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B.
1.
What are environmentalists calling a "planetary emergency"? Pollution – carbon dioxide emissions. They’re one of the primary greenhouse gases. These greenhouse gases basically blanket the earth and area causing climate change. CO2 levels are the
highest they’ve been for millions of years which is why environmentalists consider it a planetary emergency. 2.
Summarize the steps of the economic solution to this problem presented by the video. The video focuses on the efforts to reduce the number of new pollutants getting spewed into our atmosphere.
Step 1: Identify the sources of the most air pollution (Factories that burn fossil fuels for energy, industries that use oil and coal to produce things and vehicles with internal combustion engines.) Step 2: Decrease the supply of these technologies and products or decrease the demand for them.
3.
How does this solution become problematic? The implementation of these steps gets complicated.
Step 1 - One of the biggest problems with having countries independently enforce environmental
regulations is that Tragedy of the Commons. No one owns the atmosphere, so there is very little incentive for countries to keep it clean and switch to expensive green technologies if no one else is going to. There are no global environmental police punishing countries for polluting.
Step 2 – We are already reliant on fossil fuels and markets have made the production of those fuels very cheap. Any new type of energy entering the market will have a hard time beating the established systems. We could either wait for new technologies to develop and get cheaper or we
can speed up the process by manipulating markets with government subsidies, taxes, and regulations. 4.
How does pollution relate to negative externality and market failure? What is the role of the government in this situation?
Negative externalities – When the full cost of a product doesn’t line up with the costs of manufacturers or consumers pay.
Pollution represents a market failure – a situation where markets fail to produce the amount that society wants. Government intervention is justified and essential. There are all kinds of different ways intervention can happen. All of them meant to encourage producers and consumers to choose the pollute less.
One solution is for the government to come out and set very specific rules about how much specific industries can pollute. Ignore the markets and follow the government pollution rules. Another way is to encourage people to pollute less is by providing price incentives. Those incentives can encourage individuals to make choices that are better for the environment. The government could add taxes to gasoline purchases or on the other hand provide subsidies for people who drive electric cars. Governments can also create permit markets – setting a limit on how much firms can pollute and allowing those firms to buy and sell pollution permits. Cap and trade – limit emissions without creating hard and fast rules that might hinder economic growth.
people who drive electric cars. Governments can also create permit markets – setting a limit on how much firms can pollute and allowing those firms to buy and sell pollution permits. Cap and trade – limit emissions without creating hard and fast rules that might hinder economic growth. 5.
Does the state of California impose price incentives to influence greenhouse gas emission control? What are they? Yes, California imposes price incentives to influence greenhouse gas emission control. I found this website that outlines all hydrogen laws and incentives in California. Some of the incentives include:
Establishment of Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) and Near-ZEV Component Rebates.
Alternative Fuel Vehicle (AFV) Parking Incentive Programs
Alternative Fuel Vehicle (AFV) and Fueling Infrastructure Grants
Establishment of a Zero Emission Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicle Program
C.
1.
How do economists define environmental outcomes? How does it relate to market failure?
Environmental outcome is the study of the allocation of scarce resources, including how markets function and how incentives affect people’s, businesses and institutions’ behavior. Regarding public goods and common pool resources – Market failure is related to the problems in the negative and positive externalities. 2.
What are externalities? How do they relate to pollution and resource availability? Externalities - a side effect or consequence of an industrial or commercial activity that affects other parties without this being reflected in the cost of the goods or services involved. Negative externalities are rampant in environmental settings – for example Companies that spill oil into the ocean do not bear the full costs of the resulting harm to the marine environment, which include everything from degraded commercial fisheries to reduced endangered sea turtle populations). 3.
Define public goods and common-property resources, under-provision, and over- exploitation. What is the relationship between these terms? Public goods - A good with two features: (i) it has a benefit that does not diminish with the number of people enjoying it, and (ii) no one can be excluded from consuming it.
Common pool resource - A resource that is open to all users, but which is highly rival in use. Under-provision – to provide less that is necessary Overexploitation, also called overharvesting, refers to harvesting a renewable resource to the point of diminishing returns.
One person’s use of a common-pool resource has negative effects on all the other users. Thus, these resources are prone to overexploitation
4.
Define use and non-use valuation of environmental goods. Use values flow from services that affect people directly, such as food production, flood regulation, recreation opportunities, and potable water provision.
