Chapter 15 - Environment

Question 1

“Anthropocene” period

Answer 1

A new geological era characterized by human impacts on the planet

Question 2

How sociologists view the environment

Answer 2

As a social problem threatening our current forms of social organization

saving ourselves by addressing environmental degradation

Environmental problems are the consequences of larger social forces and social organizations.

We need to address the way we collectively structure our lives.

Question 3

Sustainable Development

Answer 3

As defined by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development

“development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”

Question 4

Environmental Sociology

Answer 4

Focuses on the interaction between the social and the natural systems, provides many useful insights to guide us toward sustainability

Question 5

Ecological footprint

Answer 5

Indicator as a yardstick to assess sustainability. Represents the productive area - expressed in number of “planet Earths” required to provide the resources humanity is using and to absorb its waste.

According to the calculation, we need 1.5 Earths to sustain our current consumption level.

If everyone lived like the average U.S resident we would need 5 earths.

Question 6

Overshoot situation

Answer 6

using resources at a pace more than the earth’s regenerative capacity

Question 7

Overall recourse use

Answer 7

Happens in the “background” - infrastructure, power generation, agriculture - beyond individual control

We need to be thinking about larger social forces that shape environmental outcomes and facilitate changes in our communities as well as changing individual behavior

Question 8

Social Construction of Nature

Answer 8

A category (natural or artificial) or phenomenon (climate change or biodiversity) is understood to have certain characteristics because we agree they do.

Question 9

Constructivist analysis of the environment

Answer 9

Focuses on the role of ideology and knowledge in understanding our environmental conditions.

Question 10

Wilderness

Answer 10

Environmental historian Bill Cronon famously traced the concept.

We tend to think of wilderness as the highest idea of nature: pristine, pure, and untouched by humans.

A product of America’s frontier mentality, in which people romanticized the vast and supposedly untrammeled landscape

This understanding of nature is a social construction and a product of North American cultural and historical contexts.

Question 11

China’s great leap forward

Answer 11

Another example if the social construction of nature.

Environmental disasters that occurred in revolutionary China during the 1950s.

Threatened by Western powers and driven by Marxist ideology, Chinese leader Mao Zedong took an adversarial and extreme stance toward the natural world.

Viewed humans as distinctly separated from nature.

Humans must “conquer” and “defeat” nature to achieve the modernist ideal

Philosophy represented a sharp break from the traditional Chinese emphasis on harmony between humans and nature

Consequence was large-scale environmental and social disasters

Mao encouraged every commune or neighborhood to build furnaces in their backyards to produce steal and to fuel these there was massive deforestation

Championed unscientific agricultural practices including eradicating sparrows - birds that eat grain - and overusing fertilizer resulting in famine and irreversible ecological damage to Chinese soil

Question 12

Constructing environmental problems

Answer 12

a social constructivist approach

Question 13

Constructing Environmental Problems

Answer 13

A social constructivist approach.

Examines how we come to perceive and define certain issues such as air pollution, the ozone hole and climate change as environmental problems.

Ex. Ozone hole rather than ozone thinning or depletion

Question 14

Ozone hole

Answer 14

ozone layer is a lot thinner

metaphor is a powerful representation of the problem - that hydrofluorocarbons from aurosol sprays, refrigerants and so on were severely thinning the ozone layer that protects us from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.

“Ozone hole” caught many peoples attention

Question 15

Montreal Protocol

Answer 15

limits ozone-depleting substances

widely recognized as the most successful international environmental agreement and effectively phases out the ozone depleting substances

Question 16

Paris Agreement

Answer 16

2015

UN - nations across the globe agreed to work to limit further warming of the world to within 2 degrees celsius

In 2017 Trump said he would pull US out

Question 17

Paradigm shift theory

Answer 17

sociologists Riley Dunlap, William Catton, and their colleagues have come up with.
Distinguish two sets of worldviews

The old “human exemptionist” paradigm (HEP) - reflect an anthopocentric, human-centered relationship with the environment

The “new environmental paradigm” (NEP) - views humans as only part of the complex ecosystem and subject to ecological limits

Environmental issues tend to be an elite concern. Women and minority groups rate higher concern.

People in more dominant positions tend to have better resources to protect themselves from environmental risk and thus may care less about the environment.

Question 18

Risk perception

Answer 18

the tendency to evaluate the danger of a situation not in purely rational terms nut through the lens of individual biases and cultures

ex. fear of flying when car crashes are more common

Question 19

Attitude-behavior split

Answer 19

When we think one way and act another, does not mean that we are hypocrites.

