselves over short periods of time and do not diminish” (Source: U.S. EPA [43]). Non-renewable energy is energy that cannot restore itself over a short period of time and does diminish. It is usually easy to distinguish between renewable and non-renewable, but there are some exceptions (more on that in a minute).
Once again, we will go to the US EIA for a description of renewable energy sources. Please read through the following links (quickly, if nothing else). You are welcome to read the sub-headings for each source, but that is not necessary. The key points are summarized below.
Please note that these readings only scratch the surface of the world of renewable energy sources! The DOE's "Energy 101" YouTube channel [53] has a bunch of good, short videos about different energy sources, note that there are a lot more energy-related links on the EIA websites that you read just now. You could spend your whole career learning about them (as some people do), and still have more to learn. I encourage you to learn as much as you can about these and other sources. It may sound like hyperbole, but you can never know too much about energy. It figuratively and literally makes the world go 'round.
It should be clear how most of these sources fit the definition of renewable energy ("resources that rely on fuel sources that restore themselves over short periods of time and do not diminish") and have various benefits and drawbacks. Please note that this does not provide a comprehensive list of pros and cons, but will give you a solid idea of many of them:
All of these sources renew themselves over short periods of time and do not diminish. And though intermittent, none of these sources are going to disappear in the foreseeable future. They are textbook renewable energy sources.
Agrivoltaics are a burgeoning systems-thinking application. Agrivotaics combines - you guessed it - agriculture and photovoltaics. Ground-mounted solar arrays are a great application of solar PV technology, but they do take up a lot of space relative to their energy output. So why not find a way to use all of this space? Enter agrivoltaics! With some careful design considerations (e.g. knowing which plants are shade-tolerant or even prefer some shade), crops can not only be successful but in some cases more successful in terms of production than when planted in an open field. This is particularly helpful in hot, dry climates, such as the eastern part of Colorado, which is pictured below. But it can be successful in more humid and cooler climates as well.
Agrivoltaics are becoming increasingly recognized and researched throughout the U.S. and internationally. Feel free to browse through the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) article about agrivoltaics [57] for more information.
Okay, so what about biomass and biofuels? They are both derived from living or recently living things (trees, corn, algae, sugarcane, etc.) They also get their energy from the sun (anyone sensing a pattern here?), and plants are usually pretty good at regenerating themselves. But I want you to take a minute to try to think about examples of biomass and/or biofuels that might not be "renewable," in the sense of the definition above. Can you think of any examples of non-renewable biomass?
Nearly all forms of biomass and biofuels are renewable. Corn-based ethanol is the most-used source of bio-based energy in the U.S. Corn can be grown in the same field year after year, so it is renewable. Whether or not it is sustainable is another question, which will be addressed later. The primary source of bioenergy in Brazil is sugarcane. Nearly all of Brazil's vehicles are able to use 100% sugarcane ethanol for fuel. (Contrast this with the U.S., where most automobile engines are only required to be able to handle up to 10% ethanol.) Sugarcane grows year-round in Brazil, so is definitely renewable.
There are many other biomass sources that fit our definition of renewable, including animal dung, algae (for biodiesel), jatropha nut, soybean, switchgrass, and more. Wood is used around the world as a source of heat, particularly for cooking. Most trees and shrubs regrow relatively quickly, so they are generally considered renewable. But even a fast-growing tree like an oak (up to two feet per year, according to the National Arbor Day Foundation [58]) has limits. Though most biomass sources are considered renewable, keep this in mind: if you harvest a renewable resource faster than it regenerates, it will not be able to renew itself over time. We will revisit this point in a later lesson, but it is important to remember.
Most renewable energy sources are carbon-free. This means that they do not emit any carbon dioxide when they generate energy. Solar, wind, and hydroelectric are carbon-free. Nuclear, though not renewable, is also considered a carbon-free energy source, because unlike coal and natural gas, it does not burn. As noted in a previous reading, nuclear energy generates heat through fission, not combustion. Biomass and biofuels are often considered carbon-neutral because they emit carbon dioxide when they are burned. So, why are they carbon neutral?
The International Energy Association (IEA) is a good source of information for international energy data. The US EIA (not to be confused with the IEA) publishes some international data as well, but IEA is usually the first place I look. The chart below shows the estimated energy use by type worldwide in 2016, and the data are from their 2018 Key World Energy Statistics [59] document. Note that the energy unit they use is Mtoe, which stands for million tons of oil equivalent. A Mtoe is equivalent to about 0.04 quads. In other words, there are about 25 Mtoe in a quad. The amount of energy is not important for our purposes, but please take note of the percent of the total that each energy source provides.
FYI, another good, reliable source of global energy data is BP's annual "Statistical Review of World Energy [60]." It is worth browsing if you are interested!
There are a few interesting things to point out from the chart above.
Non-renewable energy sources diminish over time and are not able to replenish themselves. In other words, they are finite, and once they are used, they are effectively gone because they take so long to reform.
You have already read about the four non-renewable energy sources: coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. Let's start with coal, oil, and natural gas, which (as you read earlier) are referred to as fossil fuels. Fossil fuels were created from the remains of dead plants and animals. The source material is renewable (it's biomass!), but since they take millions of years to form, they are not replenished over a "short" period of time, so are non-renewable. Fossil fuels are forming somewhere under your feet right now, but don't hold your breath waiting for them to finish.
The nuclear energy we use comes from an isotope of uranium called U-235. Unlike fossil fuels, U-235 has cosmic origins: it was formed by one or more supernovae around 6 billion years ago, about 1.5 billion years before the Earth was formed (a supernova is a collapsing star, "supernovae" is the plural form of supernova) (source: World Nuclear Association [62]). Again, this is not renewable on a human timescale.
All fossil fuels emit carbon dioxide (CO2) and other emissions when they are used to generate energy. Recall that they are made mostly of hydrogen and carbon, and the carbon mostly ends up as CO2. Nuclear is considered carbon-free, because it is not burned, and it is not made of carbon. Remember that energy is extracted through fission or splitting of atoms. This generates heat, but no emissions. (It is important to note that it does result in very dangerous and long-lasting radioactive waste, but that will be addressed in a future lesson.)
To summarize:
All of the carbon dioxide emitted from coal, oil, and natural gas was originally pulled from the atmosphere to make the plants from which is was derived grow. In other words, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted is no more than the amount of carbon dioxide it originally removed from the air. Why are they not carbon-neutral energy sources?
We hear a lot about renewables and natural gas in the U.S., as their use has been growing rapidly for some time now. But as you can see in this chart from the EIA, coal and nuclear still constitute over 40% of all electricity generation in the U.S. Solar, despite its massive growth and growth potential, is only 1.8%! We have a long way to go, people!
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. After going through the content, check the boxes next to the questions/statements that you feel at least somewhat confident answering. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself. This is to help you reflect on important content, and will help you prepare for this week's quiz. It will also help lay the foundation for future course content.
Hopefully, you now have a reasonably good grasp of what energy is, how it is used, where we get it from, whether or not it is renewable, as well as some good resources for finding energy information. I do not expect you to be energy experts, but it is important that you possess a good baseline knowledge of energy basics if you are going to critically analyze material that has energy information in it. There are many free information sources available, some of which I listed in the previous pages. If you have suggestions for other sources, feel free to share them on one of the course discussion boards.
Okay, time to shift gears and address sustainability. Unlike energy, sustainability (and “sustainable”) does not have a universally accepted definition. The phrase “sustainable development” is usually used to describe the goal of sustainability planning, and is often used interchangeably with the term “sustainability.” For the purposes of this course, the terms are effectively the same. Before we start really digging into the term, it’s good to start with the root word “sustain.” Dictonary.com's most relevant definition of “sustain” [65] is:
“to keep up or keep going, as an action or process”
This lies at the core of the term, and is a good place to start. If something is being done that cannot continue to be done for the foreseeable future, then it is not sustainable. The devil is in the details, though, as we will see.
The reading in this box is not required. I summarize the key points below. But it will help you understand the content in more depth.
There is almost an unfathomable number of books, articles, and websites that address sustainability. I just Googled "sustainability" and got 437,000,000 results in 0.65 seconds! There is no shortage of information out there, nor is there any shortage of definitions of sustainability. Robert Engelman, President of the Worldwatch Institute, does a very good job of cutting through some of the "sustainable" and provides some cogent thoughts on the state of sustainability and how it can be framed in the book Is Sustainability Still Possible, by the Worldwatch Institute. You are welcome (but not required) to read his entire "Beyond Sustainababble" chapter [66]. I have provided key excerpts below, which I suggest you read before moving on. I have emphasized some key text in bold lettering:
We could spend weeks analyzing the content of Engelman's chapter, but I would like to focus on a few key points.
First of all, what it means to be sustainable (and it's even fuzzier substitute "green") is open to interpretation at best, and misuse at worst. (Greenwashing is an example of such misuse, and will be addressed in more detail later in the course.) Since there is no single definition of sustainability, anyone is free to use the term to describe whatever they want, regardless of whether or not it is truly sustainable. Sustainable travel, sustainable consumption, sustainable underwear, sustainable food, green growth, green cars, greenhouses, green energy - as Engelman puts it, "frequent and inappropriate use lulls us into dreamy belief that all of us - and everything we do, everything we buy, everything we are - are now able to go on forever, world without end, amen" (p. 4).
How often do people stop and think about what it really means to be sustainable or green? Engelman points out, and I must say I agree, that too often it means "better than the alternative." But simply doing "better" is almost certainly not going to be enough to achieve a sustainable world. Hopefully, the content in this course will help you find out why!
Engelman also mentions the Brundtland Commission's definition of sustainable development:
Sustainable development "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." (Source: Is Sustainability Still Possible?, p. 3. Original source: Our Common Future, World Commission on Environment and Development. Full text available here. [67])
This is the most commonly cited definition of sustainability/sustainable development, in part because it appeared in a book - Our Common Future, published in 1987 - that was the first organized international attempt (in this case, by the United Nations) to address what was widely seen as a global problem. Namely, the commission was tasked with analyzing and proposing solutions for the unsustainable course on which the world's societies were on. But it is also a good, concise way to sum up some primary goals of sustainability. Perhaps most importantly, it acknowledges the need to focus on the world that we leave to future generations. As Engelman puts it, we need to ask ourselves "whether or not civilization can continue on its current path without undermining prospects for future well-being" (p. 4). It is important to point out that not only does society need to simply "last" or "continue" for sustainability to happen, but that we need to consider the quality of life of people living in future societies. This concern is often referred to as intergenerational equity. We will investigate the quality of life in more depth in future lessons.
On paper, the goals indicated by this definition may seem pretty straightforward:
But what is a "need," exactly? Is it meeting the bare essentials of survival, e.g., food, shelter, and clothing? Do I need to have a car? Do you need to have 3+ solid meals a day? Does your neighbor's family need that guest bedroom for when family visits? Do working Germans need to have four weeks of paid vacation each year? Does the mother or father in rural Kenya need a cell phone if there are no landlines? Does India need to update its outdated electricity infrastructure? It's hard to argue that any of these things are true needs, but if you asked each person in this situation, they would all probably say that they are, or at least that they are an important aspect of their lives.
Further, as Engelman brings up, to what degree do we sacrifice the needs and wants of the current generation in order to maximize the chances of future generations to live a good quality of life? Are you willing to impact your quality of life by buying fewer things, not traveling by airplane, not eating meat, living in a smaller house, not owning a car, and growing your own food, just so people in the future can live a better life? I would argue that some of these things actually improve the quality of life for you right now, but who has the right to decide what quality of life means? And how can we guarantee that any of this will work? None of these questions have easy, obvious, or even objectively correct answers, but they are all important to ask if we are to address sustainability.
There is something explicitly missing from the Brundtland Commission's definition (though it is implied) and from any part of the discussion so far, though it is mentioned in the book chapter. What about the natural environment? There are a few ways to approach this question - nature-centric (ecocentric) and human-centric (anthropocentric) - but for now, let's focus on the anthropocentric approach.
The anthropocentric sustainability implications of human concern for nature are concisely summarized by the US EPA when they note that "everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment" (Source: US EPA [68]). We will investigate this further through ecosystem services in a future lesson, but the logic is impossible to argue against: If we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves. At the very least, the oxygen we breathe is generated by plants and other organisms like phytoplankton, and the food we eat is reliant upon soil and water, though there are many more things we currently depend on nature for. Many would argue that nature has value in and of itself (this is generally referred to as deep ecology or ecocentrism), but that goes beyond the scope of this course.
As Engelman stresses throughout his chapter, if we are to know whether or not we are living sustainably, we must measure it. In his words, sustainability "must be tied to clear and rigorous definitions, metrics, and mileage markers." If we do not define and measure it, how can we know whether or not we are closer or farther away from achieving it? These are often called metrics or indicators, and there are many of them, including levels of biodiversity, pollution levels, quality of life metrics, economic indicators, percentage access to clean water and energy, and more. Engelman mentions concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, which the best science indicates is very likely the major cause of global warming trends, as a very important metric. This will be addressed in more detail later in the course, but suffice to say the trend is pointing in the wrong direction, and possibly already at dangerous levels. There are many other indicators that are at a varying level of (non-)concern, some of which will be addressed later. Unfortunately, Engelman is mostly right when he writes that "the basic trends themselves remain clearly, measurably unsustainable."
Finally, Engelman addresses the fraught relationship between economic prosperity and sustainability, and the difficulty in satisfying both present and future needs. Ridding the world of abject poverty is at the forefront of sustainability goals, and is addressed in future lessons. But unfortunately economic growth and sustainability - particularly environmental sustainability - are often at odds. For example, increasing access to fossil fuels generally helps facilitate improving economic conditions, but causes unsustainable emissions. Even current and future sustainability can be at odds, e.g., when Engelman notes that: "Safe water may be reaching more people, but potentially at the expense of maintaining stable supplies of renewable freshwater in rivers or underground aquifers for future generations."
This all indicates the importance of systems thinking. There is a lot of literature about systems thinking, and it does not have a single definition. (If only the world of sustainability were so simple!) It can be thought of as analyzing the world around us as a collection of interrelated systems, and considering phenomena as related to other phenomena. In other words, systems thinking requires consideration of connections. There is an old saying that "the biggest cause of problems is solutions," which is important to keep in mind when analyzing sustainability issues. Examples of unintended (sustainability) consequences abound. For example:
From a sustainability perspective, systems thinking means that you should at least always a) consider the short- and long-term impacts of actions, both in space and time, and b) consider the possible causes of issues. It is unwise to address a problem or situation without thinking about the possible causes and consequences. More on this below.
Box 2.1 on pp. 7 - 8 of the document below provides a helpful primer to the three E's (3 E's). This is a chapter from The Post Carbon Reader, an edited volume by Post Carbon Institute [76]. You are welcome to read the rest of the chapter as well.
"What is Sustainability," p. 7 - 8 [77] by Dillard, Dujon, and King.
Sustainability and sustainable development are often thought of as having three core components: environment, economy, and equity. These are commonly referred to as the "3 E's" of sustainability. The 3 E's are a useful way to provide an analytical framework for sustainability. This 3E framework is useful because it provides questions that can be asked when investigating whether or not something is sustainable. While even these terms can be defined in various ways, we will use the following definitions from the reading when analyzing the sustainability implications of something:
As Dillard and Dujan note, if a business is attempting to address these criteria, it is often called the triple bottom line. If it meets all three criteria, and will likely continue to do so into the foreseeable future, then that is a pretty strong case for sustainability.
The details of how to maintain environmental sustainability are not without controversy, but at some point, we will have to maintain a steady-state of natural resources if we are to survive (this will be addressed later). As Engelman and others say, this may come at the expense of quality of life for some/many people now. No one said it will be easy.
But through my own personal experience and the experience of others, it is clear that social equity is the most confusing of these concepts. Dillard, Dujon, and King do a good job of outlining what it means. Contrary to what some believe, equity does not mean equal distribution of resources. There will always be inequality, whether we want it or not. What it does refer to is the fairness of opportunity and access to resources like education, health care, a clean environment, political participation, social standing, food, shelter, and others. In a socially equitable society, everyone has reasonable access to things that provide a good quality of life. Social equity is about equality of opportunity. Whether or not they take advantage of this opportunity is another story. There is an important difference between being uneducated because of laziness and because of a lack of access to good schools. Making this happen is easier said than done, but the distinction is important to make.
One reason that addressing equity can be controversial is illustrated in the image below. What do you think it is?
As indicated in the caption, equity often requires providing more resources to those that are at some disadvantage. Why they are disadvantaged, who decides they deserve help, the amount of help they are given, and more aspects can be controversial. Which is understandable, given that individual and group circumstances are rarely black and white and oftentimes public resources such as tax dollars are involved. Generally, those that advocate for equity err on the side of "too much" equity rather than "too little."
Economy can also be a point of confusion. It is very important to keep in mind that "economy" from a 3E perspective does not refer to just having and/or making money. It refers both to engaging in actions that are economically sustainable (if businesses do not make enough money to continue, they will not be in business for long) and having enough money to provide and maintain& a reasonably high quality of life over the long term. Yes, money is often an important - if not the most important - factor in achieving a high quality of life, particularly at lower income levels. But please keep in mind as we move forward that, from a sustainability perspective, the true "economic" goal is quality of life, not high income. Money often does contribute to a high(er) quality of life, but not always, as we will see later. Money is a means to an end. For sustainability purposes, that economic "end" is providing adequate living standards for people now and in the future. (After all, if you are incredibly happy, healthy, safe, and have everything you need, does it matter if you do not have a lot of money? More on this later.)
Engelman's chapter brings up some very tough questions that (probably) need to be answered if we are going to achieve a sustainable world. I would like you to think about these moving forward this semester:
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. After going through the content, check the boxes next to the questions/statements that you feel at least somewhat confident answering. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself. This is to help you reflect on important content, and will help you prepare for this week's quiz. It will also help lay the foundation for future course content.
It may be helpful to summarize some of the key points from the previous page (though more will be addressed in this week's homework questions):
Sustainability is some heavy, complex stuff! Most would argue that the future of civilization depends on how we address sustainability, starting yesterday <raising hand>. As Asher Miller phrases it in his introduction to The Post Carbon Reader [80], "The success or failure of the human experiment may well be judged by how we manage the next ten to twenty years" (p. xv). (For better or worse, and unfortunately I'd say "worse," that was written about 10 years ago.) Sustainability is a very important topic, but it is an even more complex and broad topic than energy. I don't expect you to be an expert (yet), but I hope that this course helps you think critically about sustainability-related and other claims.
I have a challenge for you: think of something that you did in the past week that did not involve energy.
Okay, so that's not really a fair challenge. Everything we do, even thinking about things that we might do, require energy. Here's a more reasonable challenge: think of something that you did in the past week that did not involve the use of non-renewable energy.
Any food you eat almost certainly required non-renewable energy. There are obvious connections like farm machinery, artificial fertilizers, and herbicides, transporting food, refrigerating food, cooking food, and packaging food. But even if you grow your own [81], you likely used a tool or fencing that was manufactured using non-renewables, seeds that were processed and shipped with fossil fuel-using machines, packaging that was made using non-renewable energy, or maybe even plastic row markers made with petroleum-based plastics. Almost all transportation uses non-renewables, most businesses run on non-renewable energy sources (either directly or indirectly through electricity generation), almost all of the products you buy contain materials either made of or that are processed with fossil fuels. The electronic device you are looking at right now is partially made of and manufactured using fossil fuels. In short, modern society is very dependent upon access to non-renewable energy, particularly fossil fuels. As Asher Miller notes in The Post Carbon Reader:
Look around and you'll see that the very fabric of our lives - where we live, what we eat, how we move, what we buy, what we do, and what we value - was woven with cheap, abundant energy. (p. xiv)
Watch the video below for an interesting 5-minute journey through the last 300 years of fossil fuels in society.
The charts below provide rather dramatic evidence of how important non-renewable energy is to the U.S. All charts are from the EIA's Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) series, which are published on a yearly basis. I have provided a series of charts to provide some indication of how difficult it is to predict future trends. But, these serve as official (and generally pretty accurate) guides to future energy use.
The first chart is from the 2015 version of the AEO. Though a bit outdated, I put it here because the chart style makes it very easy to see the dominance of non-renewable energy sources. The second chart is from a more recent report (2019) that has total energy consumption, and the third from the most recent (2022) report. The second and third charts are obviously more recent, but is not quite as easy to interpret. Another nice feature of these charts is that they include both historical use and projected future use.
Any way you slice it, the charts make clear that non-renewable energy - particularly fossil fuels - have played and will continue to play a dominant role in society. At this point, our society simply cannot function at its current capacity without them.
Another aspect worth noting is that aside from recessions (e.g., early 1980's and 2007-8), energy use continues to increase over time. Despite consistent increases in energy efficiency, the U.S. can't seem to level off, never mind reduce overall consumption. This is also something that will have to be addressed if we are going to have a sustainable energy future.
Finally, Figure 1.15 shows which energy sources are most responsible for carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. Oil i the current leader, but as more and more natural gas is used (particularly to generate electricity), it will likely come close to catching up to oil-based emissions by 2050, according to the EIA.
Non-renewable energy is extremely useful - it has played an essential role in human society developing to the point that it has. It is energy dense, generally easy to transport and control, and is used for a variety of purposes. Non-renewable energy will continue to play a starring role, for at least the short term future. I enjoy the freedom of the open road in my car [88]. I like to have a house in which I have some control over the temperature and humidity. I like to buy new things from time to time. I enjoy the occasional air travel. I eat food that was shipped from countries on the other side of the world. If we are all to enjoy such things (and more) in the way society and our economy is currently structured, we need access at least to fossil fuels. But given our understanding of the nature of sustainability and non-renewable energy, this cannot go on forever. In fact, it will probably need to change dramatically within the next 10-15 years.
If nothing else, since non-renewable energy is finite, we will reach limits at some point in the future - exactly when is open to debate. But even before that eventuality, it is becoming apparent that the results of unsustainable energy (and resource) use is making it difficult for current generations to meet their needs, never mind future generations. The topics in the next lessons illustrate some of the reasons that scientists and others are worried about the sustainability of our society, some of which are directly related to energy, others not.
Richard Heinberg mentions four things that must be done to achieve a sustainable society with an adequate quality of life. Think about how difficult each of these is. Which do you think is the most difficult to achieve? Do you think they are even feasible? Can you envision a society that achieves these, and if so, is it good or bad? I don't have the answers (I wish I did!), but I think they are important questions to ask. Heinberg is not alone in thinking these are important.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
All right, that does it for the content for this week. Before you relax, make sure you complete the assignments listed at the beginning of this lesson.
This week, we went over some of the core considerations for energy and sustainability.
You should be able to do the following. The Lesson 1 quiz will help you solidify these skills:
At the end of each lesson, I will provide a list of all of the key terms from the lesson. These terms are easy to find because most of them are in bold throughout the lesson, or appear in headings. This is designed to help you review the content, both before you take the quiz, and later. Many of these terms will be used in other parts of the course, in future courses in the Energy and Sustainability Policy curriculum, and in the sustainability and energy literature. They are mostly listed in the order they appear in the text.
This quiz is based on the material this week. Unless otherwise indicated, all of the answers to the quiz questions are in the required readings, videos, and website text from this week. You have unlimited time to take this quiz, but it must be completed by the due date to receive credit. You get one try. Refer to one of the course calendars for due date. Note that you can start the quiz and save your progress, and pick up where you left off later. The quiz answers automatically save as you complete the quiz, and if you stop taking it you will pick up right where you left off if you start again. If the quiz is partially completed, it will automatically submit at the due date/time if you do not submit it yourself. Please note that students in the past have had some issues saving and resuming with Internet Explorer. I suggest using Firefox or Google Chrome. To take the quiz:
Don't forget to start commenting on the Yellowdig discussion board!
The material in this lesson covers many of the fundamental considerations in sustainability. All sustainability topics are related in some way, but the topics addressed in this lesson are either integrated into many other topics, or are overarching issues that many other topics are a part of. These concepts are important to understand if you want to analyze specific issues such as water sustainability, energy sustainability, and others (those are addressed in Lesson 3), or to understand sustainability holistically.
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
Please note that the quiz can only be taken once. You have unlimited time to complete it prior to the deadline and can save your progress and pick up where you left off at a later time. See the Assignments and Grading section of the syllabus [1] for tips on how to do this. Once you submit the quiz, you cannot change answers. All saved answers will automatically be submitted at the deadline if you have not submitted them.
Requirement | Submission Location |
---|---|
Lesson 2 Quiz | Modules tab > Lesson 2 |
Continue posting to the Yellowdig discussion board. | Modules tab > Lesson 2 |
OPTIONAL Extra Credit: Lesson 2 Extra Credit quiz | Modules tab > Lesson 2 |
If you have any general course questions, please post them to our HAVE A QUESTION? discussion forum located under the Discussions tab. I will check that discussion forum regularly to respond as appropriate. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses and comments if you are able to help out a classmate. If you have a question but would like to remain anonymous to the other students, email me.
If you have something related to the material that you'd like to share, feel free to post to the Coffee Shop forum, also under the Discussions tab.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
Think about the last time you spent money on something or considered spending money on something, even if it was something small and seemingly inconsequential. Then I want you to think about why you made the decision you did. Did you spend the money or not? What was your motivation? What factor(s) did you take into consideration? I’ll do the same.
As I write this, the last thing I thought about spending money on was a small table at a used furniture store (true story). I have been needing (okay, wanting) a small table for my front porch for a little while now. I thought this table looked nice and was kind of unique. I also liked that is was a used item, and the purchase supported a non-profit organization. I considered the fact that I was on my way somewhere else and had my dog in the car and had to be able to fit the table in the car without crowding the dog too much or making it dangerous for him to be in the car. I also considered whether or not the rest of my family would like it, in particular, my wife. Of course, I also considered how much money it would cost ($10). After taking all of this into consideration, I purchased the table.
Not the most interesting story [89], I know. But this is a small illustration of the fundamental theory behind the system of economics that we’ve been using for the past 150+ years. Namely, that people make purchases based on weighing the personal costs and benefits given the information they have available to them. In a perfect world, consumers know everything about a product, the benefits they will receive from it, and how it compares to similar products. (This is generally not a reasonable set of assumptions, but that’s another story that we will address later in this course.) All of these combined add up to the private benefit - which economists call the private utility, or simply utility - of the good. They also consider the private cost, which includes at least the price, but could also include other factors such as inconvenience. This process would appear to most people to simply be common sense, and most likely this system of thought is what led you to buy or not buy whatever it is you were considering in the thought experiment above.
There is another side to this transaction. Whoever offered to sell you the good almost certainly decided on a price based at least on how they could maximize their profit (or at least make a profit). Again, this makes sense and is how most businesses run. There is a balancing act between what consumers want, what the "going price" is, how much it costs the business to procure and sell it, and so forth. Nothing wrong with being motivated at least in part by profit – if a business does not make money, they will not be in business for very long, after all! The merchant from whom I purchased the table was able to offer a very low price because the item was donated, the business was partially staffed by volunteers, it gets tax breaks from being a non-profit, and so forth.