Non-use values are less tangible: the desire for endangered tigers to continue to exist even on the
part of people who will never see them in the wild; concern about bequeathing future generations
a planet with healthy fish populations; a sense that people have an ethical responsibility to be good stewards of the earth 5.
How do consumers play a role in valuation of environmental goods? How can our
choices facilitate sustainability? We as a consumer play a role in valuations of environmental goods through supply and demand.
“Willingness to pay” (WTP) is a budget-constrained measure of a change in welfare; a person cannot be willing to pay more money for a change than they have income. In contrast, “willingness to accept” (WTA) is not a budget constrained measure of value. you might have to
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increase a person’s income many times over to fully compensate them for the loss of an environmental amenity they hold dear and can theoretically approach infinity. D.
1. How do these datasets compare? Water is needed not only to grow everything we eat but also to produce almost all the products we use every day.
I am very surprised it costs 35 gallons to produce 1 cup of coffee and 50 gallons to produce eggs E.
1. How do these three sources of data compare? Water, air, and food are the most important natural resources to people. Humans can live only a few minutes without oxygen, about a week without water, and about a month without food. Water also is essential for our oxygen and food supply. Plants, which require water to survive, provide oxygen through photosynthesis and form the base of our food supply. Plants grow in soil, which forms by weathering reactions between water and rock. Water is the only substance that occurs naturally on earth in three forms: solid, liquid and gas. 2. What story do they tell about how we use water in our country? In 2005, the U.S. used approximately 3,300 billion gallons per day for instream use, 410 billion gallons per day for off stream use, and 100 billion gallons per day for consumptive use. The major off stream uses of that water were thermoelectric (49%), irrigation (31%), public supply (11%), and industry (4%,). About 15% of the total water withdrawals in the U.S. in 2005 were saline water, which was used almost entirely for thermoelectric power generation. 3. Where could we make major impacts in conserving water? Resource Depletion - Groundwater mining.
The Water Supply Crisis - water stress levels - many areas lack access to sufficient water or clean water or both.
We can conserve water in reservoirs that form behind dams in rivers. These large reservoirs can control lakes to meet demands. Some of the drawbacks are evaporative loss of reservoir water in arid climates, downstream river channel erosion, and impact on the ecosystem including a change from a river to Lake Habitat and interference with fish migration and spawning. F.
1. What is the difference between mitigating groundwater pollution versus surface water pollution? Water pollution is the contamination of water by an excess amount of a substance that can cause harm to human beings and the ecosystem. The level of water pollution depends on the abundance
of the pollutant, the ecological impact of the pollutant, and the use of the water. Water residence time (the average time that a water molecule spends in a water reservoir) is very important to pollution problems because it affects pollution potential. Water in rivers has a relatively short residence time, so pollution usually is there only briefly. Of course, pollution in rivers may simply move to another reservoir, such as the ocean, where it can cause further problems. Groundwater is typically characterized by slow flow and longer residence time, which can make groundwater pollution particularly problematic. Finally, pollution residence time can be much greater than the water residence time because a pollutant may be taken up for a long time within the ecosystem or absorbed onto sediment. Obvious water pollution in the form of floating debris;
invisible water pollutants sometimes can be much more harmful than visible ones 2. How are mineral resources important to society? Mineral resources are essential to our modern industrial society, and they are used everywhere. We need minerals to make cars, computers, appliances, concrete roads, houses, tractors, fertilizer, electrical transmission lines, and jewelry. Without mineral resources, industry would collapse and living standards would plummet. In 2010, the average person in the U.S. consumed more than 16,000 pounds of mineral resources. 3. What factors control mineral resource availability? There are two kinds of mineral mines, surface mines and underground mines. The kind of mine used depends on the quality of the ore, i.e., concentration of mineral and its distance from the surface. Surface mines include open-pit mines, which commonly involve large holes that extract
relatively low-grade metallic ore (see Figure), strip mines, which extract horizontal layers of ore or rock, and placer mines, where gold or diamonds are extracted from river and beach sediment by scooping up (dredging) the sediment and then separating the ore by density. Large, open-pit mines can create huge piles of rock (called overburden) that was removed to expose the ore as well as huge piles of ore for processing. Underground mines, which are used when relatively high-grade ore is too deep for surface mining, involve a network of tunnels to access and extract the ore. 4. What environmental impacts does mining have? Common sources of groundwater pollution are leaking underground storage tanks for fuel, septic
tanks, agricultural activity, and landfills. Common groundwater pollutants include nitrate, pesticides, volatile organic compounds, and petroleum products. Polluted groundwater can be a more serious problem than polluted surface water because the pollution in groundwater may go undetected for a long time because usually it moves very slowly. As a result, the pollution in groundwater may create a contaminant plume, a large body of flowing polluted groundwater, making cleanup very costly. By the time groundwater contamination is detected, the entity responsible for the pollution may be bankrupt or nonexistent. Another troublesome feature of groundwater pollution is that small amounts of certain pollutants, e.g., petroleum products and organic solvents, can contaminate large areas. G.