It does reveal that we live in a society and do not have compete control over the everyday choices we are offered.

Many environmentally significant decisions, such as fuel economy standards, food safety regulations, and city planning, happen at the societal level. As individuals, we can only control a small part of our environmental impacts.

Question 20

An Essay on the Principle of Population

Answer 20

Essay by English philosopher Thomas Robert Malthus. Malthus ([1798] 2007) noted that populations tend to grow exponentially—that is, more and more rapidly—while food supply only increases linearly—that is, at a steady rate. If population growth is left unchecked, he predicted that society will end up with misery, starvation, and resource scarcity. This is the so-called Malthusian catastrophe.

proved largely incorrect. Yet his ideas never faded away completely.

As the ecological economist Herman Daly said, “Malthus has been buried many times…anyone who has been buried so often cannot be entirely dead”

The blind spot of Malthusianism lies in its overly deterministic view on population and the environment. Human interaction with the environment is mediated through technologies that change constantly. Malthus failed to foresee the tremendous productivity growth in agriculture that supports an ever growing number of people.

Question 21

Demographic transition

Answer 21

Malthusians overlook

associated with modernization

Looking at population growth trends, demographics have noticed that in traditional societies, the birth rate (number of births per 1,000 people per year) and death rate (number of deaths per 1,000 people per year) are both high causing the pop to stay in a stable state. As societies go through industrialization, the death rate tends to drop before the birth rate bc of improvements in health and increases in food supply. As the birth rate is higher than death rate the pop increases

In the last stage of economic development, social norms finally catch up with the improved standard of living, causing the birth rate to drop to a level similar to the death rate. The population thus stabilizes again. Some scholars optimistically predict that the global population will cease growing by 2050.

One lesson is particularly worth mentioning: scholars consistently find that the status of women is the best predictor of the fertility rate. The more power women have in society, the fewer children they tend to have. Therefore, women’s empowerment is not only a gender issue but also an environmental issue.

Question 22

Production and the Environment

Answer 22

To sociologists, environmental degradation is not a result of too many people in the world, nor is it due to individuals’ bad intentions or technological failures. Instead, it is a product of our unsustainable economic system.

Question 23

Externalities

Answer 23

are all the side effects—things people fail to incorporate in their decision-making—of economic activities. Externalities can be both positive and negative

Ex. Positive - flowers outside your home. Negative - pollution

Question 24

Capitalism

Answer 24

has an ecologically destructive tendency. In the capitalist system, firms do not simply produce goods and services; they try to maximize profits. To do so, they have incentives to externalize the costs

Many other schools of Marxist-inspired analysis have reached the same overall conclusion—capitalism is the ultimate cause of our ecological crisis. According to capitalist logic, the system must continue to grow, seeking to secure raw materials, cheap labor, and new markets. The mantra of growth and accumulation inevitably will run into the physical limit of finite natural resources

.

Question 25

Treadmill of production

Answer 25

Marxist-inspired conflict theory

On the capitalist treadmill, firms must use and degrade natural resources to sustain their profits. Because of the constant pressure to expand profits, they are forced to compete with others by running faster and faster, producing more and more, and drawing ever more resources. If they don’t, they will go bankrupt and “fall off the treadmill.” In this process, firms face no choice but to externalize environmental and social costs or lose out to firms that do.

Question 26

Eco-Marxists

Answer 26

Marxists who focus on the environment argue that if we do not steer our societies toward an alternative economic system, they will collapse. Their solution is a massive radical movement toward a system that focuses on communal needs and the balance between human and nature.

Question 27

Ecological modernization theory

Answer 27

unlike eco-Marxists, maintain that societies have the potential to develop “ecological rationality”—decision making that incorporates ecological concerns—to replace the old model of modernization, which
focuses only on economic growth and industrial development. The proponents of ecological modernization argue that humans are smart enough to internalize the negative externalities—to shoulder the costs of conducting their business in ecologically friendly ways—through new technologies, social innovations, and better management. Researchers found that some European countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands, have successfully achieved economic growth while lowering environmental impact through better product design, clean technology, and government incentives for innovation.

Argue that a different modernization is possible for the United States and the rest of the world without having to overthrow capitalism

Question 28

Consumption

Answer 28

Does not happen in a vacuum

There are many factors going into what you buy, why you buy, and how you buy. For sociologists, the central tenet is that consumption is not an individual but a social process.

Question 29

The Theory of the Leisure Class.