You’re probably wondering if there is a point to all of this. Well, can you think of anything missing from this equation? Are there any costs or benefits missing from this decision-making process? Think about it, then hold that thought and watch the video below. You are required to watch the first 3:20 of the video (intro and negative externalities), as well as 5:06 - 6:22 (positive externalities). A summary of the key points can be found below. The rest of the video is optional.
Please also read this very short reading from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD [92]is an organization with representatives from 36 of the wealthier countries in the world [93], but also with some lower-income countries. You may see the term “OECD countries” in future courses and elsewhere, so this is useful to know. The OECD is also a good source of information and data.
The OECD offers a reasonably good, concise definition of externalities:
Externalities refers to situations when the effect of production or consumption of goods and services imposes costs or benefits on others which are not reflected in the prices charged for the goods and services being provided
As noted in the video, there are usually external costs and/or external benefits to transactions. External costs and benefits are borne by people or other entities that had no input on the transaction and were not fully included in the price. A negative externality occurs when an external cost occurs, and a positive externality occurs when an external benefit occurs.
Pollution is a classic example of a negative externality, as noted in the reading (and later in the video). Most pollution - particularly air pollution - is emitted without the emitter paying for any negative consequences of the pollution. These costs could be in the form of respiratory problems caused by power plant particulates, loss of beautiful vistas because of smog from car exhaust, the climate change impact of carbon dioxide from a home furnace, or any number of problems. The reading from the OECD notes that roads may have positive externalities (making it easier to get to work or school, etc.), but keep in mind that they usually have some negative externalities as well, such as air pollution, noise pollution, possibly extra traffic, and more. The point is that many of these costs and benefits happen to actors that were not involved in the decision to emit the pollutants, but that they were not compensated for (or did not have to pay for them, in the case of benefits), and were not included in the price of the good (e.g., the cost to build the road), thus making them externalities.
Dr. Paul M. Johnson of Auburn University provides a little more specificity [95] to this definition:
An externality is "a situation in which the private costs or benefits to the producers or purchasers of a good or service differs from the total social costs or benefits entailed in its production and consumption."
The narrator in the video also points this out when she says that a negative externality occurs when social cost exceeds private cost, and a positive externality occurs when the social benefit exceeds the private benefit. If an external cost is incurred by someone outside of the transaction, and that cost is fully integrated into the cost of the product, then by definition no positive or negative externality occurs. (Note that it is nearly, if not completely, impossible to fully integrate all costs and benefits into an action. But if they could be integrated, some economists still consider them externalities because they are "external" to the transaction. They would just be neither positive nor negative.)
Air pollution from a factory is considered an externality because certain costs to others that may be incurred - such as people getting sick from the pollution and missing work and paying for doctor's bills - are not paid by the factory. Even if the factory owner gets a small fine, if that fine is less than the external cost, then it is still an externality. It's difficult to imagine an external benefit to air pollution, but maybe there are people out there that enjoy asthma attacks and diminished lung capacity. (Who am I to judge?) If a state builds a road, neither all of the negative (e.g., noise and air pollution) nor the positive (e.g., decreased commute time, increased economic activity) are fully integrated into the cost of the road, and externalities abound.
Economists tend to think of externalities in dollars and cents, even if an externality does not have a direct cost. For example, let's say I play in an outdoor basketball league. I love playing basketball, but don't get a direct monetary benefit from it. What if air pollution fouls the air and makes it impossible for me to play basketball? What is the externality in dollars and cents?
In order to figure this out, my "Willingness to Pay" (WTP) would have to be determined. If it were just my teammates and me, they would ask us something to the effect of: "How much would you be willing to pay to play basketball tonight?" Of course, if you scale this up and want to know how much 1,000 people or 10,000 people would be willing to pay, you would need to perform statistical analysis. You could do the same thing for many externalities, such as political freedom, beautiful views, safe neighborhoods, etc. At any rate, it is not necessary for our purposes to always think of externalities in financial terms, but it would be if we wanted to figure out the true cost of transactions. Here is one study [96] that analyzes Willingness to Pay for environmental externalities in Spain. (Full disclosure: This is a random study that I found through a Google search. But it is a peer-reviewed study, so is legitimate research.)
Back to my table. Can you think of any externalities that may have resulted from it? It is probable that the steel, which is mostly iron [97], was mined somewhere. There may have been some chemical runoff from the mine that affected local people or wildlife. Manufacturing steel requires a lot of energy, usually from coal. This causes emissions, including carbon dioxide, that can affect local people and wildlife, and likely contributing to climate change. Even if there is a small effect on climate change, it is still an externality. Perhaps the coal mine acidified the local water supply, compromising the local fish supply. The table was probably shipped somewhere, which would have caused emissions. There are more, but you get the point. It is very important to remember that for purposes of this course, these costs are negative externalities if they are not fully integrated into the cost of making, and therefore buying the product. For example, if the company that mined the steel paid a fine equivalent to the damage from the pollution, then it was likely included in the cost. That is possible, though unlikely. If nothing else, the emissions that resulted from this whole process are almost certainly not integrated into the cost (more on this later), and so there are some externalities involved.
There are likely positive externalities as well. Perhaps the iron mining company brought jobs to the local economy, and the people earning wages spent the money on other businesses. These other businesses indirectly benefited from the mining of the iron. Perhaps the mining company built some local roads that facilitated business and allowed people to more easily visit family. Closer to home, my beautiful table is sitting on my front porch and makes my neighbors happy when they see it (I might have made that up), which is a positive externality. But if it makes them jealous, that is a negative externality (also not likely).
One more thing: As mentioned in the video, goods/actions with negative externalities are usually overproduced. This means that more of it is produced/done than is socially optimal. In other words, if there were no externalities, every impact would be reflected in the price, and less of the good/action would happen because it would be more expensive than it would be otherwise. For example, if all of the negative impacts from pollution were added to the cost of generating the pollution, then it would be more expensive to pollute, and less of it would occur. Conversely, things with positive externalities tend to be underproduced. An example of each follows:
The climate benefits of reducing fossil fuel combustion are essential sustainability considerations. However, there are many other negative externalities associated with fossil fuel use. There is increasing awareness of the negative health impacts of fossil fuel use, in particular due to PM 2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter) because they are small enough to get into lung sacs and even the bloodstream. The following are examples of recent research related to this. These are negative externalities because the costs are not included in the price of fossil fuels:
Hopefully, this makes sense to this point. Most, if not all, economic transactions have externalities, which may be positive or negative. These externalities may have a direct economic cost/benefit associated with them (e.g., hospital bill from an asthma attack that occurred because of car exhaust fumes [101]) or a non-economic cost/benefit (e.g., the sense of freedom I got while driving the car [88] that contributed to the asthma attack). These are real impacts on real people that are not included in the cost of the transactions that led to the externalities. You could probably list a few more externalities from driving, but that's really the easy part. Think about this for a minute: How would you go about quantifying the externalities? More specifically from the example above, how would you quantify the external costs of one gallon of gasoline burned in a car engine? How about the total external cost of generating electricity with a coal-fired power plant? Think about all of the complex calculations you would need to perform, and also how many assumptions you would have to make. Fortunately, I will not ask you to do that, because it goes well beyond the scope of this course. Also, this is actually a major avenue of research, and so numbers are available.
The reading below is a pretty well-balanced assessment of externalities from electricity generation. This reading is not required, but it will be very helpful to at least read the sections called "Indirect Subsidies" and "Conclusion."
There are a few important points to be gleaned from this article.
Without getting into the specifics about the causes of climate change (that will be covered in the next lesson), let's take a look at climate change as an externality. As you will see in the next lesson, if the climate continues to change, the impacts will be overwhelmingly negative. Quantifying these costs is an active area of research, but many countries - including the U.S. - have placed an "official" cost on the emission of carbon dioxide (this is used to calculate the cost of new legislation). Under the Obama administration, the U.S. federal government used a social cost of carbon (SCC) of $39 per ton [105]of carbon dioxide. (Not surprisingly, the Trump administration has proposed to lower this significantly, and the Biden Administration is proposing to increase it to $51/ton.) A 2015 study out of Stanford University [106] found that the U.S. grossly underestimated the SCC and that it should be closer to 220 dollars/ton. In 2013, major corporations integrated the cost of carbon emissions into their projects [107] (between 6 dollars and 60 dollars/ton), though they use some different considerations than SCC, and by early 2021, over 500 companies [108] worldwide had integrated SCC internally, with almost as many more planning on integrating one within the following two years.
Please note that you are not required to fully understand the calculation below, but you do need to understand how assumptions regarding SCC could impact the cost of electricity in general, as well as the implications for using natural gas vs. coal to generate electricity. This technique could be applied to anything that causes carbon dioxide emissions.
Are you wondering how much CO2 is emitted by various energy sources, so you can calculate the SCC? For example, how much would each kilowatt hour of electricity cost if the cost to society (read: externalities) were included? If you have, you've come to the right place! The carbon dioxide emissions that result from electricity generation vary significantly by energy source, so we'll start there, then apply the assumptions for actual financial cost of carbon as outlined by the two sources referred to above. Note that the information in the table below takes into consideration the average efficiency of each type of power plant (the same power plant efficiencies from Lesson 1, by the way):
What is the SCC of a kWh of bituminous coal vs. natural gas at different SCC rates (37 dollars/ton vs. 220 dollars/ton)? In other words, based on the number of pounds of CO2 are emitted when burning coal and natural gas, and assuming that the total cost to society of one ton of CO2 is either $37 or $220, how much more would we pay per kWh if these external costs were integrated into the price of that kWh?
As you can see, there is a huge difference in the social cost of electricity, based on the social cost of carbon assumption used. And also note that less carbon-intensive fuel sources would cost less than higher-intensity sources. (This is the basis of a carbon tax, by the way!)
The point of all of this discussion of different social costs of carbon is not that one calculation is better than the other, but that climate change is increasingly being recognized as having a real cost, but much of that cost will be borne in the future and is thus an externality. Even current external costs are largely borne by people that did not make the decision to pollute. This all, of course, ignores the noneconomic costs of climate change, which could be substantial.
Here is a summary of the Stanford study referred to above. It is very short and describes some of the rationale and science behind Social Cost of Carbon calculations.
Almost everything that is bought and sold has externalities. Some are more impactful than others. Externalities – negative externalities in particular – are very important considerations in sustainability. By definition, they are not included in the cost of goods. The cost of goods drives our economy, and our economy is a (and many would argue the) dominant force in society. It’s easy to see that if the dominant force in society is not accounting for all costs to society, we might have some problems. Many of the issues discussed in this and the next lesson are the results of externalities - climate change included.
There is a lot of material on this page, so here is a summary of the key points:
If the Social Cost of Carbon were included in the cost of current carbon emissions, is human-induced climate change no longer a negative externality? Would it be an externality at all?
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
Speaking of costs and benefits, in simple terms, there are two fundamental quantities a business (or individual) needs to know to determine if they are making or losing money: how much money is going into the budget (revenue) and how much is going out (expenses). If revenue exceeds expenses, then the business makes money. If costs exceed expenses, the business loses money. A business cannot lose money forever. Eventually, it will not be able to sustain itself.
The same principle applies to most natural resources in two fundamental ways:
Lesson 3 provides a lot of examples of the symptoms of overuse of natural resources, but for now, I'd like you to reiterate these two following basic truths:
Just as a business that loses more money than it makes runs a deficit, when humans overuse the capacity of the earth to replenish resources, it could be said that these places are running an ecological deficit. It stands to reason that if we could figure out our planetary capacity to generate natural resources (aka our "budget" or "revenue" of natural resources) and compare it to how much of that capacity we use (aka our "costs"), we could determine if we are losing or gaining ecological capacity. Luckily for us, some people have been working on this for the last decade or so and have come up with the concept of ecological footprint.
Watch this short (2:58 minute) video from Mathis Wackernagel, who originated the concept of ecological footprint. He is currently Executive Director of the Global Footprint Network [113], which specializes in calculating ecological footprints.
For some deeper insight into ecological footprint, read Chapter 4 of Is Sustainability Still Possible?: "Getting to One-Planet Living," by Jennie Moore and William E. Rees. (See the Modules tab for a digital copy.)
"Ecological Footprints estimate the productive ecosystem area required, on a continuous basis, by any specified population to produce the renewable resources it consumes and to assimilate its (mostly carbon) wastes."
~Jennie Moore and William Rees, "Getting to One-Planet Living", p. 40
Dr. Wackernagel sums up the goal of ecological footprint analysis by asking a simple question: "How will we be able to maintain the success (of our society) in the future?" The ecological footprint is based on the recognition that humans depend on the earth's natural resources for survival, and that our "success" is predicated on the ability of the earth to replenish natural resources through time. In the simplest terms, the question we need to answer is:
We only have one earth, and this one earth can only regenerate so many resources in a given year (produce food, filter water, pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, etc.) - this is our stock of resources. How can we use this information to determine whether or not we are overusing natural resources? In principle, it's relatively simple: If we compare the number of resources that are provided each year by the earth (one "earth") to the amount we use (our global ecological footprint), we can determine whether or not we are living within our ecological budget.
There are many implications of this, but there are two fundamental ones:
If biocapacity diminishes, eventually ecosystem collapse will occur, and ultimately societal collapse as well. This is what scientists refer to as a "very bad thing."
The bad news is that according to the Global Footprint Network, humans have been living beyond their ecological means for about 40 years now, as the chart below shows. The good news is, uh <checking notes>, well unfortunately in terms of global ecological footprint, there is very little good news. Just about every country across the world has an increasing ecological footprint [114].
The Global Footprint Network (GFN) created another way to illustrate the same phenomenon by publishing the annual "Earth Overshoot Day [116]." Earth Overshoot Day indicates the date in a given year after which humanity starts using more than a sustainable level of natural resources. As the GFN puts it: Earth Overshoot Day is when "we began to use more from nature than our planet can renew in the whole year." So, an earlier Earth Overshoot Day means that we are using up our resources faster. In 2016, this happened on August 8th. Pretty sad, right? Well, unfortunately in 2017, this occurred on August 2nd, and in 2019 it was July 29th! This is not the kind of downward trend sustainability-types like yourselves want to see. For the first time since they've been keeping track, Overshoot Day moved back about four weeks (to August 22nd) in 2020, but it was at the cost of millions of deaths and countless lives ruined. And of course, it was back to July 19th in 2021.
While humans are unfortunately overusing resources on a global scale, it is not all bad news. If the natural replenishment rate of a renewable resource is known, then it is possible to harvest them at a sustainable rate. How can this be done? I want you to think about this for a minute before moving on. (Maybe take a look at Figure 2.4 for some inspiration.)
Okay, here's the oh-so-elusive secret: If you want to maintain a supply of renewable natural resources, don't harvest them any faster than they can be naturally replenished. This practice is generally referred to as the principle of sustainable yield (you might also see it referred to as "maximum sustainable yield" or "sustained yield"). This is a pretty self-descriptive term, but Encyclopaedia Britannica provides a concise definition [117]:
Sustainable yield "can in principle be maintained indefinitely because it can be supported by the regenerative capacities of the underlying natural system."
This can in theory be done for any renewable natural resource in order to maintain a steady supply over time. This is most often thought of in forest management and fisheries management but can be applied to any resource (e.g., soil, water, animal populations, plant populations). There are numerous examples of this in practice. For example, most of Sweden's forests are harvested using sustainable yield practices, and in fact, the total amount of forest has been increasing [118] since at least the 1950s. Some forest areas under U.S. federal jurisdiction are required [119]to be managed using sustainable yield practices, and the Maine lobster industry has been maintained [120]for well over 100 years because of sustainable yield practices.
Please also keep in mind that - as indicated above - the same principle applies to emissions/pollution. If pollution is emitted faster than it can be safely absorbed, it will build up in the environment and/or cause damage to the environment. Rising CO2 levels are one example of this.
Unsustainable Forest Management: Illustration showing that if you cut 3 out of 5 trees down and 1 grows back, you have 3 trees left, then if you cut 3 more down and 1 grows back, you have 1 left.
Sustained Yield Forest Management: Illustration showing that if you cut down 1 of 5 trees and 1 grows back, you have 5 trees left. Then, if you cut down one more and 1 grows back, you still have 5 trees left.
It is very important to note a few caveats regarding sustained/sustainable yield management:
How much longer can we continue to live beyond our ecological means? Unfortunately, there is no way to know. As Moore and Rees put it in the optional reading: "System collapse is a complicated process...We may actually pass through a tipping point unaware because nothing much happens at first" (p. 41). There is a phenomenon, most often used in biology/ecology, called overshoot and collapse that can help us understand some of the risks involved with overusing renewable resources and passing through such "tipping points."
This short article describes the well-documented example of overshoot and collapse on St. Matthew Island in Alaska. The rest of the article describes how this may be an analogy for humans, specifically with regard to energy. It is good food for thought.
Overshoot and collapse can occur when there is insufficient immediate or short-term feedback to prevent an organism from acting against its own self-interest. If widespread human suffering occurred because of ecological overuse and it could be proven that resource overuse was the cause, it is likely that we would try to do something about it.
Of course, suffering is happening now, some of which is due to resource scarcity, but apparently not enough for us to address it. Regardless, it is possible to use more than our allotted biocapacity and survive, at least for a while. What's scary is that no one knows exactly how long we can keep using resources at this rate without reaching a tipping point. It may be 10 years, maybe 20 years, maybe even 50 years (very unlikely). It depends on a lot of factors, but one of the main problems is that by the time we realize collapse is occurring, it may already be too late to do anything about it. That is the "collapse" part of "overshoot and collapse." On St. Matthew Island, by the time the deer started running out of lichen to eat, it was too late. Humans are of course much more resourceful than reindeer (one would hope so, anyway), but there are likely tipping points that are points of no return. Chief among these are climate change and biodiversity loss, which will both be addressed in future lessons.
If the people in a country have a bigger ecological footprint than the physical size of the country, how can they continue to survive? For example, according to Global Footprint Network data (from overshootday.org [124]):
How is this possible? In other words, how can a country or the whole world use more resources than can sustainably be provided, and still survive?
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
If you haven't done this already, the next time you hear or read an economic report, or hear a politician discuss economic policy, pay attention to how much focus is on growth. The tax cuts passed at the end of 2017 in the U.S. provide a great example of this, as do the more recent Covid relief bill. "Economic growth" was often cited as the main purpose of the tax bill, and Covid relief to a lesser extent. One of the major economic concerns expressed with regards to the Covid-19 pandemic is "contraction," i.e. negative growth. This is not an aberration! We hear the phrase "economic growth" so much that the attempt to achieve it is taken as a given. This cuts across political (Republican, Democrat, Independent, etc.) and international boundaries, by the way.
But have you ever thought about what the implications of a permanent state of economic growth are, or if it is even possible? Renowned economist Herman Daly - who, among other accolades received the prestigious Right Livelihood Award [125], aka "the alternative Nobel prize", in 1996 - provides a concise explanation of the inadequacies of the notion of "sustainable growth" in the article below.
In general, the most acceptable type of information source is peer-reviewed research, which appears in journals. There are thousands of scholarly/academic journals [126], and to be fair not all of them are regarded with equal esteem. But, by and large, if you find information in a journal, there is good reason to believe that there is at least relatively solid scientific backing behind it, and often very solid scientific basis (again, this depends somewhat on the journal).
"Peer-reviewed" means that the article was reviewed by experts in the field of research addressed in the article, i.e., the author's peers. This is usually a very rigorous process, and it is rare to find major errors in peer-reviewed research, particularly for well-regarded journals. There are some exceptions - for example, you have to be careful who funds research. Authors are supposed to disclose who funded their research (research can be very costly, if nothing else to compensate the authors), but there are instances of this not happening. Funders are not supposed to influence research outcomes. In fact, that entirely contradicts the principle of the scientific research process. But results are often open to some interpretation, and methods are never perfect, so there is room for subtle influence. For example, you may want to take energy research funded by energy companies or energy advocacy organizations with a grain of salt (i.e., really use your critical thinking skills!). This is much more important for non-peer reviewed research. This is usually oil- and/or natural gas-related - mostly because they are some of the wealthiest corporations in the world [127] and stand to gain (or lose) significantly due to changing scientific and policy understanding - but this stands for renewables as well.
All that said, peer-reviewed research is considered the best type of information to use. The article below is from the peer-reviewed journal Development. Note that many non peer-reviewed articles use peer-reviewed information as source material, which is important to consider when analyzing the reliability of the information.
Before reading the article, a short note on terminology: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the "value of all finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period" (source: Investopedia: gdp [128]). Gross National Product (GNP) is the same as GDP, but includes money made overseas by domestic residents, and does not include money made domestically by foreign residents (source: Investopedia: gnp [129]). I recommend at least watching the videos on the GDP a GNP Investopedia pages.
So, GDP is the dollar value of every new product and service bought and sold within a country's borders, plus things like government spending and net exports. Say a Chinese company sells products within the U.S.'s physical borders. All income counts toward the U.S.'s GDP, but not China's GDP. But that income does not count toward the U.S.'s GNP, instead, counting toward China's GNP. It used to be more common to use GNP, but now GDP is much more commonly used. For the purposes of this course, it is not important to spend time distinguishing between the two, but to understand that they are both measurements of overall economic activity.
Economists use GDP as a sign of general economic health, particularly whether it is growing (considered a good thing) or shrinking (not good). Another important term is GDP per capita (GDP/capita). This is a measure of GDP divided by the number of people living in a country.
There are a lot of good points made in the article, but the overarching one is:
"An economy in sustainable development...stops at a scale at which the remaining ecosystem...can continue to function and renew itself year after year" (p. 45)
This should sound very familiar! It coincides neatly with the concept of ecological footprint. (I'll leave you to think about what this means in terms of global ecological footprint, i.e. 1 earth, less than 1 earth, etc.) He describes this point (an economy in sustainable development) as the optimal scale for the economy, and that optimal scale is never addressed when discussing macroeconomics(p. 46). In other words, economists (and by extension, politicians) do not discuss the best (optimal) size of the economy, only focusing on growing it as large as possible. Think about this next time you read or hear a story regarding economic growth.
Another essential concept is that Daly is careful to point out the difference between growth (getting "bigger") and development (getting "different"). The economy and society can develop forever, but cannot grow forever. A developing economy is not stagnant, even if it is not growing. Money will change hands, services will be provided, goods will be made, etc. An economy cannot grow forever, however, because it is a subset of the earth, and is subject to the physical limitations that the earth's biocapacity provides. This is a fundamental principle that should be considered when discussing economic growth and economic sustainability, and it also aligns closely with the notion of ecological footprint.
The whole article is important, but a few other highlights I'd like to point out are:
All of the above summarizes the concept of the steady state economy.
Please watch a video (5:07) featuring Herman Daly, himself, discussing the steady state economy:
Feel free to read a description of the steady state economy, as well as a brief historical background of the concept, by the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE). One thing to note that you will see in the article: Ecological Economics is a sub-field of Economics that essentially advocates for the application of the steady state economy concept (among other things). This should not be confused with Environmental Economics, which is more of a traditional Economics sub-field. Note that the "History of the Steady State Concept" section is less important than the others, but provides some good historical context.
There are a few important/interesting things I'd like to note from the reading and video:
Some other points that are important to note about the steady state economy. (This is from a reading by CASSSE that has unfortunately disappeared from the internet, but the points are important.)
Make no mistake: being on record as saying that the economy must stop growing at some point is anathema to the core of mainstream thinking about how economies should work. It will not win you many friends in the policy or economic world, and certainly won't get you elected to public office (in the U.S., anyway). But the logic is hard to argue with.
There is a burgeoning belief in the sustainability movement that not only do we need to stop focusing on economic growth as a development/policy goal, but that we actively need to seek ways to have negative growth (i.e. contract) in order to achieve sustainability goals. This is most often referred to as "degrowth." There are a lot of folks researching and making proposals on this, but there is a lot of controversy about this even among sustainability advocates. Some folks believe that technology and efficiency will solve sustainability problems (they are often referred to as technological optimists/techno-optimists or cornucopians). They often point to the possibility of "decoupling" resource use from growth. The jury is out on this, but it's not looking good for the cornucopians. While many countries have reduced emissions while growing GDP, most scientists believe it is not possibly to fully decouple environmental impact from economic growth.
This is an essential debate! The exact solution is not clear, and it will take years if not decades to figure out the best approach. But as burgeoning sustainability experts, it is helpful for you to know that degrowth may be necessary to achieve a sustainable future.
There is a lot of literature on this, but the following article provides a good overview of the current debate. They synopsize Degrowth thus: "The degrowth movement, as it’s called, argues that humanity can’t keep growing without driving humanity into climate catastrophe. The only solution, the argument goes, is an extreme transformation of our way of life — a transition away from treating economic growth as a policy priority to an acceptance of shrinking GDP as a prerequisite to saving the planet." While I strongly disagree with the phrase "save the planet" - the planet will survive, but the people and other organisms may not - the rest of the article is very good.
It should not be difficult to recognize that humans are subject to the physical constraints of planet earth. But how we make sure that we do not exceed our limit to the point of collapse (e.g., overshoot and collapse mentioned previously) is something that is debated, even by people with seemingly the same end goals. There is a branch of environmental (well, it's primarily economic) thought that is based on the power of free markets to most efficiently manage resources. This is often called free market environmentalism (FME). Those who advocate for FME believe that free markets (economic systems that are free from government regulation) are the best way to solve environmental problems. And, just as important, they believe that the government is much worse at managing resources than the market. This article from the Library of Economics and Liberty [142] (a free-market think tank) summarizes the school of thought pretty well.
As outlined in this article, this school of thought rests on three assumptions in order for markets to work for any environmental good (e.g., a forest, clean water, clean air, etc.): "Rights to each important resource must be clearly defined, easily defended against invasion, and divestible (transferable) by owners on terms agreeable to buyer and seller" (source: Library of Economics and Liberty [142]). In other words, if a piece of property has:
I would add that (4) the author (and this is typical of FME) also assumes that the owner of the property is motivated to protect the property in anticipation of future profits.
For example, if I own a lake and someone pollutes it, if the courts are just, the polluter will end up paying me because (s)he compromised my ability to enjoy my property. If these conditions are known, then the polluter, in theory, will decide not to pollute in order to avoid the extra cost. As you can see, all of this relies on using money as the motivating factor.
This is a very sound argument as long as those conditions are met, at least in terms of environmental protection. This situation, and variations of it, have been proven effective in a wide array of applications. It worked for water conservation in the Western U.S. [143] And here are a number of case studies [144] demonstrating that these principles can work.
But what if those four conditions are not met? With climate change, a fundamental question is: "Who owns the atmosphere?" (The answer: no one does.) If there is no clear ownership, the system may not work. Let's go back to my lake that got polluted, and think about a few plausible scenarios.
This article from the Property and Environment Research Center [145] - also an advocate for free market environmentalism - goes over a few of these and other examples where the system breaks down.
