Pebble Mines in southwestern Alaska.

Pebble Mines in southwestern Alaska. Order Description Discuss as comprehensively as possible sustainable development at the proposed Pebble Mines in southwestern Alaska. o    View o    PreferencesPrev |     Table Of Contents |     NextWEEK 1: Overview » Lesson WEEK 1: Overview Lesson What is Sustainability? The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development released a report in 1987 titled Our Common Future. The report, commonly known as the Brundtland Report, after Norweigan prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland who chaired the commission, defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. The report can be found at: http://www.worldinbalance.net/intagreements/1987-brundtland.php The definition is found at the beginning of Chapter 2. In this course, we will focus on energy sustainability, but the concept has been applied to a broad range of natural resources including: • Energy resources • Food, especially seafood • Water resources • Forest resources • Mineral resources Jared Diamond, in his 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, described how past and modern societies over exploited their natural resources, which doomed their worlds. Past societies included Easter Island, the Bounty crew, the Anasazi, The Maya, and the Vikings. Literature Cited Brook, E. (2008). Palaeoclimate: Windows on the greenhouse. Nature, 453(7193), 291-292. Zachos, J., Pagani, M., Sloan, L., Thomas, E., & Billups, K. (2001). Trends, rhythms, and aberrations in global climate 65 Ma to present. Science, 292(5517), 686-693. Climate Change: Natural or Human-induced? Climate change is one of the biggest drivers of our desire to work towards sustainable energy. • Climate change can be caused by both natural forces or human-induced (anthropogenic) effects. • In general, society will have to adapt to natural changes, but it may be able to reverse anthropogenic effects. However, reversal may take decades for a positive response is realized – hence the need for sustainable development. • Natural climate change follows the natural rhythms of geologic and astronomical processes. • Anthropogenic processes go beyond the burning of fossil fuels, and include large scale agricultural practices. Natural climate change, especially over the course of the past few hundred thousand years (kyr), occurs as several features of the Earth’s rotation and orbit around the Sun conspire. All of these features affect how close the Earth is to the Sun. From: Zachos et al. (2001). • Eccentricty is how “round” the Earth’s orbit is. • Obliquity is the angle of the Earth relative to the Sun. • Precession is the wobble of the Earth’s axis. From: Zachos et al. (2001). • Based on ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland, we have records of past temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane concentrations that extend back 800,000 years (Fig. a). • The cyclicity is due to orbital forcing. From Brook (2008) Note that through recent geologic time, maximum carbon dioxide concentrations typically reached no more than 300 parts per million (ppm), but since 1900 (Fig. b), we have been approaching and recently exceeded 400 ppm. You can check on the current atmospheric concentration at CO2now.org. Human Evolution Time Line Relative to the climate change shown in the section, keep in mind these important times in human evolution. Emergence of Homo sapiens marks the beginning of challenges with sustainability. The ability of human's ability to alter their environment has increased as population has increased. Time lines are in thousands of years before present (kyr bp). 2,500 kyr bp: Homo habilis appears 160 kyr bp: Homo sapien appears 25 kyr bp: Neanderthals die out 12 kys bp: Invention of farming. Current & Future US Energy Use Current energy sources in the US are dominated by fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas, and coal). As you can see, the amount that renewable sources currently provides us is less than 10 %. Nuclear energy, which has a small carbon footprint, also provides less than 10 % of our total energy supply. Fossil fuels are projected to remain major sources of energy for decades to come. As you can see, fossil fuels are projected to constitute a major part of our energy supply for decades to come. Most of our current energyy infrastructure is build around them, so it will take a lot of time and effort to switch to more sustainable energy sources. National Wealth and Greenhouse Gases Greenhouse gases emissions are linked the growing population and the desire of developing countries to raise their standards of living. The United States has both the highest per capita income and the one of the highest amount of greenhouse gas emission (China has since overtaken us as a country as the biggest emitter). The real question is what is "fair" when developing economies such as those in China and India try to match our level of affluence? What happens if they want to emit just as much greenhouse gas as we do to meet of level of wealth? Non-Renewable Resources and Sustainable Development Economists view the sustainable development of non-renewable resources from two end-member perspectives. The first is known as the Fixed Stock Paradigm and the other is known as the Opportunity Cost Paradigm (Tilton, 1996). For the Fixed Stock Paradigm, the amount of copper, for example as found at the Pebble deposit, in the Earth is viewed as finite, which it is, and mining simply depletes that stock. Eventually, all of the copper has been mined out and there is no more. From this perspective, copper mining truly is unsustainable. However, keep in mind that none of the copper that has been mined has been destroyed and all of it is still on Earth (except for the small amount that has been sent into space). Some of it is currently being used in wire, pipes, coins, electronic and electrical equipment, and other uses. Some has been discarded in landfills and other waste sites. Some has been recycled for reuse, but none of it has been destroyed. Energy resources obviously are a somewhat different case in that they are destroyed by use, and converted to things like carbon dioxide and water. In the Opportunity Cost Paradigm, market forces of supply and demand prohibit us from ever mining that last pound of copper. As we deplete the Earth's endowment of copper, it becomes scarcer and scarcer, which causes the price to rise until some alternative material becomes an economically viable substitute. In other words, a decreasing supply is basically the mother of invention. As an example, we are all aware of the growth of the internet. Ten years ago, it was all delivered by copper wire. To expand band width, research developed fiber optic cable and wireless, which proved to be a more economic alternative than laying massive amounts of copper wire. Similarly, whale oil was used extensively for lighting throughout much of the early US history up until the last 1800s when petroleum production started and the technology to distill kerosene from petroleum for lighting was developed. This become a much cheaper source of lighting, and its development effectively ended much of the whaling industry, well before the last whale was hunted to extinction. Eventually, electrical lighting made kerosene lighting obsolete. The concept of sustainability in modern mining instead has focused on avoiding or minimizing impacts on the environment, promoting sound stewardship of the land and local community and resources, minimizing the carbon footprint of mining operations, enhancing local communities, respecting local governance and life styles, among other things. Prev |     Table Of Contents |     Next PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET AN AMAZING DISCOUNT :)