Answer 29

Thorstain Veblen’s book

1899

Came up with the concept of conspicuous consumption - the practise of spending money for the purpose of demonstrating or enhancing social prestige

has ecological implication as this competition creates momentous to constantly elevate te consumption level leading to increasing environmental degrdation

Question 30

Green consumption

Answer 30

allows consumers to “vote with their pockets” and to engage in social change through the marketplace

if you care about the environment, you should shop accordingly

Question 31

Issues with ecololabels

Answer 31

certification process is expensive and privileges larger producers

Credibility - For consumers, labeling does not always provide useful information but sometimes gives us an illusion that we’re choosing something environmentally friendly. Do you know the difference between Rainforest Alliance certified and U.S. Department of Agriculture organic? Even worse, the standard may be so loose that the ecolabel does not mean anything.

Question 32

Greenwashing

Answer 32

a public relations campaign that promotes an environmentally friendly, positive image whose environmental practises are not in line with the image

Question 33

Inverted quarantines

Answer 33

In his book, Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves, Andrew Szasz (2007) uses the term “inverted quarantine” to illustrate this idea. Normally, we quarantine bad things from our clean environment, but as our environment is increasingly polluted, many of us have started to quarantine ourselves from the unsafe environment. For example, people worried about the chemicals in the municipal water supply protect themselves from it by buying bottled water.

efforts distract us from carrying out necessary political actions (not to mention that some bottled water is just tap water put into bottles or the environmental harm created through producing, packaging, and distributing bottled water). He points out that we could be using our resources more effectively by pressuring elected officials to pass legislation to improve the quality and infrastructure of public water supply systems.

Question 34

Flint Michigan

Answer 34

mid-2014

the city switched its municipal water source from the Detroit water system to the Flint River. Before long, local citizens started to complain about the strange color and foul smell of the tap water. A few months later, people began to report rashes, hair loss, and vision problems. It turns out the water is seriously contaminated with lead—a persistent pollutant that can accumulate in the body over time and have devastating effects. The Environmental Protection Agency has set a goal to eliminate lead in drinking water and takes action if it is higher than 15 parts per billion. In some homes in Flint, the lead level was as high as 10,000 parts per billion.

Government officials did not, at first, take the concerns of Flint’s residents seriously. They allowed residents to continue to drink lead-tainted water. It was not until researchers from outside the community verified the lead poisoning—and held a news conference about it—that government officials began to acknowledge and address the issue

a case of environmental injustice. Flint residents, who are majority Black or African American and among the most impoverished of any metropolitan area in the United States, did not enjoy the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards as that provided to other communities.

Question 35

Environmental Racism

Answer 35

Flint is no isolated case. Across the United States and the world, low-income and minority communities do not receive the same level of environmental protection as Whiter, wealthier communities. As in the case of Flint, Michigan, they often bear disproportionate burdens of environmental harm.

Question 36

Environmental Justice

Answer 36

Sociologists focused on work to document the social inequality in the environmental realm and promote more just environmental policies and laws

Question 37

The environmental justice movement

Answer 37

has the goal of ending the practise of using poor and racial and ethnic minority areas as dumping grounds for environmental hazards

Question 38

Executive Order 12898

Answer 38

12898, signed by President Bill Clinton, mandates “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.” The recognition of environmental justice issues has led mainstream environmental groups to make greater efforts to diversify their membership and goals.

Question 39

Sacrifice zones

Answer 39

2007). In many cases, when a company appears to make progress in its environmental practices in developed countries, it just moves the dirty parts to developing countries, where the costs of pollution are cheaper.

Ex. Olusosun landfill in Nigeria is one sacrifice zone. The largest waste dumpsite in Africa, it is located right in the heart of Lagos, the largest city in Africa. Approximately 500 container ships, each carrying about 500,000 used computers and other electronic equipment, enter the port of Lagos every month from the United States, Europe, and Asia. Workers, very often with their bare hands, strip down discarded electronic devices to recover the lead, gold, copper, and other metals they contain. During the process, they are exposed to harmful metals like lead and mercury, and the nearby soil and water bodies are all contaminated, too

Question 40

Environmental Justice Atlas

Answer 40

Online data collection

currently lists more than 2,700 cases of environmental injustice incidents around the world, ranging from land grabbing and mega-mining to biodiversity and conservation conflicts. Environmental issues are essentially a problem of global inequality, with lower income people burdened with more environmental hazards than others.

Question 41

Climate Justice

Answer 41

highlights the fact that climate change relates to global inequality, in its creation and its impact. Countries have made vastly different contributions to the problem. The per capita carbon emission of the average person in the United States is about ten times that of the average Indian! Furthermore, if we look at the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, most were released by Western countries over the history of industrialization,