This is a really dense, complicated topic that would take a very long time to fully flesh out. But determining the solutions to critical energy and sustainability problems is not one of the goals of this course, however, recognizing the planet's ability to support life is. One of the main points that I want you to walk away with from this page is that our economy has physical limitations that we must adhere to. The steady state economy is a precondition for environmental sustainability. But it is useful for you to know - especially in terms of critical analysis - that there are multiple possible ways to address this goal. Many - Herman Daly among them - advocate for government policy to solve this problem. Many - like the free market environmentalists - believe that markets and private property are the answer. I am not here to say which school of thought is correct, but my belief based on the evidence is that it is somewhere in between. Perhaps this could be done by having the government cap consumption at sustainable levels and allowing the market to work from there ("cap and trade"), or by using some of Daly's suggestions regarding subsidies and taxes. Cap and trade worked well for the acid rain problem in the early 1990s, for example, and is often cited as a solution to carbon emissions [146].
There are pros and cons to each approach. Markets are really great at efficiently managing resources that can have economic value attached to them (e.g., copper, oil) but even the most devout free market believers realize that they don't always work. Externalities are a good example of this (e.g., environmental destruction from copper and oil mining, air pollution from burning gasoline). And placing an economic value on something is a double-edged sword - it can, and often does, lead to preservation because of its expense (e.g., private nature parks), but it can lead to destruction if it is not perceived as worth enough (e.g., converting rainforest into pasture land). Private ownership often leads to inequity as well, as those without means are priced out of the access to goods (private education being a prime example of this). But government is generally not good at efficiently managing resources (e.g., the federal government of the U.S.). Overall, it is very difficult to believe that the market, left to its own devices, will achieve the Steady State Economy, especially if history is any guide. This is evidenced by the fact that the global ecological footprint is already at unsustainable levels.
One of the goals of this course is to help you think critically about these issues, so my hope is that when thinking about the information presented here you do so with "clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness" as you will read in the critical thinking section at the beginning of the next lesson (source: The Foundation for Critical Thinking [147]). To do this, you must look at the evidence and use sound logic, minimizing the influence of ideology as much as possible. But as we will also go over in the critical thinking lesson, the more you know about these topics, the better you are able to make a sound critical analysis.
The following short article and web page describe somewhat competing views on this.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
Clearly, there are a lot of ways to think about and measure whether or not we are living sustainably, and we've only scratched the surface in this course. So far, we've primarily examined how to be environmentally sustainable. But what about the other two "E's" of sustainability that were discussed in Lesson 1? If you can't remember what they are, I suggest clicking back to Lesson 1 [150] to refresh your memory.
Remember that one of the overarching goals of this course is to address issues from a humanistic perspective, which, among other things, means that we are concerned about the plight of all human life. And the discussion of equity made it clear that access to resources is an essential component of sustainability. Achieving environmental sustainability is a precondition for establishing this - humans live on the earth and need its resources to survive - but if we fail to address the quality of life of the people living on the planet, we've only won a partial victory. What good is a nice planet if all of the people on it are miserable?
If someone gave you a choice between a high or low quality of life, chances are about 100% that you'd say "high." But what actually constitutes a high quality of life?
GDP is the most oft-used metric to indicate how a country's economy is doing. But it is also widely used as a general indicator of how a country's people are doing. There is some usefulness to this, as you will see below. But GDP obscures a lot of possible problems (economic, social, environmental, etc.), and does not indicate all of the good things about a society. In short, there are some things that are good for GDP that are bad for people, and there are some things that are good for people that are not necessarily good for GDP. This problem was eloquently described by Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. It is as relevant today as it was 45 years ago. Hopefully, this will give you some pause when you hear the latest GDP numbers as an indicator of how well a country is doing. Watch his speech below (2:11 minutes)
One of the major inadequacies of GDP as an indicator of how society is doing is the invisibility of household labor, which is primarily done by women. According to the OECD [157], men in the U.S. spend an average of 17.5 hours per week doing unpaid household labor, while women spend (wait for it) 28.4 hours per week! None of this is counted towards GDP. (Related note: If any parent or spouse is a "stay-at-home" mom or dad, please never say that they "don't work." They just don't get paid to work.)
This article [158] from the New York Times provides some interesting visualizations of the gender-based household labor gap across the world, and found that even at minimum wage women across the world would have made 10.9 trillion (!) dollars in 2019 alone. To provide some context, the total global GDP in 2020 was a little under 85 trillion, according to [159] the World Bank. A few other problems with GDP include:
Quality of life is another one of those terms that is thrown around liberally but has no specific definition. We all want a high quality of life, but what does that mean exactly? I am not here to settle the debate, but I do like the definition from this website [163]: Quality of life is "the extent to which people's 'happiness requirements' are met." I'd add the term "satisfaction" in there as well, as in "are people's 'satisfaction' requirements met?" The same site also notes that "[Quality of life] may be defined as subjective well-being." Nothing is universally regarded as necessary for happiness, life satisfaction, or well-being. For example, I have friends who LOVE to hunt for deer and will sit for hours in a tree stand in the freezing cold, silently waiting for one to walk by. I can think of 1,000 things that I'd rather do than that (all numbers approximate). But to them, that is an important part of their quality of life. Nothing wrong at all with that, by the way - it's just not for me.
Hunting is something that is obviously not universally required for a high quality of life. But I'm sure there are thousands, if not millions, of people who count it as important. But if you think about it, there is nothing that everybody loves to do, so it wouldn't matter which activity I used as an example. So, if we want to measure the quality of life, how do we do it?
Let's go through a quick thought experiment.
Please click on this link to fill out a short questionnaire. The answers are anonymous.
We have used the word "development" solely with respect to "sustainable development" so far, though Herman Daly addressed development to some degree. The word development is used a LOT in economics, politics, and particularly in international studies. "Development Studies" is considered its own discipline and many schools offer Development Studies degrees [167].
But how do we know if a society or country is "developed?" Or better yet, how can we compare how well "developed" one country is relative to another? You probably have heard the term "undeveloped countries" or "underdeveloped countries" used in political or economic discourse. But have you ever stopped to think what that actually means? Clearly being "undeveloped" is a bad thing, so by using that term judgment is being passed. Most commonly, it is indicative of the relative income of a country and whether or not they've embraced the modern economic system. But as RFK pointed out (and as I'm sure your surveys will attest) income is not the only thing required to make life worth living.
The World Bank [168] is an international organization whose stated goals [169] are to 1) "End extreme poverty" and 2) "Promote shared prosperity." Historically, they have done this primarily by offering loans to governments and organizations.
The World Bank figures very prominently in global economics, but their reputation is mixed, especially among sustainable development advocates. They have a tendency to provide loans with conditions that push economies in the direction they want them to go, sometimes at the expense of the people in that country. That said, they have a lot of expertise, and are a good place for economic and other data. The document below provides a good explanation of what development is and is not. Frankly, it is surprising to see such a document from the World Bank, given their historical focus on economic growth alone. But they bring up some very good points. (Note that I summarize the key points below.)
A few important points from this reading:
It should be clear by now that there are many possible factors that contribute to quality of life, or lack thereof. Back to our original question: How do we measure quality of life? For that, we need a quality of life metric. These are often referred to as development indices. Recall from Lesson 1 that it is important to be able to measure aspects of sustainability? Development indices are one aspect of this.
There are two approaches to this:
There have been many attempts to do the latter and a few that have tried to do the former. It would be impossible to research all of these, but some of the most-used and/or most useful ones are listed below. The first two (HDI and Inequality-Adjusted HDI) measure things that lead to a high quality of life, the third one (Happiness Index) attempts to measure it directly, and the fourth (Multidimensional Poverty Index) measures things that indicate a lack of quality of life. The last one(Happy Planet Index) - which is optional - is a mixture of the two plus ecological footprint.
Please note that even the best metric cannot create a full picture of development, however it is measured. Even the most "developed" country - regardless of how you define development - will have people who are living in poor conditions. Also keep in mind that this is not a comprehensive list of development indices.
The Human Development Index is the most well-known quality of life metric. It was created by the United Nations (UN), who assesses it every year. It measures three things to determine quality of life, as you will see below: living a "long and healthy life, being knowledgeable, and hav(ing) a decent standard of living." The HDI scale goes from 0 (the worst possible) to 1 (the best possible).
I suggest reading the following short description and browsing the most recent HDI rankings by country.
HDI combines three indicators to evaluate the level of development in a country:
This is intended to provide a fuller picture of human development. They do recognize some inadequacies of HDI, though, as they state: "The HDI simplifies and captures only part of what human development entails. It does not reflect on inequalities, poverty, human security, empowerment, etc." Some of this is addressed in the Inequality-Adjusted HDI, which is addressed below.
The UN also publishes Inequality-Adjusted HDI (IHDI), which takes HDI and discounts it according to how equally the individual development metrics are spread across the population. If the Inequality-Adjusted HDI is lower than a country's HDI, then there is some inequality. For example, let's say two countries both have an average life expectancy of 74 years, which means life expectancy would be the same in the HDI rankings. But if in country A the wealthy people are living much longer than the low-income folks, and in country B pretty much everyone has the same average lifespan regardless of wealth, country B would be higher on the Inequality-Adjusted HDI rankings.
The Inequality-Adjusted HDI also uses a scale of 0 to 1, with 1 being the highest. Note that all countries have some inequality, so all IHDI scores are at least a little bit lower than the HDI score for that country.
As noted by the UN, the IHDI represents "the loss to human development due to inequality." The more inequality, the more the HDI score drops when adjusted for inequality. Note that the pattern in the map below is similar to the HDI map above, but the raw values are a little bit lower.
The short reading below from the UN provides a description of IHDI.
The Sustainable Development Solutions Network [177], an organization with esteemed members from throughout the world, has published the World Happiness Report since 2012 (the 2023 version of the World Happiness Report is available [178]). This reporting effort is led in part by renowned International Development expert Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University.
The World Happiness Report asks people to indicate on a scale of 0 - 10 their quality of life now and their expected quality of life in the future (see World Happiness Report details here [179], if you'd like). The basic premise behind this is that if you would like to determine how happy or satisfied someone is with their life, just ask them. This is a type of self-reported quality of life and results in a score of 0 - 10. This is sometimes referred to as the Happiness Index.
Pretty simple, right? Though it does beg some important questions. For example, if someone lives a short life with little education, but they are happy, does it matter? What about someone that has very little freedom, but is happy? What if they have almost no money, but are happy? What if others in their country lead much "better" lives, but they do not know it? I do not have the answers, but they are important questions to think about.
You may want to read the following as well.
A few things worth noting from the first reading:
The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is another UN metric. The premise of the MPI based on the recognition that (lack of) income is not the only way to measure poverty. For example, if a family is above the income-based poverty level but does not have access to adequate health care or education, they are stilll "poor" in quality of life terms.
The United Nations Development Programme(UNDP) summarizes the MPI [183]thusly: "The MPI looks beyond income to understand how people experience poverty in multiple and simultaneous ways. It identifies how people are being left behind across three key dimensions: health, education and standard of living, comprising 10 indicators. People who experience deprivation in at least one third of these weighted indicators fall into the category of multidimensionally poor."
As you can see below, the MPI provides a weighted list of measurable indicators. If someone experiences at least one third (1/3) of these factors, they are considered "multidimensionally poor." For example, if a family has a child that died in the last five years(1/6 weight) and one child does not attend school up to class eight (1/6 weight), they would be multidimensionally poor (1/6 + 1/6 = 1/3). But if someone was undernourished (1/6) and they don't have electricity (1/18) and cook with wood (1/18) they would not be considered multidimensionally poor (1/6 + 1/18 + 1/18 = less than 1/3). You may be thinking that it is pretty callous to consider undernourishment alone as not enough to be poor. To be fair to the UN, they spend a lot of time helping undernourished people. (As you may remember, "zero hunger [184]" is one of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.) Just because they are not "multidimensionally" poor does not mean that they are not considered worthy of assistance! It is merely an imperfect but helpful attempt to identify the most underserved populations in the world.
The reading below from the UNDP outlines findings from a recent report on MPI.
The Happy Planet index takes into account both well-being (they use the same metric as the Happiness Index), life expectancy (like the HDI), and inequality of outcomes. The higher your well-being and life expectancy, the higher your score. Inequality is expressed as a percentage, with a higher percentage meaning more equal outcomes. But what is unique about the Happy Planet Index is that it divides by the ecological footprint, so a higher ecological footprint will result in a lower score, and vice-versa. Nic Marks created this index. He describes it in the short (1:54) video below.
Read about the Happy Planet Index [187] here, including how it is calculated and its limitations. You may want to browse the data here [188]. You are welcome, but not required, to watch the TED talk.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
What do the following terms mean, and how do they relate to social justice?: political rights/opportunities, social rights/opportunities, economic rights/opportunities.Social justice is considered by many to be a controversial topic. Go ahead and Google "social justice" and you'll probably see as many negative than positive stories and videos. However, the concept itself is actually not very controversial - it is the application (or at least proposed application) that is. There is no single definition for social justice, but take a moment to think about the definition of social justice from the National Association of Social Workers [189], who provide a good, concise definition:
Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities.
Ultimately then, social justice is about equal rights and opportunities, which is a near-universal ideal of democratic and moral societies. Not so bad, right? But let's unpack that definition a little before we move on.
First, it is important to point out that they use the word everyone. This seemingly innocuous word actually lies at the core of social justice! I'm sure you can think of many historical and contemporary examples of unequal rights being granted to groups of people. Examples abound of discrimination against people of certain ethnicities, races, religious beliefs, sexual orientations, income levels, genders, and more. Social justice requires such characteristics and qualities have no bearing on rights and opportunities.
Alright, so let's start with the easiest of the three components: political rights and opportunities. The most obvious aspect of this is having the right to vote. In the U.S., almost every citizen has the right to vote. There are exceptions to this, such as some states not allowing convicted felons to vote [190]. However, keep in mind that black American men were only granted the right in 1869 [191] (though things such as poll taxes prevented them from fully participating for decades), and women were not afforded this right until 1920 [192] (seriously!).
But just because you have the right to vote does not mean you have an equal opportunity to vote. This is an important distinction to make. A prominent example is that black Americans were not fully given the legal opportunity to vote until the Voting Rights Act of 1964. And even now there is a lot of controversy surrounding what many think are efforts to suppress votes in the U.S. [193], particularly in low-income and minority communities, and particularly since the 2020 election season. Even the fact that the U.S. presidential election is held on a Tuesday (early voting notwithstanding) is pointed to as unfair to people who don't have the job flexibility to miss work. In short, if people are not given reasonably good opportunities to vote, then social injustice may be occurring.
But this is only voting! What about political power and influence in general? Perhaps the most obvious example is that the U.S. has never had a woman president and the first black (or any person of color) president was elected in 2008. Obviously, this has not occurred due to complete absence of qualified female or non-white candidates. Again, they had the right to be president but it would be hard to argue that they had an equalopportunity to do so as a white male. The influence of money in politics is an important social justice issue because generally speaking those with more money are generally granted more political power. The money spent on political lobbying alone has been more than 2 billion (yes folks, that's billion with a "b"!) dollars every year since 2003 [195]. And that does not include the money spent on advertisements and other political activity. Nowadays it costs on the order of 1 billion dollars to get elected president of the U.S., and thousands or hundreds of thousands for even local offices. All of this results in political power being at least partially tied to how much money one has. Again, this is socially unjust.
Please keep in mind that lack of political rights and opportunities is an important international issue as well. Some extreme examples include the fact that 99.7% of all eligible voters [196] voted for the North Korean Communist Party in 2015, that the 2013 elections in Zimbabwe were considered a total sham [197], and the 2017 election in Venezuela was essentially rigged [198]. Voter intimidation can be a major problem in many parts of the world, and minorities and women are barred from voting in some areas of the world.
So what is meant by having equal economic rights and opportunities? This is a little more difficult to define, but essentially it means that everyone has reasonable access to rights and opportunities that can result in economic security and stability. This does NOT mean that everyone should have equal income! But what it does mean is that who and where you are should have no bearing on your ability to achieve at least a reasonable level of economic security. It is difficult to disentangle this from social rights and opportunities because they heavily influence each other. Social rights include things like education, safe neighborhoods, health care, legal protection, access to transportation, access to healthy food, freedom to practice religion, and more.
Economic and social rights often overlap. Without adequate education, it can be difficult to obtain a good job. But if your parents don't have a good job, then it may be difficult to access good education. In the U.S. health care is obviously a big issue, as nearly 29 million Americans lacked insurance in 2019 [199], and one of the major concerns about the Covid-19 pandemic (well, in the U.S., anyway, since we are one of the few industrialized countries that ties health insurance to employment) is that tens of millions of people will lose their health insurance because of unemployment. Being unhealthy or sick can make it difficult to find and/or maintain a job, and not having a good job can reduce access to good health care (in the U.S. anyway). Job opportunities are usually more difficult to come by in low-income areas, as is access to healthy food.
Disparities in policing tactics have become an important topic recently in the U.S., and studies like this one from the Center for Policing Equity [200] indicate that statistically speaking minorities are often treated differently than others. The authors note that this supports previous research. A study in 2013 [201] found that sentences of black men were around 20% longer than those given to white men for the same crimes, and another study was done in 2017 [202] that found it was still 20%. The U.S. (and many other countries) have very fair laws on the books, yet access to high-priced lawyers often impacts outcomes.
Please note that this is in no way an indictment of individual law enforcement or legal officials, or on their professions in general. But it does indicate that social rights and opportunities are not equal across racial and socioeconomic divisions.
Of course, this is a problem in many parts of the world, some examples more blatant than others. The Economist Magazine [205] points out that women in Saudi Arabia were only allowed to become lawyers in 2012, and only in December of 2015 were they allowed to run for local office. Despite these recent rights being granted, it is still frowned upon for women to drive. They point out that banks have separate entrances for men and women, and that women are barred from certain public locations. In Russia, peaceful protesters are often intimidated [206]and/or arrested [207]. The Chinese government is known to discriminate against ethnic minorities, imprison political dissidents, and detain and harass other activists [208]. And minorities are disproportionately affected by poverty throughout the world.
This is of course not meant to be a comprehensive list, but hopefully, it provides a "feel" for what social justice and injustice entail.
Environmental justice is very closely related to social justice. It can be thought of as "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies" (source: U.S. Department of Energy [209]). Things like clean air, a safe water supply, and natural areas to enjoy are not available to all. In short, environmental benefits ("goods") and burdens ("bads") are unevenly distributed. And like almost all inequality-related issues, it is the least powerful among us that are disproportionately burdened. In the U.S. the most often happens to communities of color and low income members of society in general. The short video below does a great job of illustrating this phenomenon.
Environmental Justice (4:32 minutes)
You may have caught the narrator's definition of environmental justice:
A fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens across all groups.
This sums it up quite well, though it does leave the door open for some wiggle room in what it specifically means. Take another look at the definition. Do you see anything that might be open to interpretation? How about the word "fair"? This is most definitely open to interpretation, but perhaps that is done on purpose. Similar to the economic aspect of social justice, it is not reasonable to think that everyone will have the equal access to all environmental goods and equal exposure to all environmental bads. But what we can strive for is to try to provide equal opportunities to access for everyone. The goal should be to make sure that everyone has an equal share of the environmental benefits and burdens in society. Many in the Environmental Justice movement believe that we should try to eliminate all environmental burdens, but at least they should not be dispropotionately forced upon disempowered communities
The video below, China - World's dumping ground for electronic waste (4:02 minutes) illustrates one concept related to environmental justice.
As indicated in the video, electronic waste (e-waste) contains toxic chemicals such as mercury, but can also contain dangerous chemicals such as lead and chromium, as well as fire retardants and other carcinogens. So what makes e-waste an environmental justice issue? It is not made explicit in the video, but as pointed out by the National Institutes for Health in a 2015 study: [213] "Communities with primitive, informal recycling operations tend to be populated by poor people with scarce job possibilities who are desperate to feed themselves and their families, and this primary concern overrides that for personal health and safety" (emphasis added). And this is not just a problem for China! The same authors indicate that this is also a major problem in India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Ghana, and Nigeria. Think of it this way: Can you imagine a wealthy suburb allowing toxic chemicals to be released in open fields, and next to food growing operations?
Social and environmental justice issues are present all over the world, including in the U.S. It appears that some progress has been made, but that there is still some work to be done. Circling back to the beginning of this section, can you think of any reasons why social justice is a controversial issue? Recall that I indicated that the application of social justice is the main problem. Take a minute to review the injustices described, and think about how they could be remedied. It is important to point out that by their very nature, fixing social justice issues requires altering the power structure of a given area or society. When women and black Americans were given the right and opportunity to vote, it reduced the power of white males. If lobbying activity is restricted, the companies they work for would have less influence. If women are granted equal rights in Saudi Arabia, men have less influence. Additionally, most solutions require new government regulations. All of the solutions in the examples above require(d) new laws/regulations to be passed. The most likely solution to e-waste, for example, is a ban on the export of e-waste or the required (by law) responsible recycling of e-waste. And the list goes on.
There are other reasons that social and environmental justice solutions can be controversial, but these two lie at the core of the opposition.
Further complicating matters is that the root cause of many of these problems cannot easily be fixed, even with the best-intended policies. For example, urban and rural poverty - both in the U.S. and abroad - is a complex, deep-seated problem that does not have an easy solution. There is no "magic bullet" to fix them. It's difficult to blame businesses for wanting to locate in wealthier areas where people have more money to spend. And it's hard to blame people desperate for income for engaging in dangerous work like e-waste recycling. And what would happen if the e-waste was banned? What would the people who rely on those jobs do?
Finally, it is very important to note that providing equal opportunity sometimes requires what some would consider "unequal" treatment. For example, many social and environmental justice organizations provide more resources to low-income individuals than those with higher incomes. This can seem unfair to those not eligible for benefits. ("Why won't the government subsidize my housing and childcare?" "Why do I pay more taxes, just because I've made more money through my hard work?") This is a complicated issue, and I don't claim to have THE answer. I can understand why people feel that way, in particular, becaue of the (oversimplified and generally incorrect) political and social narratives they may be fed (e.g. people are poor because they don't work hard enough). But, the goal of those concerned with social/environmental justice is to provide equal opportunity for all people, and there is wide recognition that many people are born at a disadvantage through no fault of their own. In general, social justice advocates err on the side of providing extra assistance and/or helping empower all who might need help, regardless of how they got into their circumstances. We live in a VERY unequal world, and those concerned with social justice want to change that.
Charles L. Robbins said in his TEDx talk [214] that "social justice is a place where everybody's free to achieve everything that they are capable of doing...where there's an even playing field for everybody." I think it's difficult to argue against this concept, even if the application is fraught with difficulty. There are a lot of difficult questions to answer when social and environmental justice solutions are posed. But striving to achieve this justice is an important aspect of sustainability. And please keep in mind that we have barely scratched the surface regarding these issues. I recommend exploring them further, as they are prominent topics in sustainability.
Which of the 3 E's does social and environmental justice most strongly address and why?
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
We're on a roll [215], so let's continue with the "budget" theme. In Lesson 1, you learned that energy sources contain a certain amount of energy. In Lesson 1, you also learned that there are 3412 Btu in a kilowatt hour and ~125,000 Btu in a gallon of gasoline. But that only tells part of the story. Almost all energy sources require energy inputs in order to get them to the end user. Let's take that gallon of gas as an example. How was energy used to get that gallon of gas to you and your car? Think about where it came from and how it got there, and what happened in between, then read on.
Gas is a product of petroleum (oil). Most oil comes from the rocks in the ground (tar sands [216] notwithstanding), and this oil is accessed by drilling. Drilling requires energy, as does transporting the oil to a refinery, refining the oil to make gas, and transporting the gas to the gas station. Every step in this process requires energy. The important thing to consider is that if you can determine the amount of energy required to get that gallon of gas to you, and subtract that from the energy you get from the gas, you will have net energy.
It is important to note that it does not matter which form energy is used in this process (electricity, natural gas, oil, etc.), only how much is used. (Remember that we can calculate total energy used by converting to common units!) This "invisible" energy used prior to the end use is usually referred to as embodied energy.
Embodied energy is used for most energy sources, even renewables. For example, wind turbines and solar panels must be manufactured, their components mined or otherwise processed, then they must be installed using energy, etc. Note that embodied energy can actually be stated for just about anything - remember from Lesson 1 that most food required energy to be planted, grown, shipped, and/or processed. All of this represents embodied energy.
Net energy can be calculated as follows:
Net energy is a good start, but it can get confusing if you analyze different quantities of energy. This is because the net energy depends significantly on the end use energy amount, but that is not the whole story. Let's look at an example. On average you get about 20 times more energy out of gasoline (end use) than was put in (embodied). In other words, the embodied energy in a gallon of gas is about one-twentieth (1/20) of the end use energy (source: Hall, Lambert, and Balogh, 2014 [217]). The net energy for 1 gallon of gas would be (Math alert!):
But what if you get 10 gallons of gas?
As you can see, net energy is highly dependent upon the end use energy amount being considered. There is a huge difference between 118,750 Btu and 1,187,500 Btu, but those numbers are actually telling the same story.
You can avoid this confusion by calculating the energy return on energy invested, or EROI. EROI is defined by the Encyclopedia of Earth thusly:
Energy return on investment (EROI) is the ratio of the energy delivered by a process to the energy used directly and indirectly in that process.
Credit: Encyclopedia of Earth [218]
Here is the equation. (Note that "Quantity of energy supplied" is the same as end-use energy and "Quantity of energy used in supply process " is the same as embodied energy.):
Credit: Encyclopedia of Earth [218], CC BY-SA 2.5
Because it is a ratio, the end use amount does not matter, because it all balances out in the end. Let's look at the gasoline example from above using this equation:
No matter how much gasoline you analyze, you will come up with the same EROI if the assumptions are the same. As noted above, EROI is relevant to almost every energy source. The higher the EROI, the more energy you get out for every energy unit you put in. Calculating EROI often requires using a lot of assumptions, but since this is an important issue, many attempts have been made to calculate it. The article below indicates some of the complexities and uncertainty in calculating EROI, but the authors are able to arrive at general conclusions since they analyzed a number of peer-reviewed research papers on the topic.
Link to article: EROI for different fuels and the implications for society. Hall, C.A.S, Lambert, J.G., and Balogh, S.B. Energy Policy, 64, pp. 141-152 [219].
If you read the article, you should clearly see that not all barrels of oil are created equally. The figures below (from the article) indicate the average EROIs of different energy sources. Note that oil and natural gas are lumped together, because they are often extracted together. The authors are careful to point out that these values should not be taken at "face value," but that they are a good indication of the relative EROIs of different sources.
Why is EROI important? One of the main reasons is that EROI is more indicative of the true net energy benefit of various fuels than the end use. It takes about the energy from 1 barrel of oil to extract 20 actual barrels of "traditional" oil (it has an EROI of about 20:1), but the same amount of energy, when used to extract tar sands oil, results in only about 4 actual barrels. In other words, EROI indicates that you get about 5 times the amount of energy from traditional oil than from tar sand oil given the same amount of input.
A very interesting finding in the Hall, Lambert, and Balogh article is that oil discovery in the U.S. has decreased from 1000:1 in 1919 to only 5:1 in the 2010s, meaning we get 100 times less energy now than 90 years ago! (Essentially, we have extracted most of the "easy to get" oil, and do things like deep sea drilling now.) Getting ethanol from corn (recall from Lesson 1 that this is the U.S.'s primary source of biofuel) can require almost as much energy in as energy you get out, depending on how it is grown and processed.