1.
Briefly outline the history of human usage of energy. Begin by explaining how and why humans first used energy, what energy sources were used, and what were they replaced with in modern times? How is our present energy usage different from the past?
Energy is defined as the power to do work. Wood was used as the first source of energy for making fire, cooking of food, warmth, and safety against animals. After the first industrial revolution around 1700, coal replaced wood as the energy source. Then the oil and other fossil fuels came in use. The use of oil and natural started in the late 1800s which became very extensive until the mid-1900s. In 1957 the first nuclear power came into use to produce electricity and is now being extensively used for power generation. Due to the non-renewability of these oil and nuclear material-based resources, alternative renewable energy sources came into
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usage in the late 1900s and is being used currently as a source to provide energy. Hydro plants, wind turbines, and solar cells are being used as energy sources as they provide clean energy without any pollution and side effects.
2.
What challenges do fossil fuels present as a sustainable energy source? How do they compare in severity and cost of mitigation?
Fossil fuels are the energy sources which are obtained from the dead and decaying fossils. They are non-renewable sources of energy as their supply is limited and it takes a very long time for a fossil to be degraded enough to produce fuel from it. The burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oils
produce a lot of pollution by releasing harmful gases in the air. The gases such as carbon dioxide
are responsible for global warming and rise in sea levels. They not only affect the environment but also affects human health adversely. Their cost is high and would even get higher as the usage is increasing rapidly and the reserves are depleting rapidly.
3.
Historically, how long did the transition from wood to coal to oil take? How long might a change to alternative energy systems take? Why?
Wood was being used as a main source of energy until 1840, after that the usage of coal rose around fifty percent until 1900. It took around 60 years for the transition to take place from wood
to coal. Coal was used as the main and biggest energy source until 1964 when the crude oil was taken into use for energy production. The leap from the coal to oil took another 64 years. Alternative energy systems for fossil fuels are the usage of renewable sources such as solar, wind, and hydro energy. The transition from an energy source requires huge investment in terms of changing the machinery and storage facilities for the fuel. Looking at the previous transition patterns, it can be interpreted that the next transition will also take around 70-75 years, it is expected that more than 50 % transition will take place by 2040. The transition from one fuel system to another requires the change in the storage and engine to be able to accommodate and utilize the energy and the cost of production of energy is one of the crucial factors for the transition to take place.
4.
What geopolitical implications come with fossil fuel use? How is that related
to its global distribution?
The geopolitical implications define the effect of fossil fuels on the politics and demography of the countries. Fossil fuels are the main sources of energy worldwide. The production and consumption of fossil fuels defines how much influence a country has on other countries and the price of fossil fuels. In the case of oils, the maximum number of oil production facilities are
acquired by the American govt, and they control the prices of oil for all the other countries which
are dependent upon them. This makes them central in controlling the price and distribution.
5.
How can biomass be used as an energy source? What are the costs and benefits of each resource?
Biomass is the energy obtained from the biomass. The plant absorbs energy from the sun and converts the carbon dioxide into carbohydrates via photosynthesis. The carbohydrates are burned
to produce energy and heat. Advantages for Using biomass as an energy source; it is carbon neutral, way less expensive than fossil fuels, carbon-neutral source and is easy to replenish and renewable resource. It can be easily converted to biofuels such as biodiesel and ethanol.
6.
What is a carbon neutral resource? Provide examples. Why don't we use them?
Carbon neutral resource is defined as those energy resources which produces zero or no net greenhouse gas emissions. Some examples of carbon-neutral sources are biomass, wind energy, hydro energy, and solar energy. The use of carbon-neutral resources is limited due to the requirement of land and lack of regulation in the production rate of the energy. Lack of education
and financial needs makes them inaccessible to all the regions. The usage and production of energy requires initial high cost and machinery.