Essential Questions

1. Why is it important to study human behavior in regard to our environment?

2. What are the three rules of the environment?3. Why is it important for consumers to become aware of

their environmental impacts, and find a sustainable way of doing things?

What Does Environment Really Mean?

According to Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,

“Environment” can be:

1. The circumstances, objects or conditions by which one is surrounded, or

2. The complex physical, chemical,& biotic factors (as climate, soil, and living things) that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival.

Human behaviors affect the world’s air, water, and living things. In turn, the air, water, and all life on Earth affect human health.

Many of our daily activities involve choices. Each day you choose what you eat, how you dispose of your waste, and so forth.

To make your choices consciously, you can learn which ones leave the earth better or worse off.

Vast changes are taking place in your environment today. Once your eyes are open, you will see them all around you.

When you have become conscious of how your choices affect the environment, you will see the effects of choices on others—and not only the choices of individuals but also those of groups, including industry, agriculture, and government

THE IMPACT OF POLLUTION

The Three Rules of the Environment

1. Substances thrown away, flushed, drained, or even burned are still with us and find their way back into our soil, water, and air.

2. Everything we use or consume costs the environment something to produce or run.

3. All things are connected. People and the environment are part of one system.

The following are words most oftenassociated with pollution:

Ozone Air pollutionAcid rain Global warmingGreenhouse effect Kyoto Protocol

Ozone is a substance created when certain types of energy, such as the sun’s ultraviolet rays, react with oxygen.

Air Pollution contamination of the air with gasses or particles not normally found there.

Acid rain- rain that carries acid air pollutants.

Global warming is the warming of the planet, a trend that threatens life on earth.

The Greenhouse effect – is the heat-trapping effect of the glass in a greenhouse. Levels of heat trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are now much higher than 200 years ago. As they continue to climb, the earth is experiencing a massive warming trend. The change in climate causes heat waves, droughts, fires, severe storms and massive flooding. The warmer temperatures bring greater numbers of infectious diseases, such as malaria.

Despite the negativity of this message, there is much that we can do to slow, stop, and even reverse these processes and restore a livable world.

Once aware of the impacts, if a person chooses to change their actions, two kinds of ripple effect can follow. That which is the self awareness, can lead to improving the immediate surroundings.

The other kind of ripple effect is on people who hear and see what that person is doing. A word of awareness dropped into another person’s ear may start as a ripple that grows into a wave.

The task for consumers is to become aware of their impacts, and find a sustainable way of doing things.

Sustainable is a term used to describe the use of resources at such a rate that the earth can keep on replacing them.

Sustainable choices often benefit the health of the human body while also benefitting the environment

Governments can change too, and their degree of commitment to doing so matters greatly.

Many of the world leaders signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, that spells out the degree of reduction in carbon dioxide emission required of each nation by the year 2012. In December of 2012, 200 nations voted to continue the Kyoto Protocol until 2020. United States never join the original 1997 initiative and this year, Canada, China, New Zealand, and Russia opted out of the agreement.

President Obama is big on going green and using sustainable resources. In the assignment you will be doing, President Obama has come to you for advice. You job is to come up with a plan to help reduce, reuse or recycle something that will save the planet. You will need to give reasons why you choose this particular topic and reasons how you will go about making this change. You will need to show how this will benefit the earth, a timetable, as to how long this will take to occur, and where funding will come from. This will be done in a power point form with a minimum of 15 slides. Groups of two or three only. You have one week to accomplish this task.