EROI can help policymakers and others decide which energy source is a more efficient use of energy resources. In the context of this course, it is a particularly important consideration for non-renewable resources, because it indicates the net energy benefit of the sources.
One extremely important final thing to note: EROI only describes energy use. It says nothing about the other important impacts and factors. For example:
In short, EROI is only one consideration to be made.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Another week of content in the books! Before you relax, make sure you complete the two required assignments listed at the beginning of this lesson. This week, we went over some of the fundamental considerations that underlie sustainability. You should be able to do the following after completing the Lesson 2 activities:
We went over a lot of fairly heavy concepts this week. Hopefully, this list will help spark some memories of the content, both now and as we move forward:
You have finished Lesson 2. Check the list of requirements on the first page of this lesson and the syllabus to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed before the due date. Once you've ensured that you've completed everything, you can begin reviewing Lesson 3 (or take a break!).
Complete all activities in Lesson 2. The quiz may include a variety of question types, such as multiple choice, multiple select, ordering, matching, true/false and "essay" (in some cases these require independent research and may be quantitative). Be sure to read each question carefully.
Unless specifically instructed otherwise, the answers to all questions come from the material presented in the course lesson. Do NOT go "Googling around" to find an answer. To complete the Activity successfully, you will need to read the lesson, and all required readings, fully and carefully.
Each week, a few questions may involve research beyond the material presented in the course lesson. This "research" requirement will be made clear in the question instructions. Be sure to allow yourself time for this! You will be graded on the correctness and quality of your answers. Make your answers as orderly and clear as possible. Help me understand what you are thinking and include data where relevant.
For any other assignments (e.g., journal or discussion board), it will be helpful to look at the rubric before answering. You will see a button that allows you to view it below the assignment.
These activities are to be done individually and are to represent YOUR OWN WORK. (See Academic Integrity and Research Ethics [221] for a full description of the College's policy related to Academic Integrity and penalties for violation.)
The activities are not timed but do close at 11:59 pm EST on the due date as shown on the Course Calendar.
If you have questions about the assignment, please post them to the "HAVE A QUESTION?" Discussion Forum. I am happy to provide clarification and guidance to help you understand the material and questions. Of course, it is best to ask early.
The material covered in this lesson applies a lot of the concepts introduced in Lessons 1 and 2 to specific issues related to sustainability. We could spend a whole semester on just this content, so the focus has been reduced to three areas of consideration: climate change, freshwater availability, and biodiversity. In addition, the beginning of the lesson provides some insight into critical analysis, and how to investigate the credibility of sources of information, a key concern in critical analysis.
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
Please note that the quiz can only be taken once. You have unlimited time to complete it prior to the deadline, and can save your progress and pick up where you left off at a later time. See the Assignments and Grading section of the syllabus [1] for tips on how to do this. Once you submit the quiz, you cannot change answers. All saved answers will automatically be submitted at the deadline if you have not submitted them.
Requirement | Submission Location |
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Lesson 3 Quiz | Canvas - Modules tab > Lesson 3 |
Continue posting to the Yellowdig discussion board. | Canvas - Modules tab > Lesson 3 |
(Optional) Lesson 3 Extra credit quiz | Canvas - Modules tab > Lesson 3 |
If you have any general course questions, please post them to our HAVE A QUESTION? discussion forum located under the Discussions tab. I will check that discussion forum regularly to respond as appropriate. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses and comments if you are able to help out a classmate. If you have a question but would like to remain anonymous to the other students, email me.
If you have something related to the material that you'd like to share, feel free to post to the Coffee Shop forum, also under the Discussions tab.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
How many times have you been asked to "think critically" about an issue? Have you ever stopped to think what that really means? I think most of us innately understand what it entails, but it is difficult to put into words. I must admit that I am guilty of asking that of students without clearly outlining what I expect, but that ends today for this course! Please take a minute or two to fill out the poll below before continuing.
What better source to look to for critical thinking advice than the Foundation for Critical Thinking? This is hands-down the best summary of critical thinking that I have seen. You are welcome to read the following, but I summarize the key points below.
There is a lot to unpack here. Let's take a look at it again, with key elements indicated in bold. It is all important, really, but a few things stand out. I have numbered the paragraphs to assist in the analysis below.
Critical Thinking as Defined by the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, 1987A statement by Michael Scriven & Richard Paul, presented at the 8th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, Summer 1987.
(1) Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.
(2) It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue; assumptions; concepts; empirical grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions; implications and consequences; objections from alternative viewpoints; and frame of reference. Critical thinking — in being responsive to variable subject matter, issues, and purposes — is incorporated in a family of interwoven modes of thinking, among them: scientific thinking, mathematical thinking, historical thinking, anthropological thinking, economic thinking, moral thinking, and philosophical thinking.
(3) Critical thinking can be seen as having two components: 1) a set of information and belief generating and processing skills, and 2) the habit, based on intellectual commitment, of using those skills to guide behavior. It is thus to be contrasted with: 1) the mere acquisition and retention of information alone, because it involves a particular way in which information is sought and treated; 2) the mere possession of a set of skills, because it involves the continual use of them; and 3) the mere use of those skills ("as an exercise") without acceptance of their results.
(4) Critical thinking varies according to the motivation underlying it. When grounded in selfish motives, it is often manifested in the skillful manipulation of ideas in service of one’s own, or one's groups’, vested interest. As such it is typically intellectually flawed, however pragmatically successful it might be. When grounded in fair-mindedness and intellectual integrity, it is typically of a higher order intellectually, though subject to the charge of "idealism" by those habituated to its selfish use.
(5) Critical thinking of any kind is never universal in any individual; everyone is subject to episodes of undisciplined or irrational thought. Its quality is therefore typically a matter of degree and dependent on, among other things, the quality and depth of experience in a given domain of thinking or with respect to a particular class of questions. No one is a critical thinker through-and-through, but only to such-and-such a degree, with such-and-such insights and blind spots, subject to such-and-such tendencies towards self-delusion. For this reason, the development of critical thinking skills and dispositions is a life-long endeavor.
Source: The Foundation for Critical Thinking [147]
Let's look at these paragraphs one at a time:
They also provide a good approach to critical thinking:
A well cultivated critical thinker:
- raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely;
- gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively;
- comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards;
- thinks open mindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and
- communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems.
Source: The Foundation for Critical Thinking [147]
The following is a brief explanation of each aspect:
This is all very good advice when reading through the material in this course. I am asking you to apply these principles as much as possible. Keep an open mind, and try to analyze information using evidence, logic, reason, and with an eye on alternative viewpoints. Try to recognize the limitations of your knowledge, and attempt to be self-critical with regards to biases and limited worldviews that you have. Embrace discussion with others, and try to approach discussions with the intent of learning from each other to come to a reasonable conclusion, not to convince the other person that you are correct. This is particularly important because some of the material that follows is considered controversial in some circles, largely because it does not fit with certain worldviews and social/political modes of thinking. Please do your best to look at things as objectively as possible.
To be clear, I do not claim to know all of the answers and recognize that I have limitations in knowledge. The ideas presented in this course are based on reliable evidence, but many of the issues are not clear-cut and are thus open to substantive discussion. As noted in the Orientation, respectful dialogue is encouraged, and often the best way to learn is to discuss things with someone that does not agree with you. I hope that we can have good, substantive discussions throughout this course.
One last thing and this probably goes without saying but I'll say it anyway: critical thinking should be "systematically cultivated," as stated in the reading, and applied constantly. It is useful for every human endeavor, and certainly, can and should be applied beyond this course.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
As I'm sure you know, there is no shortage of information sources available to us, especially those of us with an Internet connection. We live in a unique moment in human history [226] - never before has it been so easy for so many to access so much information so quickly. But having so much available can make it difficult to determine whether or not information sources can be trusted. Engaging in critical thinking requires (among other things) knowing credible sources of information. This is an imperfect science, but there are many ways to evaluate sources. Harvard University provides a good, straightforward guide to doing this.
I will ask you to analyze the reliability of information sources throughout the semester, so please take the time to read this thoroughly. Here are some general and additional tips:
Overall, understanding the reliability of sources gets easier with time. The keys are a) to keep reading and paying attention to other information sources, b) to constantly investigate the reliability of sources, and most importantly c) learn as much as you can! The more you do this, the more you will develop a "bias detector," so to speak.
This can be complicated, so here are a few scenarios that might help you as you evaluate sources throughout the course. This is not comprehensive, but provides some common scenarios you may encounter.
Information source details | Evaluation |
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The information is pulled directly from a peer-reviewed journal. |
It's a good idea to google the journal to see if it's reputable or not, and you should google the author(s) as well. This is the best source of information you can use. |
The information is NOT an opinion and is from a known reputable source (e.g., NPR, New York Times, Wall Street Journal). | Note that the source is reliable (make sure you know this for a fact), but suggested to look to verify the information elsewhere to be certain. |
An article provides a summary of peer-reviewed research, but you are not familiar with the source and/or author. |
|
An article seems reliable, but you are not familiar with the source and/or author. |
Follow all of the steps listed in the box above. |
The website is a non-profit (.org). | As stated above, this is basically meaningless! There are many objective non-profits, but many biased ones. Perform the research indicated above. |
The information comes from an academic institution. |
|
You click on the "about" link on the organization's website, and they state that: "<name of organization> provides research-based, unbiased information about..." |
|
The information seems reliable, but is on a site that has a known bias (e.g. Fox News or MSNBC) or is from an advocacy organization or company that might seek to promote their own interest. |
|
The information is from a government website. |
|
The information is on Wikipedia. | NEVER cite Wikipedia! It is absolutely fine to use it as an initial source, but ALWAYS use another, reputable source to verify the information. Wikipedia does a good job of citing their sources, so click on the citation/footnote link to find the original source, and proceed from there. I love looking up things on Wikipedia as much as the next person, but I never assume that it is accurate unless I can verify it elsewhere. |
Please know that you are not expected to memorize all of this! I will try to be as clear as possible when I ask you how to analyze a source. But moving forward you should always at least investigate the following when analyzing a specific information source:
For any other article, evaluate the following:
Author's credentials (e.g. Do they appear to be an authority on the subject? Is their expertise relevant?)
Objectivity of the way the information is presented in the article (e.g. is it matter-of-fact/objective or does it use sensational/emotional language?)
Objectivity of the site the information is on (Investigate other articles on the website to see if their appears to be an agenda.) For example, is the article on Fox News? New York Times? Etc. Does that site have an agenda?
Reliability of original source material (Does the author use reliable sources? Can you find other reliable sources that have the same information? Do they cite all sources?)
Keep in mind that this is as much an art as a science! Use your best judgment based on the factors above to evaluate the source. Remember that a source can be totally reliable, totally unreliable, or all points between.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
Before diving into specific sustainability issues, we'll get an overview of some of the key "planetary boundaries," as outlined by Carl Folke In Chapter 2 ofIs Sustainability Still Possible? As you'll see, we'll go over some of these in more detail in this lesson. One important term that Folke does not define, but is important to understand, is ecosystem services. The National Wildlife Federation [230] defines an ecosystem service as:
"any positive benefit that wildlife or ecosystems provide to people."
Examples include plants that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, fisheries that naturally replenish themselves and feed humans, wetlands that filter toxins and mitigate storm impacts, soil organisms that foster plant growth, and bees that pollinate food crops and other plants. We could cite innumerable examples, but without ecosystem services, life on earth would not be possible. Further, much of what we depend on for survival is offered for free by nature. Most ecosystem services are performed by the biosphere, which "includes all living organisms on earth, together with the dead organic matter produced by them." (Credit: Encyclopedia of Earth [231]).
The following is a summary of some key points from the readings:
The time that we find ourselves in now is what he terms the "Anthropocene," which he defines as "the age in which human actions are a powerful planetary force shaping the biosphere."
So where does the term Anthropocene come from? You may remember the concept of the geologic time scale [238] from Geology or Environmental Science class, which is how the earth's history is separated into different time periods called eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages. (Refer to this chart from the Geological Society of America [239] for details.)
The Holocene epoch began around 10,000 years ago, and saw the beginning of agriculture and thus permanent human settlements. The term "Anthropocene" is a deliberate reference to the fact that humans have become such a dominant force in the world that many scientists consider it to be a new geologic epoch. "Anthro" refers to "humans" (remember anthropocentric from an earlier lesson?), which is why it is referred to as the Anthropocene.
By now you should have a sense that humans are using resources at an unsustainable rate. As we have seen previously, it is important to look at specific metrics when possible. The International Geosphere-Bioshpere Programme (IGBP) did just that when they looked at what they consider key socio-economic and earth system trends. What they found is frequently referred to as the Great Acceleration. (See the full original report here [240], if you are interested.)
Here is how they described what they found (emphasis added in bold): "The second half of the 20th Century is unique in the history of human existence. Many human activities reached take-off points sometime in the 20th Century and sharply accelerated towards the end of the century...The last 60 years have without doubt seen the most profound transformation of the human relationship with the natural world in the history of humankind." (Source: International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme [241])
The charts below provide a stark illustration of the Great Acceleration. Every indicator - world population, real GDP, foreign direct investment, urban population, primary energy use, fertilizer consumption, large dams, water use, paper production, transportation, telecommunications, international tourism, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, stratospheric ozone, surface temperature, ocean acidification, marine fish capture, shrimp aquaculture, coastal nitrogen, tropical forest loss, domesticated land, and terrestrial biosphere degradation - took a sharp upward (upward is bad) turn sometime around the mid-20th century. Because of this, some scientists point to the mid-20th century as the beginning of the Anthropocene.
For more detailed information, see IGBP [241]. If you have trouble seeing the image, click on itfor a resizable version. You can also see each one up close in the slideshow below the image.
How important are humans to the Anthropocene? Do they play a large role?
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
We'll start with climate change for two reasons. First, of all of the specific issues in this lesson, this is the one that potentially has the most devastating impact because of the scale of the problem. If the climate continues to change, the impacts will likely be catastrophic and on a global scale. Second, climate change will likely impact all of the other sectors of sustainability and society, including all of those listed in this section. It is absolutely essential to understand climate change if you want to address sustainability. The following is a short list of facts that indicate why we should be concerned about the human influence on the climate.
First, a few important terms:
The following article from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) explains a lot of the basics regarding the terms listed above.
As I hope you know, climate change is a massive, complex topic. This short lesson is meant to provide an overview of some key concepts. We could spend all semester - and dozens of semesters afterward - focusing on the ins and outs of climate change and still have more to analyze. Hopefully, this will provide a good introduction to those of you who are not well-versed and some helpful reminders and deeper information for others.
There are many sources of information about different aspects of problems, solutions, myths, etc. related to climate change, and I encourage you to explore them. A few of my favorites are as follows. Feel free to share your own sources in the Coffee Shop!
The greenhouse effect is a universally accepted natural phenomenon, and carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the primary greenhouse gases. Without it, life on earth would not be possible. The video below from Stile Education provides a good succinct explanation of the basic physics behind the greenhouse effect.
Watch "What is the greenhouse effect and how does it work?" by Stile Education (3:14 minutes)
In a nutshell:
The following gases contribute to the greenhouse effect: water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). There are a lot of details about each, but the main focus of anthropocentric climate change are carbon dioxide and methane, because they play the largest role in the climate impact that most scientists believe humans are having.
Note that methane is considered approximately 30 times as powerful [257] as carbon dioxide in terms of causing increased warming (over a 100-year period). Methane is the primary component of natural gas and is what gives natural gas its energy. If natural gas is burned, it releases about half as much CO2 as if you burn an equivalent amount of coal. But if natural gas leaks or is otherwise emitted, it is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Despite this, carbon dioxide reduction is the main focus because it is far and away the biggest contributor to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions impact.
It was mentioned in the video above that the sun emits most of its radiation in the visible spectrum. This is due entirely to its surface temperature. Every object with any temperature above absolute zero emits electromagnetic radiation in a range of wavelengths. (Wavelengths are the distance between the peaks of the electromagnetic waves.) The hotter the temperature, the shorter the wavelengths emitted. See the image below for an illustration of wavelengths. Note that the magnitude of the wavelengths is in meters, e.g. the distance between peaks of visible light is approximately 0.5 x 10-6 m, or 500 nanometers. (Visible light actually ranges from around 380 nm for violet to around 700 nm for red, according to NASA [258].)
The sun's surface temperature averages between around 5,500 to 6,000 degrees C, which is pretty darn hot. Because it's so hot, the peak radiation is shortwave. More specifically, it peaks in the visible spectrum. The idealized amount of each type of radiation that is emitted by an object can be described using a blackbody radiation curve. Humboldt State University provided a good description [260] of a blackbody radiation curve, now provided on answersmore.com: "The intensity and distribution (and peak) of the radiation depends only on its temperature. The graphical representation of this is commonly known as a Blackbody Radiation Curve. For example, our Sun has an approximate temperature of 5800K and emits peak radiation in the visible portion of the spectrum. The Earth on the other hand is significantly cooler and emits a fraction of the energy and peaks in much longer wavelengths in what's known as the thermal infrared portion of the spectrum."
The image below provides an illustration of the blackbody radiation curve of the sun. Note the peak in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, but that the sun emits other wavelengths as well. To the left of the visible spectrum (shorter wavelength) is ultraviolet radiation, much of which is absorbed by ozone in the stratosphere. To the right of the visible spectrum on the chart is longwave radiation, much of which is absorbed by greenhouse gases.
There are a few fundamental things to know in regards to the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.
We have been directly measuring the atmospheric concentration of CO2 since 1958 in the Mauna Loa Observatory [263] in Hawaii and have seen it increase steadily since then (see Figure 3.5 below). This is known as the Keeling curve, and is named after Andrew Keeling, who initiated the measurements.
We also know with a very high level of certainty the concentration of the ancient atmosphere through time as well through proxy measures such as ice core samples from ancient ice (click here for some links to explanations of how this is done [265]- click on CO2 Past at the top of the page). The current levels of CO2 are almost certainly unprecedented in the past 800,000 years. The chart below depicts the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere for the past 400,000 years.
It is an established fact that the burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide and that the concentration of carbon dioxide has been increasing rapidly since around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s. The Industrial Revolution is characterized by the increased use of fossil fuels - first coal, then oil, then natural gas. All of these non-renewable energy sources release CO2 when burned, and aside from minor natural occurrences like volcanic eruptions, are what has primarily caused the increased carbon dioxide concentration over the past 200+ years.
In short, energy is the primary culprit in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, according to the International Energy Agency, two-thirds of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are due to energy use and production (source: IEA, "Energy and Climate Change [267]," World Energy Outlook 2015). This boils down to the fact that:
This causes an imbalance, and thus the concentration increases. This is one of the fundamental things to understand about sustainability that has been addressed a few times in this course: As noted last lesson, and as Herman Daly stated in regards to the steady state economy, we simply cannot emit wastes faster than they can be naturally reabsorbed.
You may hear something like the following as a reason to be skeptical of anthropogenic climate change: "The earth naturally emits WAY more CO2 than humans do. The emissions are so relatively small that they cannot have an impact on CO2 concentrations, never mind climate change."
The earth does, in fact, emit significantly more CO2 than humans do! The image below is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) most recent report, called the Fifth Assessment Report or simply AR5. This is an illustration of the global carbon cycle. Carbon, like most other elements, is constantly moving around the earth, e.g. being emitted and absorbed by oceans, being taken up by plants, being released by decaying plants, being released by volcanoes, etc. The carbon cycle illustrates this process. (Don't worry about analyzing this image if you don't want to - it's pretty dense, and you do not need to know any of the numbers.)
This is a pretty busy image, so I'll summarize it for you:
Hmm, okay, so there are way more natural than anthropogenic emissions. So why care so much about the measly 9 billion anthropogenic ton? As it turns out, if there were no anthropogenic emissions, the carbon cycle would likely even out, or perhaps even cause a reduction in carbon in the atmosphere. There are many natural processes that absorb carbon, mostly oceans, and vegetation. According to the IPCC, the total increase in carbon in the atmosphere is only about 4 Gt per year (including anthropogenic emissions). If you do a little math it becomes apparent: if those 9 Gt of emissions caused by humans were not there, then there would likely be no increase in overall concentration. Even though the relative contribution is small, anthropogenic emissions throw the global carbon cycle out of whack.
One good analogy of this process is weight gain. Let's say you average around 2,000 calories of food intake each day, and on average you burn off the same amount each day. If this continues over time, you will not gain weight. But if you add one extra 100 calorie snack each day, it will throw this balance out of whack. Even though you are only increasing your calorie intake by a measly 5%, over time this will cause weight gain. Well, it appears that the earth has put on some serious carbon weight in the past ~200 years, and it is almost entirely due to the extra human emissions!
Humans have been taking direct temperature measurements since about 1880. There has been an upward trend in global temperature since around 1900, and the increase has become very sharp since about 1980.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (via NASA [272]):
"Nineteen of the warmest years have occurred since 2000, with the exception of 1998. The year 2020 tied with 2016 for the warmest year on record since record-keeping began in 1880"
Based on this evidence (which has been corroborated by other scientific sources) and Figure 3.8 above, it is clear that the global temperature has been increasing since humans have been measuring it on a global scale, and it appears that the warming is accelerating.
One note of caution: The earth operates in cycles of thousands and millions of years, so less than 150 years of warming is not irrefutable evidence that the climate will continue to warm at this rate. However, the correlation that is observed between increased CO2 levels and temperature, along with what we know about GHGs, indicates that we are on a very unsustainable path.
There is wide agreement that the Earth's average global temperature has increased about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of the 20th century. I am the first to admit that this does not seem like a big deal, but it takes a LOT lof extra heat to increase global temperatures by that much and a few degrees can make a huge difference in the climate system. As NASA states:
Two degrees may sound like a small amount, but it's an unusual event in our planet's recent history. Earth's climate record, preserved in tree rings, ice cores, and coral reefs, shows that the global average temperature is stable over long periods of time. Furthermore, small changes in temperature correspond to enormous changes in the environment.
For example, at the end of the last ice age, when the Northeast United States was covered by more than 3,000 feet of ice, average temperatures were only 5 to 9 degrees cooler than today.
There is wide consensus that if the climate continues to change and CO2 levels continue to rise, the results will not be good (okay, "not good" is a pretty big understatement). As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated in their 2013 report: "Taken as a whole, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time" (source: IPCC, quoted by NASA [273]). This is a stuffy way of saying that "things will probably be really bad and continue to get worse."
The link below outlines some of the possible impacts, some of which have already begun to occur. Note that I am not saying that all of these things will happen, even if climate change continues, but it is meant as a survey of some of the most commonly cited negative impacts of climate change. Also note that some of the likely consequences may be positive in some areas, including extended growing seasons in cool climate zones and some increased growth of plants due to extra carbon being available, but the overall impact will very likely be overwhelmingly negative.
It is also very important to note that the most vulnerable to these impacts will be low-income and otherwise marginalized people all over the world. As the IPCC states in their 2014 assessment:
"(Climate change) risks are unevenly distributed and are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development" (IPCC, Climate Change 2014 Syntheses Report [275], p. 13).
Translation: the people with little power and/or resources will be disproportionately affected by climate change, regardless of whether they live in a low- or high-income country. This is thus an important social and environmental justice issue!
I wish that I did not have to note this, but it is such a frequent occurrence that I would be remiss if I did not. Okay, here goes: Weather and climate are two different things. Weather refers to short-term variations in ambient atmospheric conditions, mostly day-to-day. It can be hot and sunny one day, and cold and rainy the next. This is weather. Climate refers to long-term trends in atmospheric conditions, which exhibit seasonal trends over the course of decades. (The National Centers for Environmental Information [NEI] from NOAA has some information here [276], if you are interested.) As NEI puts it: "Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get." In other words, you can expect a certain type of condition based on the season, but the weather can change daily. The tweet below from Donald Trump in January of 2019 is typical of the conflating (on purpose or otherwise) of weather and climate.
In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Warming? Please come back fast, we need you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2019 [277]
There are in fact at least two important things wrong about this statement.
First of all, it is important to recognize that the climate is a complex system that cannot as of yet be completely modeled. There are gaps in our knowledge, so we do not know with 100% certainty the extent to which our emissions are impacting the climate. But, the evidence has become increasingly clear and compelling.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the most highly regarded climate change research body in the world, as it is made up of over 1,000 of the top climate scientists in the world. Their conclusion in their most recent report [281] in the summer of 2021:
It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred...Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe
In addition, multiple reports in peer-reviewed journals have found that at least 97% of scientists actively publishing in the climate field agree that the climate change observed in the past century is likely due to human influence, i.e., it is anthropogenic. See these links to some studies [282]. In 2015, 24 of Britain's top "Learned Societies" - groups of scientific experts, basically - wrote a letter [283] urging that we need to establish a "zero-carbon world" early in the second half of the 21st century. In the past 15 years, 18 U.S. scientific associations [282] have confirmed that climate change is likely being caused by humans. Big players in the private sector are concerned as well. For example, CEOs from 43 companies in various sectors (with over $1.2 trillion of revenue in 2014) signed an open letter [284] urging action in April of 2015. Even Exxon Mobil states as their official position [285] on climate change (as of the summer of 2018) that:
"We believe that climate change risks warrant action and it’s going to take all of us — business, governments and consumers — to make meaningful progress."
Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil and gas company, is not known to be a friend of carbon reduction advocates. In fact, a study published in August of 2017 [286] found that they systematically misled the public for nearly 40 years about the dangers of climate change, even though they acknowledged the risks internally. Yet even they assert that emissions should be reduced.
(Note: You are welcome to browse and play with the charts below, but please at least read this short explanation.)
You might also hear that China is the world leader in emissions. This is true, and has been since 2006/2007 (see the first chart below). There are at least three important considerations to make with regards to assigning blame for global emissions, though:
Let's consider these facts together:
These three facts alone indicate that there is likely a problem. But, on top of this, you add that:
We know that humans are impacting the climate. Do we know the exact extent to which we are? The short answer is "no." The longer answer is that we are almost certain that humans are the primary cause of the warming that has occurred and that it is worth taking the precaution to prevent the worst of climate change just in case. Yes, it is possible that so many climate experts are wrong about the severity of the human impact on the climate - it is a rare occurrence that so many experts are wrong, but there is a possibility, however miniscule. And yes, there will be costs associated with making the change to a low-carbon society. But why do people buy life insurance? What about fire insurance? As silly as it sounds, what about buying an extended warranty on a new piece of electronics, or extra insurance for a rental car? The point is that even though the likelihood of using those insurances is minimal, people are willing to pay the cost in order to avoid catastrophe. The same could be said of climate change. Taking steps to avoid the worst-case scenario, or perhaps something near the worst-case scenario, is known as the precautionary principle. This may cost money or other resources in the short term, but is seen as worth it because of the situation it may prevent.
One quick addendum to this: If steps are successfully taken to reduce climate emissions to a sustainable level, it is very likely that there will also be cleaner air, less environmental damage, more energy security (not being dependent on another country for energy), and probably more active/healthy citizens. Something to think about.
Climate change is a very complicated, multifaceted, and unique problem that overlaps a multitude of sectors and has no capital "S" Solution. This, among other things, makes it a so-called "wicked problem." Stony Brook University [289] provides an excellent synopsis of wicked problems. (Feel free to read more about them here [289].)
- They do not have a definitive formulation.
- They do not have a 'stopping rule.' In other words, these problems lack an inherent logic that signals when they are solved.
- Their solutions are not true or false, only good or bad.
- There is no way to test the solution to a wicked problem.
- They cannot be studied through trial and error.
- Their solutions are irreversible so, as Rittel and Webber put it, 'every trial counts.'
- There is no end to the number of solutions or approaches to a wicked problem.
- All wicked problems are essentially unique.
- Wicked problems can always be described as the symptom of other problems.
- The way a wicked problem is described determines its possible solutions.
- Planners, that is those who present solutions to these problems, have no right to be wrong. Unlike mathematicians, 'planners are liable for the consequences of the solutions they generate; the effects can matter a great deal to the people who are touched by those actions.'
If you are interested in reading more about this topic, here are some suggested readings.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
It is a widely known fact that people can survive much longer without food than without water. Under optimal conditions, humans can go around a week, maybe a bit more, without water [295], whereas it is possible to go more than a month without eating food [296]. But when water sustainability is being discussed, it is rare that death from lack of drinking water is the concern. A more likely cause of death (or, otherwise, a reduction in quality of life) is lack of clean water, and the water-borne diseases like diarrhea and cholera that result. Lack of access to water will likely be a very important problem in the future, though it also poses a threat right now.
The World Health Organization (WHO) [297] was established by the United Nations (UN) in 1948. Its goal is "to build a better, healthier future for people all over the world" and its "staff work side by side with governments and other partners to ensure the highest attainable level of health for all people" (source: World Health Organization [298]). They perform and fund research, write reports, establish international health recommendations/standards, provide aid throughout the world, and publish a LOT of data. They are a great source for information regarding international health (and sickness/disease).
Key facts
Over 2 billion people live in water-stressed countries, which is expected to be exacerbated in some regions as result of climate change and population growth.
Globally, at least 1.7 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces. Microbial contamination of drinking-water as a result of contamination with faeces poses the greatest risk to drinking-water safety.
Safe and sufficient water facilitates the practice of hygiene, which is a key measure to prevent not only diarrhoeal diseases, but acute respiratory infections and numerous neglected tropical diseases.
Microbiologically contaminated drinking water can transmit diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio and is estimated to cause 505 000 diarrhoeal deaths each year.
In 2022, 73% of the global population (6 billion people) used a safely managed drinking-water service – that is, one located on premises, available when needed, and free from contamination.
Overview
Safe and readily available water is important for public health, whether it is used for drinking, domestic use, food production or recreational purposes. Improved water supply and sanitation, and better management of water resources, can boost countries’ economic growth and can contribute greatly to poverty reduction.
In 2010, the UN General Assembly explicitly recognized the human right to water and sanitation. Everyone has the right to sufficient, continuous, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic use.
Water and health
Contaminated water and poor sanitation are linked to transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, and polio. Absent, inadequate, or inappropriately managed water and sanitation services expose individuals to preventable health risks...
Inadequate management of urban, industrial, and agricultural wastewater means the drinking-water of hundreds of millions of people is dangerously contaminated or chemically polluted...
Some 1 million people are estimated to die each year from diarrhoea as a result of unsafe drinking-water, sanitation and hand hygiene. Yet diarrhoea is largely preventable, and the deaths of 395 000 children aged under 5 years could be avoided each year if these risk factors were addressed. Where water is not readily available, people may decide handwashing is not a priority, thereby adding to the likelihood of diarrhoea and other diseases.
Diarrhoea is the most widely known disease linked to contaminated food and water but there are other hazards. In 2021, over 251.4 million people required preventative treatment for schistosomiasis – an acute and chronic disease caused by parasitic worms contracted through exposure to infested water.
In many parts of the world, insects that live or breed in water carry and transmit diseases such as dengue fever. Some of these insects, known as vectors, breed in clean, rather than dirty water, and household drinking water containers can serve as breeding grounds. The simple intervention of covering water storage containers can reduce vector breeding and may also reduce faecal contamination of water at the household level.
Economic and social effects
When water comes from improved and more accessible sources, people spend less time and effort physically collecting it, meaning they can be productive in other ways. This can also result in greater personal safety and reducing musculoskeletal disorders by reducing the need to make long or risky journeys to collect and carry water. Better water sources also mean less expenditure on health, as people are less likely to fall ill and incur medical costs and are better able to remain economically productive.
With children particularly at risk from water-related diseases, access to improved sources of water can result in better health, and therefore better school attendance, with positive longer-term consequences for their lives.
Challenges
Historical rates of progress would need to double for the world to achieve universal coverage with basic drinking water services by 2030. To achieve universal safely managed services will require a 6-fold increase. Climate change, increasing water scarcity, population growth, demographic changes and urbanization already pose challenges for water supply systems...
The World Economic Forum (WEF) [300] is a non-profit headquartered in Switzerland whose members are a who's who of the global economically elite corporations. The WEF is best-known for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which is frequently attended by world leaders, including the U.S. president. The WEF is often critiqued for not doing enough about income inequality and other issues facing the world's impoverished, but they do provide a lot of information that reflects the perspective of many of the world's economic leaders. This includes their annual Global Risks Report, which ranks what it sees as the top global risks in the next 10 years. Water figured prominently in the 2016 Global Risks Report. (The 2023 report [301] focused more on a variety of environmental problems, including cllimate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, and lumps water into "natural resource crises.")
You are welcome to read the entire press release [302], but here is the content most relevant to this lesson:
An increased likelihood for all risks, from the environmental to society, the economy, geopolitics and technology, looks set to shape the global agenda in the coming year, the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2016 has found.
...The risk with the greatest potential impact in 2016 was found to be a failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation. This is the first time since the report was published in 2006 that an environmental risk has topped the ranking. This year, it was considered to have greater potential damage than weapons of mass destruction (2nd),& water crises (3rd), large-scale involuntary migration (4th) and severe energy price shock (5th).
The number one risk in 2016 in terms of likelihood, meanwhile, is large-scale involuntary migration, followed by extreme weather events (2nd), failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation(3rd), interstate conflict with regional consequences (4th) and major natural catastrophes(5th).
Such a broad risk landscape is unprecedented in the 11 years the report has been measuring global risks. For the first time, four out of five categories – environmental, geopolitical, societal and economic – feature among the top five most impactful risks. The only category not to feature is technological risk, where the highest ranking risk is cyberattack, in 11th position in both likelihood and impact.
The following is some of the more important (and startling) information from the readings above:
While this paints a bleak picture, some progress has been made in the global fight for access to clean water, as evidenced by the fact that the UN's Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on drinking water has been met. The MDG was to "halve the proportion of the world's population without sustainable access to safe water." This goal was met in 2010. However, the article indicates that while the broad goal was met (global percentage), none of the 48 "least developed" countries met the goal.
As usual, there is a deficiency in terms of equity with regards to access to clean water, with "low-income, informal or illegal" populations "usually having less access to improved sources of drinking-water than other residents." The consequences are dire, as around 1 million people are estimated to die each year from diarrhea alone, including nearly 400,000 children under the age of 5. And over a quarter of a billion people had to be treated for schistosomiasis, which is a painful chronic disease also caused by water contamination. The worst part is that this is mostly preventable!
These and other factors combine to make access to water an essential part of quality of life. The United Nations has declared access to water and sanitation a human right and thus should be provided to all people equitably. The UN realizes that access is a fundamental component of the ability to live one's life and further that "clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realization of all human rights" (Source: United Nations [303]).
All of this is reflected in the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Risk Report 2016, which ranked water as the third highest global risk in terms of "impact." (The 2019 report lists it as number 4 in terms of impact.) Note that the WEF did not rank water crisis on a large scale as highly likely relative to other things, including extreme weather, but that if it does occur, it will be very impactful. This speaks to the importance of access to water.
The United Nations declared its Millennium Development Goals in 2000. They focused on 8 themes, each with many practical steps listed as ways to achieve the goals:
Actions were to be taken for a period of 15 years and assessed every year along the way. This period concluded in 2014, and in 2015 the UN published the final report assessing the progress toward the goals. You can view The Millennium Development Goals Report [304]. This is optional reading but will give you a very good feel for a lot of the development activities undertaken by the UN.
These have been replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals [305]. These were adopted by the UN in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [306]. According to the UN, this agenda "provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests."
The SDGs are quite well known, and many public and private entities (and educational institutions) are using them to provide a framework for applying sustainability. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are as follows. You will probably note that almost all of these are addressed to some extent in this course!
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) [307] indicates that its goal is to "achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives" (Source: FAO [308]). They are widely regarded as a leading international organization in the movement to alleviate malnutrition and food poverty across the world, particularly in impoverished areas of the world. In the video below (viewing is optional), they provide an introduction to the concepts of physical water scarcity and economic water scarcity and provide some data about these two phenomena.
The following video from FAO has no audio narration, so there is nothing wrong with your speakers/headphones! Note that the data provided are a few years old, but have not changed much. It is important to point out that despite what is indicated in the video below, reducing domestic water use is not the most effective way to reduce total water use. As you will see in the video below, much more water is used as a result of farming and industrial uses worldwide.
Watch Water Scarcity by FAO Water (3:26 minutes).
You are welcome to read from the beginning through the "Water stress versus water scarcity" section on the United Nation's "International Decade for Action 'WATER FOR LIFE' 2005 - 2015 [312]," but that is not necessary. The key passages are summarized below. The full document provides a snapshot of water scarcity worldwide. This was the final report published by the UN after their decade-long focus [313] on international water issues. I have highlighted some key elements in bold.
Water scarcity already affects every continent. Around 1.2 billion people, or almost one-fifth of the world's population, live in areas of physical scarcity, and 500 million people are approaching this situation. Another 1.6 billion people, or almost one quarter of the world's population, face economic water shortage (where countries lack the necessary infrastructure to take water from rivers and aquifers).
Water scarcity is among the main problems to be faced by many societies and the World in the XXIst century. Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and, although there is no global water scarcity as such, an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water.
Water scarcity is both a natural and a human-made phenomenon. There is enough freshwater on the planet for seven billion people but it is distributed unevenly and too much of it is wasted, polluted and unsustainably managed...
- Around 700 million people in 43 countries suffer today from water scarcity.
- By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world's population could be living under water stressed conditions.
- With the existing climate change scenario, almost half the world's population will be living in areas of high water stress by 2030, including between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa. In addition, water scarcity in some arid and semi-arid places will displace between 24 million and 700 million people.
- Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest number of water-stressed countries of any region
The main takeaways from this video and article are:
The TED Talk below provides some great insight into the causes and effects of, and some solutions for, water scarcity. It also dispels some common misconceptions about the best ways to address this issue.
Watch Fresh water scarcity: An introduction to the problem (3:39 minutes)
Though this TED-Ed talk was produced in 2013, the same issues exist today. As the narrator indicates, only about 8% of global fresh water consumption is from domestic uses (showering, teeth brushing, cooking, etc.) Most - about 70% (!) - is used for agriculture, and over 20% is used for industrial purposes (e.g. manufacturing, energy generation). This is very similar to the U.S. water use profile, as you will see in a second.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) [316] is charged with compiling the U.S.'s water use data. The most recent report is from 2015, which was released in June of 2018. Feel free to tool around with the data here [317], and go here for an interesting visualization of water use by category and state [318].
The chart below shows the percent of consumption different sectors of use are responsible for. As noted above, very little is used domestically and in the public supply (around 13% combined). (Note that irrigating lawns and watering gardens at home counts as domestic use, not irrigation.) You may be surprised by some of this, in particular that thermoelectric cooling is the single biggest user of total water in the U.S. (Keep in mind that about 50 billion gallons of salt water are used for thermoelectric power, so irrigation is the biggest single freshwater user in the U.S.). Thermoelectric cooling just refers to cooling towers. Have you ever noticed that power plants are always located near a body of water? That is because the electricity generation process generates a LOT of waste heat. (Recall that power plants are generally 30% - 40% efficient, and so waste a lot of heat). Without constant cooling by a local water source, the plants would overheat.
It is important to keep in mind that it's not as easy as knowing how much water is being used. Unlike coal, natural gas, or other non-renewable resources, once water is "used," it does not disappear. (Recall that we have the same amount of water on earth now as we have had for thousands of years.) Rather, water is just moved into a different part of the water cycle. For example, with thermoelectric cooling, liquid water is converted to water vapor. It is then in a different part of the cycle, but is eventually converted back to liquid water (and perhaps solid) in the form of precipitation. If that precipitation falls over the ocean, it may stay there for a few days, or thousands of years. (The amount of time it stays in storage is called the residence time). If water is used to grow a food crop, it may evapotranspire in a matter of days, or it may stay in the plant, only to be consumed by an animal, and then perhaps by us, where it will eventually end up somewhere else. The UCAR Center for Science Education [320] (who operates the National Center for Atmospheric Research) provides the following [321] average residence times in the water cycle. It is important to point out that these are average residence times, and they are careful to note that there are exceptions to this:
A drop of water may spend over 3,000 years in the ocean before evaporating into the air, while a drop of water spends an average of just nine days in the atmosphere before falling back to Earth.
Water spends thousands to hundreds of thousands of years in the large ice sheets that cover Antarctica and Greenland
...snow that falls in the winter may only stick around for a few days in mid-latitudes locations, where temperatures often rise above freezing causing the snow to melt, or up to six months closer to the Arctic
..Water stays in soil for around one to two months although this varies greatly.
Like many sustainability-related issues, freshwater availability is complex. When we use water, we may eventually get it back in a usable form. But keep in mind that when we use freshwater (e.g., to irrigate crops, cool power plants, etc.), much of it ends up as water vapor, and on average (according to UCAR) 80% of precipitation falls over the ocean, where the residence time is an average of 3,000 years. It is difficult to convert it back to freshwater when this happens. As you will see below, the overall trend is toward less freshwater being available. The take-home message here is that it is in our best interests to make sure we maintain an adequate level of freshwater as possible by minimizing& use.
Okay, now you have an idea of what water scarcity is, and know different ways that human activity moves a lot of water in and out of different parts of the water cycle. You've also seen some indication of global water contamination issues. If you want to learn about some evidence of water scarcity, read through the suggested reading below.
Two important questions remain: Are we at risk of running out of fresh water? If so, how do we know? The article below will help us answer these questions.
Given that most water is used for things other than direct household use, it stands to reason that there are "hidden" water costs to many of the things we do, use, and consume. Take a look around you, and think about what you ate today and yesterday. Have you ever thought about how much water was used for all of that "stuff?" Have you ever seen a water use label on a pack of hamburgers in the store? How about a loaf of bread? The label on your jeans? Neither have I and just like me, you would probably be shocked to find out how much water is used to produce most things. The Water Footprint Network [324] defines water footprint as "the amount of water used to produce each of the goods and services we use" (source: Water Footprint Network [325]).
A water footprint - like an ecological footprint - can be calculated for individual products, individual people, or groups of people (communities, cities, countries, etc.). The folks at the Water Footprint Network provide a lot of information about water footprints [326]. What is particularly nice about this organization is that they use peer-reviewed research as their information sources. The video below indicates some of the footprints of "everyday" products. The specific numbers are not meant to be gospel, but give you a good idea of water footprints. Note that the following 1 minute video has no audio narration.
Take a look at the Water Footprint Network's product gallery [328]to see the (often surprising) water footprint of many common items.
As with other sustainability issues, problems associated with access to fresh water is most acute in disadvantaged areas of the world. This includes low-income countries - particularly those in arid or semi-arid regions like sub-Saharan Africa - but also in impoverished communities in otherwise wealthy countries.
Browse through "Access to drinking water around the world - in five infographics [329]" by the Guardian, for a snapshot of international water issues.
UNICEF [330] is an organization that fights for the rights of every child worldwide through advocacy and action. It is part of the United Nations and is the best known and most powerful child advocacy organization in the world. They perform research, publish reports, collect donations, and administer aid throughout the world.
Since about 97% of the water in the world is salt water, why can't we just desalinate (remove the salt from) this abundant source so we can use it for freshwater? Well, actually we can! This is done all over the world. According to the International Desalination Association [332], an industry organization, there are over 20,000 desalination plants in 150 countries that supply some 300 million people with at least part of their needs. Aha - problem solved! Wait, what's that you say? It is very energy intensive? It has negative environmental impacts? It is expensive? (You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?)
Desalination is a very promising technology, but it is not without its problems. You are welcome to read through the articles below, but the bottom line is that desalination plants, while a proven technology, require an immense amount of energy [333], can impact local environments in a variety of ways [334], and is quite expensive [333]. Desalination is probably necessary to satisfy the world's energy needs (and likely increasingly so), particularly in arid areas of the world. But as succinctly stated by Scientific American [334]: "Due to its high cost, energy intensiveness and overall ecological footprint, most environmental advocates view desalinization...as a last resort for providing fresh water to needy populations."
The articles below provide a snapshot of domestic and international issues related to desalination. These are optional.
If you are interested in digging a little more deeply into the specific pros and cons of desalination, you can read through this article from Water Deeply [337]. The author provides links to a lot of quality information sources.
Finally, Sandra Postel summarizes many of the issues outlined above, and provides additional insight into water sustainability issues in her book chapter in Is Sustainability Still Possible? This is optional but may be helpful.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
The American Museum of Natural History in New York defines biodiversity thus:
The term biodiversity (from 'biological diversity') refers to the variety of life on Earth at all its levels, from genes to ecosystems, and can encompass the evolutionary, ecological, and cultural processes that sustain life. Biodiversity includes not only species we consider rare, threatened, or endangered, but also every living thing — from humans to organisms we know little about, such as microbes, fungi, and invertebrates.
Source: U.S. Museum of Natural History [338]
Biodiversity is the variety of life on earth, encompassing everything from the largest ecosystem to strands of DNA. It is in every living thing around us, and everything around us is part of it. I know, this all seems very poetic, and nature can be appreciated merely by virtue of its own beauty and diversity. But there are some practical, and even selfish reasons to care about biodiversity, as you will see in the readings below.
As you can see, there are many reasons to care about biodiversity. Aside from the huge economic benefits of ecosystem services, we depend on the biosphere - and by extension, biodiversity - to sustain human life. We depend on ecosystem services for food, shelter, clothing, water, and even our oxygen. So yeah, basically everything we need to physically survive!
Life on earth is connected in innumerable ways (systems thinking, y'all!), and compromising one part of an ecosystem - including a single organism - has impacts in other areas. Unfortunately, human activity is playing a major role in ecosystem damage, including species extinction. Wilson points out [341] that:
"Species are disappearing at an accelerating rate through human action, primarily habitat destruction but also pollution and the introduction of exotic species into residual natural environments."
Humans are the main cause of the observed increase in extinction rates. Often, the impacts of this biodiversity loss are hard to predict. Donella Meadows, a well-regarded ecologist, pointed out a few of these in her essay "What is Biodiversity and Why Should We Care? [342]".
Biodiversity is a key aspect of ecosystem services, and ecosystem services are essential for human survival. (If you need a review of ecosystem services, refer to the first part of this lesson [343].) One thing that makes biodiversity difficult to manage is that we don't know how many species exist, and by extension do not know exactly how many are going extinct each year.
Many would also argue that nature has value in and of itself, irrespective of how it helps humans. This is often referred to as ecocentrism or deep ecology, which we will not discuss in more detail (but is worth looking into if you are so inclined). Humans also enjoy nature in many noneconomic ways. The "beauty of nature" is a common phrase, and being in and around nature can be both enjoyable and therapeutic. Indeed, nature is known to be therapeutic [344], as people in the emerging field of eco-psychology are documenting. I imagine most of you have enjoyed the soothing calm of a forest, desert, ocean, or even backyard. It is difficult to put a monetary value on this, but it is valuable all the same. Biodiversity makes all of this possible, and destroying biodiversity puts all of it at risk.
So how much danger are we in, and how do we know? As it turns out, it is possible to measure - or at least scientifically estimate - the rate at which biodiversity is dropping. As Carl Foulke pointed out in Chapter 2 of Is Sustainability Still Possible?, the rate of biodiversity loss as one of "The Nine Planetary Boundaries." The metric used to quantify this loss is the background extinction rate, which is defined as the number of species going extinct every year. So, how are we doing on this front? Some recently published studies can shed some light on this issue.
It's not every day that you read a serious article that quotes a knowledgeable person as stating that: "What is at stake is really the state of humanity." Alas, that is where we find ourselves on this issue. There is unequivocal evidence that populations of many species have dropped considerably since humans became the dominant species, and as the article states, the background extinction rate is probably at least "100 times what would be considered normal" (see the optional reading above for some insight on this), which may be a conservative estimate. As indicated in the article, there is some controversy regarding this issue - the Atlantic article [348] that Sutter links to provides a good, even-keeled assessment of some of them - but this primarily has to do with difficulty in determining the rate of extinction, and whether or not it should be considered a "mass extinction" or just a dangerous level of it. Any way you slice it, humans are causing species to go extinct at an accelerated rate for a variety of reasons, including land use change (especially food production), poaching, climate change, ocean acidification, and more.
It is important to point out that it is very unlikely that we have crossed an extinction threshold from which we cannot recover, but many signs point to us risking catastrophe. There is hope, but we will likely have to take action very quickly to prevent the worst outcome(s). Before this happens, it will have to be recognized as a problem, which unfortunately is only happening very slowly.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
That's it for this week! Please make sure you complete the two required assignments listed at the beginning of this lesson. This week, we applied a lot of the concepts in Lessons 1 and 2 to key sustainability issues. You should be able to do the following after completing the Lesson 3 activities:
We went over a lot of fairly heavy concepts this week. Hopefully, this list will help spark some memories of the content, both now and as we move forward:
Reminder - Complete all of the lesson tasks!
You have finished Lesson 3. Check the list of requirements on the first page of this lesson and the syllabus to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed before the due date. Once you've ensured that you've completed everything, you can begin reviewing Lesson 4 (or take a break!).
Complete all activities in Lesson 3. The quiz may include a variety of question types, such as multiple choice, multiple select, ordering, matching, true/false and "essay" (in some cases these require independent research and may be quantitative). Be sure to read each question carefully.
Unless specifically instructed otherwise, the answers to all questions come from the material presented in the course lesson. Do NOT go "Googling around" to find an answer. To complete the Activity successfully, you will need to read the lesson, and all required readings, fully and carefully.
Each week, a few questions may involve research beyond the material presented in the course lesson. This "research" requirement will be made clear in the question instructions. Be sure to allow yourself time for this! You will be graded on the correctness and quality of your answers. Make your answers as orderly and clear as possible. Help me understand what you are thinking and include data where relevant.
For any other assignments (e.g., journal or discussion board), it will be helpful to look at the rubric before answering. You will see a button that allows you to view it below the assignment.
These activities are to be done individually and are to represent YOUR OWN WORK. (See Academic Integrity and Research Ethics [221] for a full description of the College's policy related to Academic Integrity and penalties for violation.)
The activities are not timed but do close at 11:59 pm EST on the due date as shown on the Course Calendar.
If you have questions about the assignment, please post them to the "HAVE A QUESTION?" Discussion Forum. I am happy to provide clarification and guidance to help you understand the material and questions. Of course, it is best to ask early.
Hopefully, by this point, you have a reasonably good grasp of overarching and specific topics within sustainability. Please keep in mind that all of these concepts are intertwined and overlapped. What can I say? The real world is a messy, complicated place. But, hopefully, you will keep these in mind as you move forward in this class and in your life. These will pop up in the readings, book, and other materials in this course, and I hope that you will recognize the terms and concepts as you encounter them. Feel free to look back at these lessons if you need a refresher.
In this lesson, you will take a relatively deep dive into various sources of energy, including the fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewables. These were all introduced in Lesson 1; but in this lesson, we will look at these sources through the lens of sustainability. Specifically, we will investigate how much of each source is probably left (supply), how feasible continued use of the source is (feasibility), and some (not all, mind you!) sustainability implications of each source.
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
Please note that the quiz can only be taken once. You have unlimited time to complete it prior to the deadline, and can save your progress and pick up where you left off at a later time. See the Assignments and Grading section of the syllabus [1] for tips on how to do this. Once you submit the quiz, you cannot change answers. All saved answers will automatically be submitted at the deadline if you have not submitted them.
Requirement | Submission Location |
---|---|
Lesson 4 Quiz | Canvas - Modules tab > Lesson 4 |
Continue posting to the Yellowdig discussion board. | Canvas - Modules tab > Lesson 4 |
(Optional) Lesson 4 Extra credit quiz | Canvas - Modules tab > Lesson 4 |
If you have any general course questions, please post them to our HAVE A QUESTION? discussion forum. I will check that discussion forum regularly to respond as appropriate. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses and comments if you are able to help out a classmate. If you have a question but would like to remain anonymous to the other students, email me..
If you have something related to the material that you'd like to share, feel free to post to the Coffee Shop forum, also under the Discussions tab.
Okay, now let's tie this all together. Modern society is inextricably tied to the availability of energy, as we explored in Lesson 1. We just went through more than two full lessons outlining a lot of reasons to be concerned about the sustainability of modern society, in terms of the 3E's of sustainability and otherwise. Putting these two broad concepts together begs the question: What is sustainable energy?
At risk of sounding glib, the short answer is that there is no short answer. You will probably not be surprised to know that there is no single or even "correct" answer, that is to say, an answer that everyone can agree with. This has a lot to do with the fact that a singular definition of sustainability remains elusive, but in addition to that there is a lot of uncertainty with regards to both the long- and short-term impacts of energy use, and even how much energy (non-renewable in particular) is left to harvest. I want to be clear that the analysis that follows is not meant to answer the question once and for all, but to help frame some of the key considerations to make when answering the question. As you'll see, I've divided the analysis into sections for a number of energy sources, and subsections that provide information regarding supply, feasibility, and sustainability impacts.
One last thing you should consider prior to reading through this lesson: No matter what mixture of energy sources/technologies that we decide to use, we cannot continue to emit CO2 at the current rate for long. As detailed in the previous lesson, the reality of anthropogenic climate change and its negative impacts have near universal agreement among experts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has determined that we need to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (about 3 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels to maximize our chances of avoiding climate catastrophe but no more then 2 C. (It is about 2 F warmer already!) The following is a quote from the latest report [349] from the IPCC, which was published in 2023. This is from the Summary for Policymakers [350]. (A smorgasbord of climate change information for you energy policy nerds out there!)
Pathways that limit warming to 1.5C (>50%) with no or limited overshoot reach net zero CO2 in the early 2050s, followed by net negative CO2 emissions. (source: Synthesis Report of IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Summary for Policymakers, p. 21.)
In case you don't speak climate scientist, this means that we need to be 100% carbon neutral by around 2050 globally if we want the best chance of preventing the worst impacts of climate change. The UN published a report in 2018 that stated that to reach this, we need to cut global emissions by 40% - 50% by 2030 (that's really not long from now!) (See the NPR summary [351] if you are interested). In case you were wondering, global emissions have have only increased since the start of the Industrial Revolution (see below). In addition, a report authored by 13 federal agencies [352] in the U.S. found that consequences for the U.S. will be dire if emissions are not significantly reduced. This report was particularly notable because it was released by the Trump Administration, which is no friend to climate regulation. (It was only released because it is mandated by Congress, and was immediately downplayed by the Administration, but still...)
Please keep this in mind as you read through these summaries. There is near consensus that humans must significantly reduce net emissions to near zero by mid-century, or we face a very dire future. No energy solution should be considered sustainable in the long term if it emits any carbon dioxide, unless carbon reduction technologies are sufficient to offset these emissions. Right now, it is much cheaper to not emit in the first place than to capture and store them.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
We'll start with the most straightforward aspect: how much do we have, and how long will it last? That is an obvious question to ask, because if we are going to run out anytime soon, it is clearly not sustainable.
Most energy sources have an "industry organization" or "industry association" associated with it. These organizations are funded by companies in the industry (e.g., the World Coal Association [355] is funded mostly by coal producers, energy companies that rely on coal, and others [356]) and promote policies that will increase the use of the energy source. They often fund and perform research, devise ad campaigns, lobby various levels of government, write press releases, and more. You should not view them as impartial - they exist solely to promote the energy source. However, they are generally a reliable source of data, e.g., how much coal was used in a year, the portion of GDP from coal, etc. They are also good sources of information regarding industry technology and trends.
But please keep this in mind when looking for energy data: if at all possible, you should use information (including data) from the EIA (Energy Information Administration), IEA (International Energy Agency), World Energy Council [357] (WEC), or some other reliable, impartial source. Note that these industry organizations will usually use data from one of these impartial sources, but it's always best to go to the original source.
First and foremost, note all of the various caveats issued in these reports. As the EIA notes: "The amount of much coal that exists in the United States is difficult to estimate because it is buried underground." (Probably not what you want to hear from the authority on the topic, but bear with me.) The same goes for the rest of the world, and it is more difficult in a lot of other countries because even less is known about the underground resources. Also, there is a difference in the basic assumptions regarding the statistics.
Terminology is important to keep in mind.
All of these quantities use some estimation, with the bigger reserves requiring more estimation, so take all of them with at least a grain of salt. They should be considered a good estimate, with the estimated recoverable reserves probably being a reasonably good (but possibly conservative) estimate of what's left and can be realistically mined. You don't need to memorize all of these terms, by the way! It wouldn't hurt, mind you, but the goal here is for you to understand that coal resources are known to varying degrees, and for you to be conscious of which estimates companies/organizations/people cite.
There are many benefits to living in the United States, but having easy to understand energy units is not one of them. We use a mixture of Imperial and English units, with the system usually referred to as U.S. Customary units. Most of the rest of the world uses metric units, which are also considered SI units (Systéme international d'unités). Got all that? Good. (Here is an explanation of how convoluted the non-metric units are [363], if you are so inclined.)
Coal in the U.S. is usually measured in tons, which is a unit I'm sure you have heard of, and likely used, before. A U.S. ton is equivalent to 2,000 pounds. However, to prevent confusion with an Imperial ton, the U.S. ton should be referred to as a short ton. A long ton, on the other hand, weighs 2,240 pounds. Finally, the metric ton, which is also known as the tonne, is equivalent to 1,000 kg, or about 2204.6 lbs. To summarize:
Credit: Encyclopaedia Britannica [364] and U.S. EIA [365]
"Very impressive" you might be thinking, but what does it all mean for sustainability of supply? Glad you asked! In 2023 the EIA stated that: "Based on U.S. coal production in 2020, of about 0.535 billion short tons, the recoverable coal reserves would last about 470 years, and recoverable reserves at producing mines would last about 25 years" (FYI, the year before they said that there were 357 years, which demonstrates that these calculations are scientific approximations. The increase in 2020 was because we were mining less coal, as you will see below). How do they get this number (357 years)? Hint: it is based on the total production and the Estimated Recoverable Reserves (ERR).
So the years of supplies remaining went from 261 years to 348 years to 325 years to 332 years to 357 years, all in the span of four years. The moral of this short little story: All predictions of remaining resources on a large scale should be considered scientific estimates. They provide a sense of remaining supplies, but that can change quickly as supply and/or demand change.
Note that this assumes that coal production rates will remain the same and that technology will not change. And this, of course, assumes that this it is reasonable to mine all remaining U.S. resources, given environmental and social impacts, but it is a good starting point for the U.S. The same set of assumptions (with different numbers) are used to estimate how long the world will have coal - the recoverable reserves and current levels of coal production. According to the World Coal Association, there are between 110 years and 121 years of reserves available worldwide.
Coal has been used en masse as an energy source since near the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s. The infrastructure for coal mining, transportation, and use (mostly in power plants) is well-established and if it were not for the environmental and social impacts, coal would be a good source of energy. It is energy-dense, and we know how to use it. (I think there's a ZZ Top song about that.) It turns out that it is also pretty cheap to use (ignoring externalities, of course!).
Despite the relatively low cost of fuel, coal is rapidly being replaced by natural gas and to a lesser extent, renewable energy. This is partially due to the lower emissions of natural gas, but mostly due to basic economics [368]. Energy generators want to make a profit like everyone else, and right now, natural gas and some renewables are simply more profitable, particularly in the U.S. In addition, investors and banks are less likely to invest in coal and insurance companies are increasingly likly to refuse to insure new power plants due to the risks involved with climate change and future regulation. See the suggested reading below for some insight into some of these issues on domestic and international scales.
Coal use has been on the decline in the U.S. for the past 15 - 20 years. Feel free to read the following article for some insight into what is causing this, but also some of the issues with coal on an international scale. Note the prominent role that insurance companies (and re-insurance companies) are playing.
It is no exaggeration to say that coal has played a starring role in delivering the energy that was used for the development of the U.S. and many other countries (especially Western countries) in the past 200+ years. It also currently provides over 40% of global electricity (according to the World Coal Association), and is the primary source of electricity for many "developing" countries like China and India Coal is relatively cheap (again, as long as you don't include external costs), abundant, and relatively easy to use. There is a reason we've been using it at such a high rate for so long! So far, so good. So what's the catch?
Now the bad news: coal has a lot of negative environmental and social impacts.
Probably the most important sustainability issue with coal is that it is so carbon-intensive. It emits about twice the carbon dioxide per Btu as natural gas and is responsible for more carbon dioxide emissions than any other energy source, and the energy sector is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. [374]
One possible solution to this is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) [375], which is a process that can capture CO2 and bury it (i.e., sequester it) in underground rock formations. Under ideal circumstances, up to 90% of the carbon dioxide will turn into solid rock and thus not pose a leakage threat, though these "ideal" circumstances have proven to be [376] elusive. (This is usually what is referred to as "clean coal" technology, though it is notable that only the carbon emissions are reduced in "clean coal" plants. Mining waste and particulates and other emissions still make this a relatively "dirty" source of energy, which causes "clean coal" to have higher mortaility rate [376]s than other sources.) While promising, there is some indication [377] that CCS might not be as effective as once hoped. It is only beginning to be demonstrated on a commercial scale [378], and some plants have had major issues [379], so the jury's still out.
One interesting irony is that carbon dioxide can be injected into oil wells to increase output, and has been since 1972 [380]. In addition to this, as pointed out in the EIA article above [370], about 11% of the methane emissions in the U.S. are due to venting of methane gas from underground coal mines. Recall that methane is about 30 times as powerful as carbon dioxide with regards to climate change.
While relatively inexpensive in simple terms (not including externalities), the external costs are likely quite high due in particular to negative health impacts (as you read in Lesson 1). But as you saw from the EIA, there other environmental concerns, such as mercury pollution, acid rain (which has mostly been mitigated through technology/policy), and remnants of power generation like fly ash. Coal mining can be a risky business, as you may remember from the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster [381] that killed 29 miners in West Virginia in 2010. There have been many other accidents in the U.S. as well, as indicated above. China is the world leader in coal mining fatalities, according to the Wall Street Journal [382], including over 1,000 killed in 2013 and 2012, with more than 33,000 deaths in the past decade. There is also environmental damage that often results from mining and mining waste. Coal is a major source of particulate pollution, and contributes to the 1.1 million deaths in China from air pollution [383] in 2016 and 1.2 million deaths in India in 2017
In short, coal is a reliable energy source, and is generally a relatively cheap source of energy as long as externalities are not included. If externalities were to be included, the price would undoubtedly increase, especially if the social cost of carbon and negative health impacts were included. CCS provides some hope for reducing the carbon dioxide emissions of coal use, but other significant sustainability problems will persist even with carbon capture.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past 20 years or so, you have heard about natural gas in the news. If you have heard about it, it was most likely in relation to hydraulic fracturing, or simply "fracking." This is a VERY controversial topic at the moment, and with good reason (as we'll see below). Because of this, you have to be careful where you get your information (good thing you are taking this course!). Our old friend Hank provides a pretty clear and unbiased description of fracking in the video below (4:32 minutes).
One popular misconception is that fracking has only been around since the early 2000's or so. As Hank explains, this is simply not the case. Hydraulic fracturing has been known to increase the output of gas (and oil!) wells since the mid-1900s. The main innovation that has caused the recent fracking boom is directional drilling (sometimes called horizontal drilling). Until relatively recently, oil and gas wells were generally drilled in a straight line. But directional drilling allows operators to change the direction of the drill bits so that they can trace the path of underground rock layers (which are rarely straight up and down). This allows for significantly more gas output per well and is what mainly facilitated the fracking boom.
Like coal, it is impossible to determine the amount of natural gas reserves available in the U.S. or worldwide. First of all, it's underground, so we cannot directly measure it, though reasonable estimates can be made. But more importantly, as technology changes, the proved natural gas reserves change as well. Most of the data you will see are based on "proved reserves," which the EIA defines as "estimated volumes of hydrocarbon resources that analysis of geologic and engineering data demonstrates with reasonable certainty are recoverable under existing economic and operating conditions." (Source: US EIA [386]). Basically, proved reserves are a reasonable estimate of the amount of natural gas that can be recovered given current technology, and for a profit.
The upshot to this is that 1) technology is changing rapidly, as evidenced by the boom in natural gas in the past 10 years or so, which is due entirely to fracking, and 2) as more test (exploratory) wells are drilled, more natural gas is discovered. See the chart below for the result of this moving target in the U.S.
What is particularly interesting about this chart is that the proved reserves have mostly increased even as we have continued to produce and use more natural gas. This can seem counterintuitive because it seems logical that as we take more of the gas out of the ground, less would be left. This is technically correct, but at the moment, the industry is less concerned with how much is left than how much is available. For the reasons indicated above - primarily technological advance - more is available even though less is left. The increase in production in the U.S., as well as the projected increase, can be seen in the chart below.
I'm sure you noticed the dramatic drop in proved reserves from 2011 to 2012 and 2014 to 2015. 2015 has a somewhat simple explanation: "Declines in natural gas prices in 2012 and 2015 contributed to reductions in proved reserves estimates in those years", according to the EIA [388]. Again, this is a quirk of how we define proved reserves. Since proved reserves refer to the natural gas that is "economically recoverable," if prices are down and/or projected to continue, the proved reserves go down with them because it is more difficult to make a profit. (For a more in-depth discussion of these drops, see the optional reading below.)
In the chart above, shale gas refers to gas that is locked up in the pores of shale in underground layers, as described in the fracking video above. It is clear that this is the biggest source of natural gas in the U.S. and is only projected to grow. (Seriously - look at that giant blue blob in the figure above! That's mostly shale gas.) Tight gas refers to gas that is locked up in other formations like low-permeability sandstone. For a full explanation of the terms, see the EIA website: Natural Gas Explained [390]. One important thing to point out is that unlike oil wells, fracked gas wells rapidly lose production over a very short period of time. The table below shows the reduction in the production of wells in various parts of the U.S.
So, if the well output declines, how do companies keep up production? Drill more wells! In order to maintain supply, wells must be drilled at a very high rate.
You probably noticed a sharp drop in proved reserves from 2011 to 2012 and 2014 to 2015 in the chart above. It should jump off the page at you. So what happened that year? Did the technology all of a sudden decline? Did we pull out a record amount of natural gas? Actually, this was an adjustment known as a "revision." As explained by the EIA: "Revisions primarily occur when operators change their estimates of what they will be able to produce from the properties they operate in response to changing prices or improvements in technology." Recall that proved reserves depend upon financial feasibility and the state of the technology. This is an inexact science, and the natural gas industry is constantly adjusting expectations based on those changing factors. The energy industry is nothing if not dynamic!
At any rate, you can see in the chart below that the proved reserves had MAJOR downward "revisions" in 2012 and 2015. As noted above, this was primarily the result of the price of natural gas dropping, causing companies to revise the estimate of economically recoverable natural gas downward.
You might also notice that the most consistent negative impact on proved reserves is production, i.e., what is being extracted (represented as yellow columns). But in most years, operators make up for production with increased "extensions" which are "additions to reserves that result from additional drilling and exploration in previously discovered reservoirs." So basically, drillers are usually able to find ways to get more gas out of the same wells faster than they actually extract gas (at least according to their estimates).
As you can see, when it comes to determining how much natural gas is left, well, it's complicated. (Sorry if you are tired of reading this phrase by now!) But hopefully, at this point, you have a better understanding of how the remaining amount is quantified.
While knowing the (approximate) amount of accessible natural gas is helpful, it is perhaps more useful to know how long these supplies will last. I would now like you to think about how, using proved reserves as a starting point, you could calculate the number of years of supplies remaining. (Hint: You also need to know the rate at which supplies are used.) The EIA provides the following analysis and explanation on their "How much natural gas is left and how long will it last [394]" webpage:
The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates in the Annual Energy Outlook 2021 that as of January 1, 2019, there were about 2,867 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of technically recoverable resources (TRR) of dry natural gas in the United States. Assuming the same annual rate of U.S. dry natural gas production in 2019 of nearly 34 Tcf, the United States has enough dry natural gas to last about 84 years. The actual number of years the TRR will last depends on the actual amount of dry natural gas produced and on changes in natural gas TRR in future years.
Technically recoverable reserves include proved reserves and unproved resources. Proved reserves of crude oil and natural gas are the estimated volumes expected to be produced, with reasonable certainty, under existing economic and operating conditions. Unproved resources of crude oil and natural gas are additional volumes estimated to be technically recoverable without consideration of economics or operating conditions, based on the application of current technology. EIA estimates that as of January 1, 2019, the United States had about 475 Tcf of proved reserves and 2,392 Tcf of unproved reserves of dry natural gas.
As with coal, to determine the approximate number of years left, you just divide the estimated reserves by the annual use. (Interestingly, the EIA calculated that we would only have about 80 years left two years ago and 400 trillion fewer cubic feet.) It is notable that the EIA's number includes unproved reserves, and thus should be seen as a high-end estimate.
Like coal, the natural gas infrastructure is well-established, including wells, pipelines, and power plants. As you saw in the figure on the previous page, natural gas is relatively cheap. The recent boom in natural gas production has provided a lot of high-paying relatively low-skilled jobs and has generated millions of dollars in royalties for landowners. Increased use and cheaper (upfront) cost of natural gas has allowed the widespread replacement of coal-fired power plants, which has resulted in natural gas increasing its share of U.S. electricity production from 24% in 2010 to about 33% in 2015 (when it was about even with coal), to nearly 40% as of 2021. During the same period, coal's share has dropped from 45% to about 22%. This is a major change in just over a decade!
As budding energy and environmental experts, you should be familiar with industry terminology. The percent of electricity that a country (or other area) gets from various sources is referred to as "electricity fuel mix." Figure 4.12 is thus a chart that details electricity fuel mix in the U.S. The total energy by source (e.g. the Sankey chart we looked at in lesson 1) is the "energy fuel mix."
One major benefit of this is that it has contributed to reduced CO2 emissions that come from electricity generation in the U.S. These emissions are at their lowest level since 1993. The EIA explains that: "A shift in the electricity generation mix, with generation from natural gas and renewables displacing coal-fired power, drove the reductions in (CO2) emissions." This is a major benefit of natural gas (and renewable energy of course!). As indicated previously, burning natural gas results in approximately half of the emissions from an equal amount of coal energy.
But this is not the whole story regarding emissions. Remember that while natural gas emits about half of the CO2 as an equivalent amount of coal when burned, natural gas itself is about 30 times as powerful as carbon dioxide in terms of greenhouse effect impact over a 100 year period and about 80 times as powerful over a 20 year period. One result of this is that methane leaks throughout the natural gas supply chain (from the well to the end-user) counteract some of the positive impacts of natural gas being a relatively clean-burning fuel. How much of an impact is open to debate. Though some research [400] has indicated that the emissions from leaks are vastly underestimated and may be worse for climate change than coal, a recent report by the International Energy Agency [401] found that the best scientific estimates indicate that "on average, gas generates far fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than coal when generating heat or electricity, regardless of the timeframe considered." In other words, from a climate change perspective, the IEA believes that it is better to use natural gas than coal. But that is up for debate.
So that solves the debate, right? Not so fast! The IEA makes it clear in the same report that: "The environmental case for gas does not depend on beating the emissions performance of the most carbon-intensive fuel, but in ensuring that its emission intensity is as low as practicable" (my emphasis added). In other words, based on what we know about the GHG-climate change connection, we should not just use the "lesser of two evils" (those are my words, not theirs), but seek to reduce emissions as much as possible, regardless of the source. They also point out that about half of global leakage-based emissions could be stopped with no additional cost, and in many instances, it would actually save money to reduce emissions. And even where it would cost money to prevent the leaks, in all regions it is at least as cheap or cheaper to stop methane leaks than to reduce emissions in other ways.
As noted above, natural gas is a very controversial issue, specifically with regard to fracking. Some of the issues involved are outlined in the articles below. To say that this only scratches the surface of information on this topic is a massive understatement! I encourage you to research this issue further.
Some key points from these articles include:
There are many other sustainability concerns regarding fracking, including:
All that said, the recent fracking boom has revived the U.S. oil and natural gas industry and created or supported millions of jobs. Also, natural gas-fired power plants can also be energy to supplement renewable energy like wind [410]. Natural gas-fired power plants can increase and decrease output quickly, much more so than coal or nuclear. So, if energy generation from solar or wind drops suddenly, natural gas can make up the difference through increased output. However, these "peaker" plants are very inefficient, and so are not good from an emissions perspective. Until widespread storage is available through batteries or other means, natural gas is under most circumstances the most reliable way to "balance the grid."
Natural gas is really a mixed bag of sustainability implications, especially with regards to hydraulic fracturing:
There has been some recent movement toward more regulation of the fracking industry, but that has lessened under the Trump Administration. Regardless, natural gas use is only predicted to increase, so the more we know about all of its impacts - good and bad - the better off we will be. Stay tuned!
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
The oil business is not for the faint of heart - it has always been a boom-and-bust [411] industry since the first oil well was drilled in 1859 by Edwin Drake in Titusville, PA. Witness, for example, the changing price of oil since 1970 illustrated in the chart below, compared to the average price of electricity and natural gas in the U.S. over approximately the same period. A few things to note:
(All of this information is publicly available from the EIA [412], and the charts are easy to create and interactive.) It may be a little difficult to see, but the key is to note the overall trends in real prices since 1970. (Remember - real prices are represented by the blue lines.)
As you can see from the charts, the price of oil can be quite volatile, even on a year-to-year basis. The price reflects a complicated mixture of international supply and demand, and international events can (and do) severely impact the price. Note the following sudden changes in prices:
Only ~50 years of history is enough to make your head spin! Here's a good summary of these, and other oil trends in history [415]. But this is the nature of the beast that is the international oil market. Compare that to the retail price of electricity, which has had only minor fluctuations, and mostly been in decline in terms of real prices the whole time. Natural gas prices are smoother than oil but more volatile than electricity.
In terms of feasibility, oil is so ingrained in modern society and its infrastructure is so well-established that there is no risk of not being able to integrate oil supplies into the economy and society. However, oil supply projections have a very interesting history, and like the price, projections of supply have been volatile. First of all, like natural gas, the calculation of proved reserves is subject to limitations of using current technology, economics, and known reserves, each of which can change from year to year. Like natural gas, for oil, proved reserves refer to "those quantities of petroleum which, by analysis of geological and engineering data, can be estimated with a high degree of confidence to be commercially recoverable from a given date forward, from known reservoirs and under current economic conditions" (Source: CIA Factbook [416]). The result (again, like natural gas) is that even though oil use is increasing globally every year, there are paradoxically more proved reserves. Please note that the chart below represents global proved reserves.
How is it possible that we can continue to use more oil each year, yet the estimated remaining supplies keep increasing? The primary reason is improving technology. We have so far been able to exploit new resources as the market demands more oil. The most recent increase in proved reserves, especially in the U.S., is from shale oil that can be extracted through hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking). There has been an oil boom that has come in lock-step with the recent natural gas boom, all due to fracking. Access to additional "unconventional" reserves via tar sands in Canada has also contributed to the increase in proved reserves and supply.
Dr. James Conca provides a very good explanation of the somewhat complex workings of the global oil market in the article below. As you will see, the price of oil and the economic feasibility of technology is not as simple as supply and demand. He also throws in a nice lesson on how fossil fuels are formed for good measure. Also, if, like me, you have found yourself wondering whether oil deposits are more like a jelly donut or tiramisu, he'll help you out with that as well.
Dr. Conca makes it clear that despite dire warnings of "peak oil" since the 1970s: "For every barrel of oil consumed over the past 35 years, two new barrels have been discovered." In other words, technology has increased the available oil despite the fact that humans have been using it at an increasing rate for over a century. For the past 15 or so years, fracking (and directional drilling) is the main reason that proved reserves have increased. He also provides some insight into the global nature of the oil industry when he notes that Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries purposefully decreased the price of oil by refusing to cut the output of oil in an attempt to starve out American competition. In short, peak oil will not come any time soon, but Dr. Conca notes that: "Unfortunately, the environmental cost of unconventionals is even greater than for conventional sources." This is important to keep in mind, as fracked oil has the same negative impacts as fracked natural gas.
So, how much oil is left, and how long will it last? Unfortunately, that is an impossible question to answer with certainty. In 2022 BP released its well-regarded annual Statistical Review of World Energy [421] and determined that there is enough oil to satisfy global needs for 53.5 years, but only if we continue on our current trajectory. (This includes the recent boom in proved reserves.) This is not a very long time if you think about how important oil is to society.
Also, keep in mind that as we approach this point of exhaustion, the price of oil - and all of the goods that depend on it, which is basically, you know, everything - will increase. Yet, there are people like energy reporter Jude Clemente of Forbes magazine stating that oil will basically never be economically unavailable [422]. In 2016, McKinsey and Company [423], a highly respected global research firm, reported that the world may actually reach peak demand (not peak supply, as is usually referred to) for oil by around 2025. This was unheard of only a few years ago, but the combination of oil extraction technology, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy policy may make the era of oil over before oil becomes scarce. (Note that I wrote MAY, not WILL!) The video below from Bloomberg illustrates how this might occur (3:40 minutes).
It is impossible to know who is right, that is until the future happens. There is a risk associated with this, as you will see below (especially if we keep getting oil through particularly damaging methods such as oil sands). But in terms of raw physical resources, the future is difficult to predict. We may run out of oil at some point, given that it is a finite resource. It is almost certain that before we reach the physical end we will reach a point where other issues (e.g., sustainability impacts, economics, or even reduced demand) cause the collapse of the oil industry. You've heard it before, so this should be no surprise: when it comes to predicting the future of oil, folks, it's complicated.
Oil is extremely important to the functioning of modern society, as noted in a previous lesson. A little under 40% of all of the energy used in the U.S. is from oil (the biggest primary energy source in the U.S., you may recall from a previous lesson), and in addition to that, oil is used in the manufacture of common things like plastic, car tires, and asphalt. It is energy-dense, and relatively easy to transport. Around 150,000 people in the U.S. work in the oil and gas extraction industry [427], and possibly millions more are "supported" by oil and gas [428]. Oil is intertwined with every industry in the U.S. It has allowed food to become cheaper and made international and other long-distance travel more accessible. Do you think you could get two-day shipping from Amazon without readily available oil? Electricity and other alternatives can be used to substitute for many of these functions, but for now, it is oil that is the dominant force. A lot of this helps provide some quality of life improvements, and even some equity advantages (e.g. cheaper food). But it does come at the expense of other sustainability aspects, particularly the environment.
One of the problems with not knowing how much oil is left is that it makes it easier to justify not planning for its eventual unavailability. As discussed above, energy (and oil) is deeply ingrained in modern society. When oil shocks happen, they have a severe negative impact on the economy. If we knew exactly how much oil we had left, and how much we were using, society would be able to prepare for its demise. But because we do not know this with certainty, very little has been done to prepare for it. This is a sustainability issue for many reasons. Primary among them is that if we do not reduce our dependence on oil, there will be a lot of suffering when the next oil shock happens. This is an economic and equity issue primarily, as oil scarcity will hit us economically, and the poor will be most affected, especially at the beginning. I'll leave it to you to think about what those that practice the precautionary principle would advise!
But there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about the current use of oil. First of all, recall from the chart on the Sustainability of Coal page from this lesson that oil is second only to coal in global carbon emissions. There is no practical way to prevent the emission of carbon dioxide when an oil product like gas is burned. Given the gravity of the issue of climate change, this is an essential consideration.
Yet another climate change implication is the use of gas flaring. Frequently, natural gas is found (and hence extracted) along with oil because they often form together underground. When a facility is designed to handle oil and not natural gas, the gas is "flared." Flaring entails separating the gas from the oil, then burning it off and not using any of it. This seems wasteful, right? So how much gas is flared each year? According to the World Bank [429] 141 billion cubic meters of natural gas was flared around the world in 2017, which was actually down a bit from 2016. This is about twice the annual total usage [430] of natural gas in the U.S. each year! In terms of emissions, it results in about 350 million tons of carbon dioxide, which according to the World Bank is equivalent to the emissions from about 77 million cars. That is about 1% of total annual emissions worldwide, or about 7% of U.S. energy-related emissions [431]. (Translation: That's a lot of CO2!) This is being addressed but is still a major problem.
There are a number of other emissions [433] associated with the burning of oil products like diesel and gasoline, including nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (which cause lung damage), sulfur dioxide (acid rain and some health impacts), particulate matter (asthma, bronchitis, visual pollution, possibly lung cancer), and others (source: U.S. EIA [433]). Exposure to automobile exhaust has been found to increase hospital admissions [434] for people with lung disorders (asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, etc.). Nearly all of these impacts are externalities because they are not included in the price of oil, it should be noted.
Also, all of the issues associated with fracking, in particular, the heavy use of water (see the Natural Gas Sustainability page) are the same for shale oil. Another unconventional source of oil is Canada's oil sands (sometimes referred to as tar sands). 97% of Canada's known reserves [435] come from oil sands, and they have such a large reserve that they are second only to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela [435] in terms of proved reserves. Oil sand extraction is particularly damaging to the natural environment and has a very low EROI (see Lesson 2). Canada is the U.S.'s largest supplier of foreign oil (over 4 million barrels per day [436] in 2021), almost all of which is from oil sands.
Encyclopedia Britannica provides a short explanation of the environmental impacts of Canadian tar sands, also know as oil sands.
As you will see in the article below, oil is often associated with the so-called "resource curse [438]" when it is controlled by corrupt governments. This problem has historically been especially acute in African countries like Nigeria [439], but oil revenues have propped up many undemocratic regimes elsewhere, e.g. Middle Eastern Countries (Iran, Iraq) and South American Countries (like Venezuela). Finally, oil spills are a common occurrence, some larger than others. Since 2000, hundreds of thousands of metric tons of oil have been spilled worldwide [440]. Some of these spills are more damaging than others.
Oil is an extremely useful resource, and it is a very important aspect of the modern economy, and by extension, society. Considering that current projections assert that we only have about 50 years of supplies left, we should probably try to maintain our resources for as long as possible, and avoid an abrupt collapse. But we also should be conscious of the sustainability impacts of its extraction and use. Climate emissions are all but unavoidable when it comes to oil use, and there are many other sustainability impacts to consider as well. It is becoming increasingly likely that much of our automobile-based demand for oil will diminish, but recall that we only have about 10 - 15 years to significantly reduce our global carbon dioxide emissions. If we do not significantly reduce oil use soon we are unlikely to hit that target.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
Nuclear energy has been a hot-button issue for a very long time, both domestically and internationally. It provides about 10% of the global electricity supply, as you can see in the image below.
As you (hopefully) recall from Lesson 1, nuclear energy is non-renewable. Uranium is by far the most-used nuclear fuel, though there are possible alternatives (such as thorium [445]). As with other non-renewable fuels, all of the uranium that is on earth now is all that we will ever have, and estimates can be made of the remaining recoverable resources. As you will see in the article below, at current rates of consumption, we will not run out of uranium any time soon. But - at risk of sounding like a broken record - this highly depends on a number of variables, including keeping consumption at current levels, technology not advancing, estimates of reserves changing, and so forth. If, for example, we waved a magic wand and doubled the output of nuclear power tomorrow, the estimated reserves would last half as long.
The World Nuclear Association (WNA), an industry association, provides a very thorough explanation of possible complicating factors [446], but they state that at current rates of consumption, as of the fall of 2021 [447] the world has enough reserves to last about 90 years. The Nuclear Energy Agency [448] (NEA), like the WNA, [448]is effectively an industry group and has a wealth of expertise at its disposal. It operates out of the OECD (remember them from Lesson 1?) in Paris. They are a pro-nuclear group but are very good at providing technical data, as well as statistics. They indicate [449] that as of 2018, the world had about a 130 year supply of uranium.
The author of the article below provides a number of reasons why nuclear energy will not play a large role in the global energy future.
The first nuclear power plant came online in 1954 in Russia [451] (then the Soviet Union), and according to the World Nuclear Association, there are 436 reactors worldwide and another 59 [452] under construction. The technology is well-known by now, and despite the extreme danger posed by nuclear meltdowns, there have been very few major incidents. You are probably familiar with the Fukushima Daichi meltdown that happened in 2011, and perhaps heard of Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986 (still the worst nuclear disaster to date), and maybe even Three Mile Island in the U.S. in 1978. Here is a partial list of nuclear accidents [453]in history from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
But putting aside this risk at the moment, nuclear energy has shown itself to be a viable source of electricity, and likely will continue to be used for the foreseeable future. Among other things, nuclear power plants generally have a useful lifetime of around 40-60 years, so we are "locked in" until mid-century at least. That said, increasing the use of today's nuclear technology would likely pose some problems, for a variety of reasons. The article below sums up these and a few others reasons for and against nuclear energy.
Okay, now for the fun part. Nuclear energy is a mixed bag in terms of the question of sustainability. The biggest dilemma for those concerned about anthropogenic climate change but skeptical of nuclear is that nuclear energy is considered a carbon-free source, and since it is responsible for a significant portion of non-fossil fuel based electricity production worldwide and is a proven and reliable source, it is seen by many as a good option. Note that despite being considered "carbon free," nuclear energy results in some lifecycle emissions because of the materials used in mining, building the power plant, and so forth. (Lifecycle emissions are all the emissions generated by all processes required to make an energy source, including things like mining of materials, manufacturing of equipment, and operating equipment.) But according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) [454], a U.S. National Lab, it has approximately the same lifecycle emissions as renewable energy sources.
Nuclear energy is a very reliable source of electricity, and power plants can operate at near full capacity consistently. Once a plant is built, electricity is relatively inexpensive to generate. But nuclear energy is very expensive in terms of lifetime costs (as you'll see in the article below), and the waste from nuclear reactors can remain dangerous [456] for thousands of years, which can result in large externalities. Since they are so expensive, there is an incentive to keep a plant online for as long as possible to recoup costs, thus people are effectively "locked in" once a plant is built. There is, of course, the risk of another disaster, which however rare the possibility, could be catastrophic. There are also some issues with the equity impacts of uranium, particularly in terms of mining [457]. There is not an easy answer here, as there are reasonable and strong pros and cons.
The first article below is a good example of why it pays to pay attention to citations and be well-informed on a topic, in regards to finding good information sources. The article is on a website that I've never heard of before, so at first, I was suspicious of the content. However, they provide legitimate sources for the information presented, and I have enough prior knowledge to know that the arguments they put forth are legitimate. Overall, it's a good summary of some of the pros and cons of nuclear energy, though I have a few minor issues with the content, as I'll describe below. (See if you can figure out what I take issue with.)
Did you guess the issues I have with the first article? First, the author calls nuclear a very "efficient" energy source. If you recall from previous lessons, the efficiency of a nuclear power plant hovers around 35%. It is, however, energy dense (a lot of energy by volume), which is what he describes as "efficient." (Though he also mentions energy density as well, confusingly.) The second - and more subtle - problem I have is with the assertion that nuclear is an "inexpensive" energy source. This was clearly indicated in the second article (if you read it) but is also asserted by the EIA. Nuclear plants are inexpensive to run once they are built, but they are extremely expensive to build. The author glosses over that part, but it is a really important consideration. Finally, he says that nuclear is "sustainable" but as you know by now, any energy source that is non-renewable is not sustainable.
Regarding the cost of nuclear: The high up-front cost makes nuclear power one of the most expensive types of electricity available. For a technical discussion of this, feel free to read through this description of levelized cost of electricity [462] from the EIA, which indicates that over the lifetime of the energy source, nuclear is more expensive than geothermal, onshore wind, solar, hydroelectric, and most types of natural gas plants.
Nuclear is a mixed bag. To summarize:
Nuclear is a very controversial source of energy. It is embraced by many as a key to the a carbon-free future, while many think we should move away from it because of its inherent danger and/or expense and/or general sustainability problems. There are arguments to be made on each side. Hopefully, you have a better handle on some of them after reading through this.
Why are we "locked in" to the use of nuclear energy once a plant is built?
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
Given the scope of this lesson and course, I will limit the focus of this page to the three most prominent renewable electricity technologies: solar photovoltaic, wind, and hydroelectricity.
I've combined these two sections into one because the supply aspect is very straightforward for wind and solar: they are inexhaustible! As stated in Lesson 1, both of them get their energy from the sun, and if the sun stops shining we have more important issues to deal with than not having a source of renewable electricity. The amount of solar energy that hits the earth in about one hour is enough to power the world for an entire year (this is a commonly held fact, but here is one source from Sandia National Laboratories [463]). There is no shortage of solar energy!
As for hydroelectric, though it also gets its energy from the sun, it is limited due to its dependence on the availability of flowing water. As of 2021, about 15% of the world's electricity came from hydroelectricity. According to the International Energy Agency [404], there is about 5 times as much technical potential for hydroelectric worldwide as is currently generated today. We certainly would not want to exploit all of it, given some of the environmental impacts of large hydroelectric facilities (see below), but this number does provide a frame of reference.
The feasibility is a mixed bag. An oft-cited paper by Mark Jacobsen and Mark Delucchi of Stanford University [464]showed that through wind, water (hydroelectricity), and solar, all of the world's energy needs could be met by 2030, or in a less aggressive scenario, 2050 (note that this is all energy, not just electricity). This assumes that energy efficiency would increase worldwide by 5% - 15%. According to their research, this could be done using existing technologies and would require the use of about 1% of all dry land on earth. They assert that the barriers to accomplish this are "social and political, not technological and economic." They calculate that it would cost $100 trillion over a 20 year period. There are a lot of other details to this study - way too many to get into here.
There are no shortage of critiques to this study, including this critique from Ted Trainer [465] of the University of New South Wales, who is an advocate of renewable energy. He cites possible underestimates in their cost calculation, underestimates of the amount of energy required to provide a high quality of life (the authors assume that the per person energy use in 2050 would be about 1/6th of the current per person energy use in Australia, for example), and probably overestimate the reasonableness of electric storage capacity, among other things. If nothing else, this plan would require an alteration to the global energy infrastructure at a pace and scale that has never been seen before. It is almost certainly possible with enough political and social will, but it would take a lot of both.
One sign that bodes well for renewables is that the cost has come down significantly in recent years. In the U.S. the cost of generating electricity from wind and hydroelectric - assuming they are sited and installed properly - is cost-competitive with fossil fuels, even without incentives. Residential-scale solar is still relatively expensive, but utility-scale (large arrays) are cost competitive today. This is all based (as you will see below) on the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), which was noted in the nuclear lesson. The LCOE is the amount it costs to generate each unit of energy (usually measured in $/megawatt-hour) on average over the lifetime of an electricity source.
Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE): the amount it costs to generate each unit of energy (usually measured in $/megawatt-hour) on average over the lifetime of an electricity source.
This includes everything from building the power plant (e.g. nuclear plant, solar array, wind turbine), to purchasing the energy source (e.g. coal, natural gas), to operating the plant, to decommissioning the plant at the end of its life. To calculate the LCOE, you take the total lifecycle costs and divide it by the total electricity output over the lifetime of the source. This is of course not including externalities, which would likely make renewable energy cheaper right now, especially if the social cost of carbon were to be considered.
electricity source | low | high |
---|---|---|
rooftop solar PV | $117 | $282 |
community and commercial/industrial PV | $49 | $185 |
utility-scale PV | $24 | $96 |
utility-scale PV + storage | $46 | $102 |
geothermal | $61 | $102 |
onshore wind | $24 | $75 |
onshore wind + storage | $42 | $114 |
offshore wind | $72 | $140 |
peaking gas | $115 | $221 |
nuclear | $141 | $221 |
coal | $68 | $166 |
gas combined cycle | $39 | $101 |
The bottom line in terms of cost is that right now, well-sited wind and utility scale solar ("utility scale" refers to large arrays, usually hundreds or thousands of panels in size) are the cheapest form of electricity available, other than only the least expensive natural gas power plants. (Please note that, as stated in a previous lesson and the Greentech Media article above, energy efficiency is cheaper than all energy sources!) Other renewable sources such as small hydroelectric, biomass, geothermal, solar thermal, and commercial-scale solar are very cost-competitive with coal and natural gas, and generally less expensive than nuclear. All of this does NOT include subsidies, by the way!
All three of these sources are considered carbon-free, so they are ideal with regards to anthropogenic climate change. Even after consideration of the embodied energy of these sources - hydroelectric dams require a LOT of concrete; solar panels are manufactured in an energy-intensive process, as are wind turbines; and all of them require mining - the lifecycle carbon footprint is minimal for renewables, as you can see in the chart below. In terms of climate change concern, there is really no debate: these renewables are great choices.
However, there are some other considerations to make in terms of sustainability. First, large hydroelectric facilities are not very environmentally friendly. Depending on the location, there can be problems with flooding of habitats and even towns, compromising fish migration, altering stream content and temperature, impacting scenic areas, and other considerations. The articles below provide some insight into some of these potential problems. Note also that not all hydro has the same problems - by using different types of hydroelectric facilities such as run-of-the-river and microhydro [473], environmental and social impacts can be minimized.
In terms of social equity, there are a few important considerations to make. First of all, do people have access to energy, and can they afford it? This is a tricky question to answer, as it depends on a lot of factors, many of which were indicated above. Some equity and other considerations include:
One of the benefits of conventional energy generation is that the infrastructure is largely set up, at least in industrialized countries. In the U.S., for over 100 years, we have built an energy infrastructure based on large power plants and fossil-fuel based vehicles. This gives conventional energy sources an advantage in terms of providing access. That said, wind, hydro, and solar can all utilize the existing infrastructure. Hydroelectric dams provide the same service as fossil-fuel power plants, but usually on a slightly smaller scale, so they are a good fit. They also provide a very consistent stream of electricity as long as no droughts are occurring, and they can increase and decrease production pretty rapidly, unlike solar and wind.
Probably the biggest current problem with solar and wind is that they are intermittent - the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow. This is a major issue because we currently do not yet have widespread storage capabilities to provide the energy on demand, though improving battery technology and policy are rapidly changing that. As you can see in figre 4.21, solar and wind plus storage are now cost-competitive with fossil fuels, and costs continue to drop. This has resulted in some utilities [480] agreeing to purchase or build "solar + storage" facilities because it makes economic sense. For the sam reasons, multiple "wind + storage" facilities were online as of 2020 [481]. The future of renewables is in storage! (Side note: If any of you discover an energy dense, cheap storage medium that is abundant and safe, feel free to give me a cut of your billions of dollars in wealth!)
One common problem with wind and solar are that they are often highest in areas with low population densities. In the U.S., for example, the greatest onshore wind resources are in the Great Plains in the Midwest, where the population density is very low. Because of this, a lot of infrastructure (high voltage power lines for example) will need to be added to fully tap into these resources. That said, as you can see in the map below, offhore wind resources match up pretty well with heavily populated areas. However, offshore wind is currently expensive.
One of the benefits of solar is that as long as there is not too much shading, many households can satisfy their energy needs using existing rooftop spaces. However, not every location is ideal for solar.
Overall, the biggest advantages of renewable energy are:
The main disadvantages of solar, wind, and hydro are:
The last things I'd like to note are the following:
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
That's it for this week! Please make sure you complete the two required assignments listed at the beginning of this lesson. This week, we went over a lot of the supply and sustainability implications of a variety of modern energy sources. You should be able to do the following after completing the Lesson 4 activities:
We went over a lot of fairly heavy concepts this week. Hopefully, this list will help spark some memories of the content, both now and as we move forward:
You have finished Lesson 4. Check the list of requirements on the first page of this lesson and the syllabus to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed before the due date. Once you've ensured that you've completed everything, you can begin reviewing Lesson 5 (or take a break!).
Complete all activities in Lesson 4. The quiz may include a variety of question types, such as multiple-choice, multiple select, ordering, matching, true/false and "essay" (in some cases these require independent research and may be quantitative). Be sure to read each question carefully.
Unless specifically instructed otherwise, the answers to all questions come from the material presented in the course lesson. Do NOT go "Googling around" to find an answer. To complete the Activity successfully, you will need to read the lesson, and all required readings, fully and carefully.
Each week, a few questions may involve research beyond the material presented in the course lesson. This "research" requirement will be made clear in the question instructions. Be sure to allow yourself time for this! You will be graded on the correctness and quality of your answers. Make your answers as orderly and clear as possible. Help me understand what you are thinking and include data where relevant.
For any other assignments (e.g., journal or discussion board), it will be helpful to look at the rubric before answering. You will see a button that allows you to view it below the assignment.
These activities are to be done individually and are to represent YOUR OWN WORK. (See Academic Integrity and Research Ethics [221] for a full description of the College's policy related to Academic Integrity and penalties for violation.)
The activities are not timed, but do close at 11:59 pm EST on the due date as shown on the Course Calendar.
If you have questions about the assignment, please post them to the "HAVE A QUESTION?" Discussion Forum. I am happy to provide clarification and guidance to help you understand the material and questions. Of course, it is best to ask early.
We are now going to switch gears a little bit and investigate rhetorical strategies in the so-called rhetorical triangle - ethos, pathos, and logos. Rhetorical strategies are methods used to persuade an audience. They were outlined over 2,000 years ago in ancient Greece, but they remain valid and powerful today. They can be used in all forms of communication, including speech, writing, video, and imagery. They are used in every field of inquiry and study, including energy and sustainability. Understanding these strategies can be an important aspect of critical analysis because skilled communicators are very good at using them to persuade an audience that their assertions are valid. Rhetorical strategies are also important to understand if you are to be an effective communicator.
We then investigate greenwashing, which is an attempt by companies to convince audiences that the company acts more sustainably than it actually does.
Finally, you will be introduced to the three types of lies, and an emerging field of study and application called "Behavioral Economics." Behavioral Economics is a branch of economics that seeks to understand why people act in ways that don't fit into the standard, neoclassical model of economics. Neoclassical Economics is the type of economics that most economists, policy-makers, and academics use, and is almost certainly the one that you learned in Economics class. Buckle up - this should be interesting!
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
Please note that the quiz can only be taken once. You have unlimited time to complete it prior to the deadline, and can save your progress and pick up where you left off at a later time. See the Assignments and Grading section of the syllabus [1] for tips on how to do this. Once you submit the quiz, you cannot change answers. All saved answers will automatically be submitted at the deadline if you have not submitted them.
Requirement | Submission Location |
---|---|
Lesson 5 Quiz | Canvas - Modules tab > Lesson 5 |
Continue posting to the Yellowdig discussion board. | Canvas - Modules tab > Lesson 5 |
(Optional) Lesson 5 Extra credit quiz | Canvas - Modules tab > Lesson 5 |
If you have any general course questions, please post them to our HAVE A QUESTION? discussion forum located under the Discussions tab. I will check that discussion forum regularly to respond as appropriate. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses and comments if you are able to help out a classmate. If you have a question but would like to remain anonymous to the other students, e-mail me.
If you have something related to the material that you'd like to share, feel free to post to the Coffee Shop forum, also under the Discussions tab.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
Please read the following sentences, and think about the message(s) each one is giving you. Imagine that you don't know anything about the person who is making the statements other than what you read. Treat each example separately.
Each of these statements exhibit an attempt to convince you that solar panels are a good idea, but each in a different way. Think about the language devices employed in each of the sentences. What part of your psyche does it attempt to address? Is it logic, emotion, or something else? Are they obvious attempts to gain your agreement, or do they seem reasonable?
Each of these sentences uses a different rhetorical strategy. Rhetorical strategies are the subject of this lesson, specifically the rhetorical triangle. At the root of all of this is rhetoric, so let's start there. This is just a quick video introduction - no need to take any notes (3:24 minutes).
Purdue University's Online Writing Lab [487] (OWL) provides a lot of publicly available resources that are designed to help students and others become better writers. We will be watching some videos and reading some of their material in this lesson. They do not allow embedded videos, so please click on the link below to watch.
Rhetoric/rhetorical arguments are designed to convince an audience of whatever the speaker is trying to say, or as Purdue OWL notes, it is "about using language in the most effective way." You most often hear this when referring to a politician, or at least someone acting politically or disingenuously, for example: "That speech was all rhetoric." When you hear or read this phrase, it is meant in a negative way and implies that the speaker was using language to trick the audience into believing the argument they were presenting. As noted in the video above, this negative connotation goes back centuries. But rhetoric has a few connotations, not all of them negative. It can refer to "the art of speaking or writing effectively," and "the study of writing or speaking as a means of communication or persuasion." These two definitions do not necessarily connote deceit. But it can also mean "insincere or grandiloquent language" (Source: Merriam-Webster [489]).
So, contrary to popular belief, rhetorical arguments are not always "insincere." Using rhetoric effectively can help convince the audience of your message. This is an important part of effective communication, including communicating information about sustainability. That stated, understanding rhetorical strategies can help you "see through" insincere arguments that are presented to you.
One final note: Rhetorical strategies can also be deployed visually - for example in images, photos, and video - and audibly. Advertisers do this all the time, as do movies, politicians, and even college professors!
Rhetoric is used to persuade people, and there are three general strategies used to do this: ethos, pathos, and logos. Please watch the following 5:40 minute video and read the readings below as an introduction to these strategies. We will then go into more detail in each in the following lessons.
The following provides a good, succinct explanation of the three strategies, as well as some examples.
Ethos, pathos, and logos are rhetorical strategies, but these are not rhetorical devices. Rhetorical devices are specific methods that can be deployed to make a persuasive argument, whereas rhetorical strategies are general strategies. You have likely picked up on many of these devices when listening, reading, or speaking. Politicians are particularly fond of them. The "Mental Floss" website [494] goes over some of them. If you Google around, you will find more.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
Two of the previous sources provide concise definitions of ethos (bold letters are my highlights):
Before we go any further, please consider the following. This has caused some confusion in past classes: Despite the definition above, is NOT primarily based on demonstrating you are an ethical person (though that may be part of it). It can most easily be summed up in one word: credibility. Keep that in mind, please.
Purdue provides the following examples of ways that you can establish ethos. I highlighted a few things that are most important to consider:
Pathosethoslogos provides the following advice:
I know what you are probably thinking: This seems a bit complicated! There are a lot of rules! Actually, it's not terribly complicated. There are many ways to establish ethos (credibility) with your audience. Some of the most common are listed above, but there are others. What it boils down to is that whether you are speaking, writing, or trying to communicate in any way, anything you do to try to convince your audience that you are a credible, reliable source of information, it is ethos. Any time that someone is trying to establish credibility, they are using ethos.
Okay, now lets' get back to our original examples. Which of these sentences relies the most on ethos, and why do you think so?
If you said the second example, then give yourself a pat on the back. The language used in that narrative is a clear attempt to establish the author's credibility, in a few ways.
Remember, any way that a speaker or writer can establish credibility and believability is ethos. There are myriad ways of doing this, including using appropriate language, citing legitimate sources of information, dressing appropriately, speaking/writing with confidence, avoiding grammatical and/or spelling errors, and more.
So, now that we have ethos figured out, here's a little curveball: Appeals to ethos can change from situation to situation, even if it is the same speaker or writer trying to convey the same message. The video below from our friends at Purdue University does a really good job of explaining this and goes over ethos in general as well.
Please click on the link below for an explanation of ethos.
The narrators sum up ethos nicely by stating that: "In every rhetorical situation, ethos means a quality that makes the speaker believable." This "quality" can and does change all the time. Even if you don't have the credentials that render you credible on the topic, you should do your best to establish credibility by doing things like using reliable sources, proper language, and so forth. You've probably heard the truism that as a speaker or writer you need to "know your audience." Establishing ethos is one of the reasons why. You want your audience to believe you and ethos can help make that happen. Politicians are particularly (or notoriously, depending on whom you ask) good at doing this. A few examples of this can be seen below.
Take a look at the photos of former President Obama below and think about the different ways that he is trying to establish credibility with his audience.
Notice the stark difference in physical appearance in the photos of Barack Obama above. What messages is he sending with regards to ethos? The left photo shows the classic "sleeves rolled up" look, which politicians use to speak to "regular folks," usually in public settings like fairs, construction sites (they'll also don a hard hat for this), local restaurants, and so on. The ethos-related messaging is something like: "Hey, I'm just a regular, hard-working guy like you. I understand your problems." But by wearing a dress shirt instead of, say, a polo shirt, an air of authority and professionalism is still presented.
The photo to the right presents a much different attempt at ethos. He is projecting an image of power and authority by wearing a suit and tie, being the only person in the shot, and sitting in a well-appointed office. Even his posture is different than the other photo. Note that both an American flag and flag with the Presidential Seal is in the background. Both project authority, among other things. Do you notice anything else in the background? Do the family pictures convey a message? This is a subtle reminder that he has a family with two young children, and thus is relatable (this is probably also an example of pathos). Everything in the frame is very carefully considered before the cameras roll. (Politicians are generally obsessed with symbols and appearance.)
Again, the same person can project a different ethos with a simple change of outfit. On the left, former President Musharraf is sending a reminder that he is a military general and thus has credibility when discussing military matters. If he wore the military outfit while meeting with former President Bush, he would be conveying a different message than if he was wearing a suit, as he is in the right photo. He still projects authority but in a more business-like, professional manner.
Let's go over one more example, just to hammer the point home. Say you have a question about investing money. Which out of the two people below would you ask?
Which person do you think is better suited to answer your question? If you said the guy on the left, you were wrong! That is John Niederhuber, former Director of the National Cancer Institute. He may be a good investor, but I'd have to do some more research to figure that out. The woman to the right is Chanda Kochhar, CEO of India's largest private sector bank. She manages nearly $125 billion in assets, and is quite a good business person/investor, according to Forbes Magazine [504]. If I only knew their respective positions, I would definitely ask Ms. Kochhar first.
Let's assume that you picked Mr. Niederhuber (like I would if I did not do any research). There are a couple of lessons to be learned here. First of all, looks can be deceiving. Closely related to that is, do your research when determining ethos. We live in a time where there is no shortage of access to information. Use the Internet to your advantage. The third is that we are all biased. Even if you did not assume that Mr. Niederhuber was more qualified to speak to financial issues, it is very likely that the idealized image of an investment banker is almost certainly male, and, at least in the U.S., white. There is nothing to be ashamed of for thinking this - if I'm being honest, when I picture, say, an investment banker, my immediate image is a young- to middle-aged white guy with a suit and tie, despite the fact that I in no way believe that this is the only type of person suitable for or capable of this career. It actually bothers me that this happens! But we are all products of our respective environments, and most of the investment bankers and Wall Street types we are used to seeing in the U.S. are white men. This is slowly changing but, historically, women have not been granted the same opportunities as men in certain sectors, business and investing being two of them. For example, of the top 500 companies in the U.S. (the S&P 500) in 2021, an all-time record of 41 (yes, that's 41 out of 500) were headed by women. If you are counting at home, that is 8.1%. Only 4.6% of the global 500 companies are headed by women (source [505]). This is slowly changing, but not fast enough to alter the perception of what a powerful business person "looks like."
Remember that one of the goals of this course is for you to be able to critically analyze claims being made. One important aspect of doing that is to recognize preconceived notions and biases and to try to look past them. Try to step outside of your own experience and viewpoint, and as much as possible, investigate ethos from an objective perspective.
It can be easy to view ethos as a way to "trick" audiences into being persuaded by someone. This can certainly happen, and often does. This is a common problem with politicians, as they never want to appear not credible. But it is important for you to know that ethos can be legitimately established. Knowing as much as possible about the source of information is an important aspect of determining credibility. For example, if I want to know about drought conditions across the U.S. [506] I refer to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) [507], since I know that monitoring water conditions is one of their focuses, and that they are tasked with presenting an unbiased, scientific perspective. In short, I know that they are credible.
If the Administrator of NOAA [508]was to give a speech or write an article, (s)he would be remiss if (s)he did not let the audience know her/his position. (S)he has credibility, but still may need to establish ethos. Doing this does not mean that (s)he is trying "trick" anyone, but it does mean that (s)he is trying to strengthen her/his argument, which if you recall is the purpose of rhetoric. Ethos is only established if the audience thinks that you and/or your argument, is credible, and that can be done without being dishonest or "tricky" in any way.
There are a lot of ways to establish ethos, and they can change from audience to audience. The adage "know your audience" is an essential consideration.
Remember that ethos (despite the name) is not expressly an appeal to the audience's ethics, but to try and establish your credibility with the audience.
The most common ways to establish ethos are as follows (in no particular order):
Describe one specific example of something that could establish OR compromise ethos, depending on the audience.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
(Wow, that last one "gets me" every time I see it!) What was your reaction to each of these videos? Was your reaction to each similar in any way? Different? If you have not already, take a moment to think about how each commercial tried to persuade you through its emotional content.
Please click on the link below for an explanation of pathos.
As noted in the video, pathos can be defined as "the emotional quality of the speech or text that makes it persuasive to the audience." Though most often associated with sympathy, sadness or similar "sad" emotions, pathos can utilize the full range of human emotion, including anger, joy (e.g., through laughter or inspiration), frustration, suspicion, curiosity, scorn, repulsion, jealousy, desire, compassion, hope, love, and more.
Please take a few minutes and think about all the ways that the commercials at the top of the page attempt to elicit an emotional response. Do these attempts make the commercials more persuasive? Why or why not?
The McDonald's commercial uses one of advertising's favorite pathos tool - the baby [518]. Babies tend to elicit all kinds of positive emotions - e.g., happiness, sympathy, love, and compassion. When in doubt, find a way to put a baby (or puppy) into your advertisement! (No, seriously. Next time you see some advertisement, see how often a baby or puppy appears.) The commercial also uses humor and (for parents, anyway) empathy. Even the music evokes pathos. Note that the baby is essential to the plot of the commercial, but I submit that (s)he has absolutely nothing to say about whether or not I should eat at McDonald's. Pathos does not need to be logically consistent with the rest of the work. It is meant to play on the audience's emotion(s). This is one thing that distinguishes the first ad from the second.
The second ad uses kind of an odd mixture of suspense, dread, and humor to get its point across. The humorous aspect in and of itself has little connection to the product. (It should be noted that there is some humor in the first commercial as well, e.g., the girl hurriedly sliding over the counter in the middle of it.) However, the negative emotion created by the man's reaction to the cable bill and the woman's to the telemarketer could be said to have a direct connection to real-life experience of issues related to cable TV. Of course, this is all seriously overdramatized (at least for me, but I suppose everyone reacts to their bills in their own way), but milder versions of the emotions expressed are not far-fetched.
The third ad uses pathos (sympathy, sadness, anger, etc.) to get its point across, but the pathos is very much consistent with the message of the video. Speaking for myself, the imagery used in the third video makes it much more impactful than an article providing statistics about how parents' behavior can negatively impact children. In other words, the pathos served its purpose.
I consider the pathos in the McDonald's ad to be "fake pathos," which was described in the video from Purdue. From my perspective, the McDonald's ad is a clear attempt at emotional manipulation (though I don't think they want the viewer to think that), and thus compromises the ethos of the company because it calls into question their credibility. Call me a cynic, but I don't think that McDonalds' goal in making the ad was to spread joy and laughter. As the folks from Purdue mentioned, that is the risk you run if your pathos is not genuine. The Sony commercial is overdramatic, but it's so "over the top" that it's quite clear that it is done in jest and (again, speaking for myself) does not compromise ethos. Regardless of how genuine or fake the pathos is, it is still used to create an emotional response. To a large extent, the impact on ethos is subjective.
Pathos is the most commonly used rhetorical strategy in advertising (both print and video) because it is often relatively easy to do with imagery. See below for an interesting example from the World War II era.
Pathos can also be conveyed in writing. As noted in the video, this often boils down to word choice, in particular, adjective choice. In fact, word choice often provides the reader with insight into the motivations of a writer.
The two articles below are about the same issue - the revised "Clean Power Plan [520]" announced by the Obama Administration in August of 2015, which has since been revoked by the Trump Administration. This plan was designed to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants in an effort to "take real action on climate change" by requiring states to meet emissions standards set by the federal government. This would have impacted some states more than others - states who get a high percentage of their electricity from coal would be particularly impacted. As you can well imagine, this was not without controversy. When reading the articles below, pay special attention to word choices that can elicit emotion, especially when other, more neutral words could have been used. Note that both are from reputable websites, but that both are opinion pieces.
Here is another short article about the Clean Power Plan. See if you can pick up on any use of pathos from the author, or not.
Was pathos used by the author? The only instances of pathos are used to describe what other people are saying - e.g., "slashing jobs," "driving up prices" - the author himself writes dispassionately about the topic. This demonstrates good reporting, using more ethos and logos (see next section) to persuade the audience.
Add and/or change some words from the Time Magazine article to evoke more pathos in the following paragraph. Have some fun with it!:
"In a report released last week, public policy professor Marilyn Brown found that boosting renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power would reduce energy costs in the long run as they become more readily available. Even if energy costs did go up in the short run, she argued that would cause consumers to invest more in things like energy-efficient appliances, which would again lead to lower electricity bills over time."
Please note that I am not advocating one opinion over the other on this topic, nor am I saying that either of the authors are telling untruths. I am merely pointing out word choices that convey pathos. Perceptive readers will pick up on such word choices, which may compromise ethos. Pathos can be an effective persuasive technique, but generally only if the reader agrees with the author's arguments. As critical thinkers, you should be skeptical of anyone that uses pathos in such a way that appears to try and persuade you to believe one thing or another, whether or not you agree with the overall point.
Finally, back to the statements at the beginning of this lesson. Which one is most pathos-filled?
Of course, the last one is the correct choice. The use of children's suffering and in particular the use of the word "innocent" are both meant to elicit pity, and ultimately sympathy. Even if it is true, the statement is unnecessarily emotive. I could have just kept to the facts and stated that said power plant has been shown to cause asthma problems for children. This is a strong reason to be concerned. It is still an example of pathos, but does not lay it on quite as thick.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
The folks at the Purdue Online Writing Lab provide a good explanation of logos.
It is very important to note that logos is not necessarily how logical (sound) or accurate (true) the argument is. It is the attempt at logic made by the way the argument is structured. Of course, a sound and true argument is more likely to establish logos, but it depends on the perception of the audience. As noted in the reading above, two common ways of doing this are through inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning takes a specific example or examples, then assumes that a generalization can be made based on that example or those examples. In other words, inductive reasoning goes from the specific to the general. The following are examples of inductive reasoning:
Inductive reasoning can be correct or incorrect (the first example above is correct, and the other three are not, by the way) - it is up to the audience to determine whether or not the logic is valid. But inductive reasoning is an attempt at logos, irrespective of its validity. The persuasive effectiveness of logos depends on a myriad of factors and can change from audience to audience. The same goes for deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is the application of a general belief, and applying it to a specific example, i.e., it goes from the general to the specific. Some examples of deductive reasoning are below:
Like inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning can be false (neither of the above statements can be verified, but they can certainly be false), even if they are sound. If I've seen hundreds of swans and they have all been white, then assuming that the next swan I will see will be white is sound reasoning based on my experience, but it may be false because there are other colors of swan out there. Again, it is up to the audience to determine whether or not the logic is sound and/or true, but it is an example of logos either way.
As is the case for pathos and ethos, the effectiveness of the rhetorical strategy depends on many factors, and can (in fact, often does) change from audience to audience. With logos, sometimes seemingly sound arguments are neither sound nor true. This is referred to as a logical fallacy. Logical fallacies are encountered all of the time, and you may even use them, accidentally or otherwise. Logical fallacies will undermine your persuasiveness if they are found by the audience, and in turn, impact your ethos as well as your logos. The reading from Purdue linked to previously goes over some of these arguments and provides some examples. There are many possible strategies, sometimes known as "logical appeals," to making a logical argument. Some of them can be seen in the reading below.
Dr. George H. Williams, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, put together some good examples of logical strategies. Please read the "Logos" section in the reading below.
Given all of this, which of the examples below are the strongest attempt at logos? Do any of the other sentences exhibit logos?
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
Watch the video (:38 minute) below and see if you pick up on any rhetorical strategies.
So, what did you find?
This commercial is filled with pathos. The babies (are some children?) are meant to evoke happiness/warmth/etc. The song is jaunty and catchy - I don't know about you, but I actually like it. The imagery (other than the "bad" gas stations) is colored with pastels, giving it a very soft look. The BP gas pump is whistling (!) and the kids are smiling after they go to the BP station. There is a small attempt at humor at the end (the "baby" part of "gas stations, a little better, baby"). All of this is pathos.
The only thing I could detect was at the end when BP put its brand on the screen "Beyond Petroleum." This is a weak attempt at establishing credibility, and I imagine not purposeful. They do that at the end of every commercial. There is no scientific information or even scientific-sounding information. No people in lab coats or statistics cited. Really, very little in the way of ethos.
There is not much in the way of logos either. The story does have a logical progression - happy kids run out of gas, pass gas stations with inferior gas, kids refuse the "bad" gas, then find a BP station and end up happy and high-fiving. I know, this story is ridiculous on its face, but it does tell a story with some logic to the structure. If there is a logic to the structure, then it has logos. BP is also saying that their gas is better, or at least a little better. You could also say that showing wind turbines at the end of the commercial are an attempt to associate renewable energy with BP, so perhaps the audience might think that BP supports wind turbines. This is a bit of a logical leap but could be considered logos.
There are a number of rhetorical strategies being deployed in this commercial, which to be honest, is to be expected. Please note that this is not meant to single out BP - as noted earlier in this lesson, print and video advertising is rife with rhetoric, pathos in particular. But is there anything that does not quite "sit right" with you when watching the video? Does it feel like part of the story is missing? Anything odd about an oil company using so much green imagery?
This article provides a good introduction to what greenwashing is and how to spot it. Please read before continuing.
Greenwashing can be thought of as:
So, why would a company spend the time and money to convey a green image, and risk being viewed as insincere? As you might have guessed, it's good for business. Investopedia notes that: "The general idea behind greenwashing is to create a benefit by appearing to be a green company, whether that benefit comes in the form of a higher stock price, more customers or favored partnerships with green organizations."
Being (or at least putting on the appearance of being) "green" or sustainable has become a very good marketing strategy. Think about all of the times you've seen the term "green" or "sustainable" associated with a product or process. It is happening in basically all sectors of the economy - food, energy, transportation, housing, business, cleaning products, events, sports stadiums, and even fashion. Business pursuing sustainability is not a bad thing. If we are going to achieve a sustainable future, the business community will have to be on board, if not leading the way. The problem is when a business is using sustainability more as a marketing ploy than a legitimate attempt at addressing sustainability.
So, how do you know if a company is making a legitimate attempt at addressing sustainability? In short: it's complicated. The folks in the Greenwashing Index offer some good suggestions on how to investigate claims (see the "How Do I Spot It?" section in the reading):
The best way to fight greenwashing is to become educated about sustainability and take the time to learn about companies. The 2:30 minute video below illustrates some facts about BP that could be found with a little research.
Even though BP is not directly making any claims other than being "a little better," the rhetorical strategies outlined above are used to indicate the company's "green-ness." To be fair, BP has been one of the more aggressive oil companies in regards to renewables. According to Bloomberg Business [537], they achieved their goal of investing $8 billion in renewables between 2005 and 2015. They heavily invested in wind farms, though they have recently put many of them up for sale. They had a solar division for decades, and only recently shut it down. They are still fairly heavily invested in biofuels. Whether or not it's wise for BP to invest in renewable energy may be debatable [538], but the point is that renewables are a tiny sliver of their business, so focusing marketing on that aspect is greenwashing.
You may be thinking "What are they supposed to do - advertise the negative climate change implications of their business?" That would be a fair question. But it is possible to be a little more reasonable in the message the company sends. If they oversell their "greenness," it is greenwashing.
This article from the Worldwatch Institute provides some examples of greenwashing, and some tips for how to avoid it.
Greenwashing is not only used by energy companies. Watch the 1 minute ad below and see if:
Please note that the presence of rhetoric does not mean it is greenwashing! Remember that rhetoric consists of techniques that are used to try to persaude an audience. Many times that persuasiveness is based on fact.
Okay, one more example. Once again, keep an eye out for rhetorical strategies (1:37 minutes).
You probably figured out that this last one is a parody (a pretty funny one, if you ask me). But it actually makes some really good points by bringing light to the touchstones that many advertisers put in their commercials to persuade you. Again, this is not meant to single out the petroleum and plastic industries, as these techniques are used by many companies. But it is the only parody video I know of. Look, dolphins!
Again, the best way to detect greenwashing is to learn as much as possible about sustainability and to research companies' claims. The best way to reduce the incidence of greenwashing is for consumers to push back against companies that do it. By "voting with your dollars" you hurt profits, which is a good way to get a company's attention.
Hopefully, it's pretty clear what greenwashing is, and how to spot it. But why does it matter? Of course advertisers are not telling us the whole truth, and are just trying to get us to buy their products. After all, that is literally their job (the part about getting us to buy their stuff is, anyway). The main problem with greenwashing is that it can trick people into doing things that they think is promoting sustainability, but it is actually not, or worse - it is promoting things that are bad for sustainability.
Most often, the best way to address sustainability is to not buy anything at all. But given that it's nearly impossible to go through life without buying things and that consumer spending constitutes somewhere around 70% of U.S. GDP [544], making wise consumer choices is important. Greenwashing makes this much more difficult.
Please note that the use of rhetoric and greenwashing are two separate things. Use of rhetoric does not constitute greenwashing. Of course they can and sometimes do appear at the same time, but these are separate concepts. That stated, they both call into question the credibility of the author.
Why would a company risk being viewed as one that greenwashes?
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
Hopefully, by now you see that there are a number of rhetorical strategies available to help convince people of an argument. Though this can be seen as manipulative in many cases, often times it does not involve actual lying. But what is lying, exactly? Merriam Webster's online dictionary provides two relevant definitions of a lie [546]:
lie (intransitive verb)
- to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive
- to create a false or misleading impression.
Seems pretty cut-and-dry, but for the purposes of this lesson, it is helpful to know that there are different types of lies. The three most commonly referred to are lies of commission, lies of omission, and lies of influence, aka character lies. The reading below neatly summarizes these and provides some examples.
These three types of lies are well-known, and there are many readings that illustrate them. This one from Vanessa Van Edwards is clear and offers a number of examples. I suggest going through the examples she provides to test your understanding.
The link will take you to the section of the website that you are required to read, but you are welcome to read the content above it as well.
Now that you have a good idea of what each of these three types of lies entail, take a second to think about which type of lie fits which of Webster's definitions above.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
Read through the following statements/questions. You should be able to answer all of these after reading through the content on this page. I suggest writing or typing out your answers, but if nothing else, say them out loud to yourself.
Try and think back to the very brief "Economics 101" lesson that was part of the explanation for externalities. If you recall, I noted that most economic decisions are based on weighing private benefit against private cost in an effort to maximize private benefit (remember the thrift store table?). This effectively summarizes the neoclassical economic model we've been using in the Western World for the past 150+ years, and it has changed very little in that time. When economics models people's decisions in this manner, the generic person in the model often referred to as "Economic Man" or "homo economicus," the latter of which is an obvious play on the term homo sapiens. Economic Man was described by Craig Lambert in Harvard Magazine [548] thusly:
Economic Man makes logical, rational, self-interested decisions that weigh costs against benefits and maximize value and profit to himself. Economic Man is an intelligent, analytic, selfish creature who has perfect self-regulation in pursuit of his future goals and is unswayed by bodily states and feelings.
As Lambert says, this is the "standard model...that classical and neoclassical economics have used as a foundation for decades, if not centuries." If you recall, I noted in the externalities lesson [549] that these conditions required for the behavior of what you now know as Economic Man "is generally not a reasonable set of assumptions, but that is a story for another day." Well, that other day has arrived, my friends! Most economics models are based on this assumed behavior, but there is at least one major problem with this. Lambert sums up the problem concisely: "But Economic Man has one fatal flaw: he does not exist."
So what does he mean by this? Well, for starters, the world is littered with irrational behavior. Some are relatively harmless like making an impulse buy of something you don't need (come on, admit it - we've all been there!), but some are more serious, like engaging in potentially life-changing or -threatening behavior such as heavy drug use or risky sexual activity. And of course, we don't always act in self-interest, for example donating to charity, making decisions such as water conservation that benefit the "greater good," and so forth. (Though it should be stated that some of this behavior can be at least partially driven by selfish consideration because it makes the decision-maker feel good.) There are many more examples, as you will read below. But the question is, how do we include this type of irrational behavior into economic models? In a more general sense, it begs the question: "How can we explain such behaviors?" Enter Behavioral Economics. Some of the principles of Behavioral Economics is described below by Alain Samson in the Behavioral Economics Guide 2015 [550]. (I added the emphasis in bold.)
In last year's BE Guide, I described Behavioral Economics (BE) as the study of cognitive, social, and emotional influences on people's observable economic behavior. BE research uses psychological experimentation to develop theories about human decision making and has identified a range of biases. The field is trying to change the way economists think about people’s perceptions of value and expressed preferences. According to BE, people are not always self-interested, cost-benefit-calculating individuals with stable preferences, and many of our choices are not the result of careful deliberation. Instead, our thinking tends to be subject to insufficient knowledge, feedback, and processing capability, which often involves uncertainty and is affected by the context in which we make decisions. We are unconsciously influenced by readily available information in memory, automatically generated feelings, and salient information in the environment, and we also live in the moment, in that we tend to resist change, be poor predictors of future preferences, be subject to distorted memory, and be affected by physiological and emotional states. Finally, we are social animals with social preferences, such as those expressed in trust, altruism, reciprocity, and fairness, and we have a desire for self-consistency and a regard for social norms
It's worth noting that the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Richard Thaler, who is considered one of the fathers of Behavioral Economics. Here is an article from The Atlantic ("Richard Thaler Wins the Nobel in Economics for Killing Homo Economicus [551]") that explains some of his theories, if you are so inclined. These theories are starting to hit the mainstream!
Read the Introduction to the Behavioral Economics Guide 2015 by Dan Ariely. This can be found in the link below, and on Canvas under Lesson 5 in the Modules tab.
The Behavioral Economics Guide provides an excellent introduction to this topic, but the following sums it up pretty well (I added the emphases in bold):
- "...if people were simply perfectly rational creatures, life would be wonderful and simple. We would just have to give people the information they need to make good decisions, and they would immediately make the right decisions. People eat too much? Just give them calorie information and all will be well. People don’t save, just give them a retirement calculator and they will start saving at the appropriate rate. People text and drive? Just let them know how dangerous it is. Kids drop out of school; doctors don’t wash their hands before checking their patients. Just explain to the kids why they should stay in school and tell the doctors why they should wash their hands. Sadly, life is not that simple and most of the problems we have in modern life are not due to lack of information, which is why our repeated attempts to improve behavior by providing additional information does little (at best) to make things better.
- There are lots of biases, and lots of ways we make mistakes, but two of the blind spots that surprise me most are the continuous belief in the rationality of people and of the markets. This surprises me particularly because even the people who seem to believe that rationality is a good way to describe individuals, societies and markets, feel very differently when you ask them specific questions about the people and institutions they know very well. On one hand, they can state all kinds of high order beliefs about the rationality of people, corporations, and societies, but then they share very different sentiments about their significant other, their mother-in-law (and I am sure that their significant other and mother-in-law also have crazy stories to share about them), and the organizations they work at. Somehow when we look at a particular example of life up close, the illusion of sensible behavior fades almost instantly. And the more we look at the small details of our own life, the more our bad decisions seem to multiply.
The main thing Ariely is trying to get at here is that people make decisions that are irrational and/or are not good for their own well-being all of the time, and if you ask them they admit it. Yet, modern economic models assume that people always act rationally and in their own self-interest. He provides a lot of examples of this, including texting while driving, overconsumption of alcohol, overindulging in social media, over-eating and more. You may find it enlightening to go through the exercise he provides on p. viii. In it, he asks the reader to indicate how many times (really think about it and put a number behind it) in the past 30 days you've done things such as texting while driving, reading email while driving, mismanaged your time, drank too much, procrastinated, said something inappropriate then regretted it, stayed up too late and did not sleep well, and lied. (I know that I was surprised, okay, horrified when I went through the exercise!) The point is that there are a lot of damaging behaviors that people engage in despite "knowing better." This is indicative of something being amiss in economic models.
You may be wondering how this all fits into this week's lesson. Okay, here goes: As it turns out, though the field of Behavioral Economics is only recently gaining steam in academics, and to a lesser extent public policy, advertisers have known about irrational behavior for decades. Though they did not call it Behavioral Economics, they have been using its principles to sell stuff to people. And if you ask the right person, they will openly acknowledge this.
Lucky for you, the good folks at Freakonomics Radio [553] have interviewed such a person, and some others familiar with this topic in a recent show. [Despite the funny-sounding name, Freakonomics Radio delivers a lot of legitimate, insightful commentary on modern economics. It is the brainchild of Dr. Steven D. Levitt [554], William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago (how's that for ethos?!) and author, journalist, and TV and radio personality Stephen J. Dubner [554].] In a more general sense, Behavioral Economics provides insight into how people can be influenced to act irrationally, and even against their own interests. The applications go well beyond advertising! I'm looking at you, in particular, politics.
When reading or listening to the show below, pay special attention to the terms social norming, loss aversion, positivity, and perception of scarcity. Note this telling quote from one of the key players in this podcast, and who says it: "The problem with economics is that it’s designed for the perfectly rational, perfectly informed person possessed of infinite calculating ability. It isn’t really designed for the human brain as it is currently evolved."
Hopefully, next time you are looking at advertisements, listening to politicians, or even just listening to others speak, you will pick up on techniques like social norming, loss aversion, positivity, and perception of scarcity.
One final note: Always keep in mind that the only goal of advertising (other than public service announcements) is to get you to buy things. And it works, otherwise it would not be a multi-billion dollar industry! Do not believe everything you see or hear in ads.
Now that you have completed the content, I suggest going through the Learning Objectives Self-Check list at the top of the page.
That's it for this week! Please make sure you complete the required assignments listed at the beginning of this lesson. This week, we went over the rhetorical strategies of ethos, pathos, and logos, and learned how they can be deployed in speech and writing to persuade an audience. We also went over greenwashing, and some of its associated issues, and learned about lying techniques and principles of behavioral economics. You should be able to do the following after completing the Lesson 5 activities:
We went over a lot of fairly heavy concepts this week. Hopefully, this list will help spark some memories of the content, both now and as we move forward:
You have finished Lesson 5. Check the list of requirements on the first page of this lesson and the syllabus to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed before the due date. Once you've ensured that you've completed everything, you can begin reviewing Lesson 4 (or take a break!).
Complete all activities in Lesson 5. The quiz may include a variety of question types, such as multiple-choice, multiple select, ordering, matching, true/false and "essay" (in some cases these require independent research and may be quantitative). Be sure to read each question carefully.
Unless specifically instructed otherwise, the answers to all questions come from the material presented in the course lesson. Do NOT go "Googling around" to find an answer. To complete the Activity successfully, you will need to read the lesson, and all required readings, fully and carefully.
Each week, a few questions may involve research beyond the material presented in the course lesson. This "research" requirement will be made clear in the question instructions. Be sure to allow yourself time for this! You will be graded on the correctness and quality of your answers. Make your answers as orderly and clear as possible. Help me understand what you are thinking and include data where relevant.
For any other assignments (e.g., journal or discussion board), it will be helpful to look at the rubric before answering. You will see a button that allows you to view it below the assignment.
These activities are to be done individually and are to represent YOUR OWN WORK. (See Academic Integrity and Research Ethics [221] for a full description of the College's policy related to Academic Integrity and penalties for violation.)
The activities are not timed, but do close at 11:59 pm EST on the due date as shown on the Course Calendar.
If you have questions about the assignment, please post them to the "HAVE A QUESTION?" Discussion Forum. I am happy to provide clarification and guidance to help you understand the material and questions. Of course, it is best to ask early.
Links
[1] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/emsc240/node/446
[2] https://www.yellowdig.co/
[3] https://esp.e-education.psu.edu/node/947
[4] http://www.need.org/
[5] http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/energy/Resources/Intro%20to%20Energy%20Reading.pdf
[6] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZYTClx2T1of7BRZ86-8fow
[7] https://www.youtube.com/c/SciShow
[8] https://www.youtube.com/embed/CW0_S5YpYVo
[9] https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademymedicine
[10] https://www.youtube.com/embed/sZG-zHkGR4U
[11] https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/thermo.html
[12] http://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/thermodynamics
[13] http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/heacon.html
[14] http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3
[15] http://www.eia.gov/
[16] http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=natural_gas_home
[17] http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=coal_home
[18] http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_home
[19] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/imports-and-exports.php
[20] http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=nuclear_home
[21] http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/phyto.html
[22] http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/chromista/diatoms/diatommm.html
[23] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diatom_algae_and_pollen.jpg
[24] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lake_Side_Power_Plant.jpg
[25] https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/properties-of-sunlight/the-sun
[26] http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/gallery/SolarCorona/eit027.html
[27] http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=about_energy_conversion_calculator
[28] http://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/executive-branch
[29] https://energy.gov/national-laboratories
[30] http://energy.gov/national-laboratories
[31] https://www.llnl.gov/
[32] https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2022-04/Energy_2021_United-States_0.png
[33] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/emsc240/node/566
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[36] https://www.youtube.com/c/Edpvideoproduction
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[38] https://www.youtube.com/embed/Iwmb1p25ws4
[39] http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/seclaw.html
[40] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_01.html
[41] http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_01.html
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[43] https://web.archive.org/web/20150405010943/http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/gpmarket/
[44] http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=solar_home
[45] http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=wind_home
[46] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsZITSeQFR0&index=18&list=PLACD8E92715335CB2
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[48] http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=hydropower_home
[49] http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=biomass_home
[50] http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=biofuel_home
[51] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0elhIcPVtKE&list=PLACD8E92715335CB2&index=17
[52] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=geothermal_home
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[55] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinas-three-gorges-dam-disaster/
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[58] http://www.arborday.org/TREES/treeguide/TreeDetail.cfm?ItemID=877
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[65] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sustain
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[69] https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature
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[78] https://www.flickr.com/photos/communityeyehealth/27755848262/in/photostream/
[79] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/
[80] http://www.postcarbon.org/pcr/
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[83] https://www.youtube.com/embed/cJ-J91SwP8w
[84] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/archive/aeo15/
[85] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/aeo2019.pdf
[86] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/AEO2022_ReleasePresentation.pdf
[87] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/aeo2020.pdf
[88] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNgcYGgtf8M
[89] https://giphy.com/gifs/PIIMXAjqlO9zy
[90] https://www.youtube.com/user/mjmfoodie
[91] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC5R9WPId0s
[92] http://www.oecd.org/
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[95] http://www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/externality
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[105] https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-social-cost-carbon
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[107] http://www.economist.com/news/business/21591601-some-firms-are-preparing-carbon-price-would-make-big-difference-carbon-copy
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[112] https://www.goodfreephotos.com/vector-images/colorful-natural-tree-vector-clipart.png.php
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[505] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/02/a-record-number-of-women-are-now-running-global-500-businesses.html
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