This data plot shows the monthly mean carbon dioxide of the Mauna Loa volcano from roughly 1960 to the present day.

In 1958, Charles David Keeling went to the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii and began measuring the levels of carbon dioxide present.  As the data in the graph above shows, the amount of carbon dioxide parts per million (ppm) has increased steadily and dramatically from roughly 1960 to 2020.  In what came to be known as the Keeling Curve, the Mauna Loa data shows that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing.  By 2012, atmospheric CO2 had risen by 25% from the original recording.

Deforestation, the Industrial Revolution, and numerous other man-made factors have caused this acceleration of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but why does it matter?  Well, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere.  As the sun shines down on Earth, some of the heat radiation is reflected back away from the atmosphere.  Global amounts of carbon dioxide, as demonstrated in the figure above, are increasing.  This means that more heat is being trapped and less is being reflected, causing the Earth’s atmosphere to become warmer.  This causes numerous potential problems for humans and other species as well.  The increased atmospheric temperature causes sea levels to rise because of the expanding water due to heat, and also due to glaciers melting.  A higher atmospheric temperature also lowers the pH of water, causing destruction to coral reefs and many marine habitats.  The rise in sea level will affect human beings because many places that are densely populated will soon be underwater if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise like the figure shows.

Sources:

Molles, Manuel C., and Brendan Jonathan Borrell. Environment: Science, Issues, Solutions. W.H. Freeman, 2016.

A recent article on Beyond Pesticides news website details the lasting effects that Agent Orange has had on Vietnam and the Vietnamese people.  The article explains that a dangerous toxin called dioxin, one of the “dirty dozen”, is a byproduct of Agent Orange.  Scientists at Iowa State and Illinois have discovered that 130,000 fifty-five gallon drums of toxic herbicides were sprayed over Vietnam during the Vietnam War.  A byproduct of this “Agent Orange” spraying is the dioxin TCDD, which has persisted for decades in Vietnamese water and soil.  According to researchers, the spraying of chemicals over Vietnam wasn’t limited to revealing enemy hiding positions.  Over 40% of the chemicals sprayed were over farmlands, mostly owned by citizens, not soldiers.

Rain, erosion, and other factors have spread these chemicals, notably dioxin, into streams, rivers, and other wetlands.  Through biomagnification, dioxin has moved up the food chains of ecosystems and into fish that Vietnamese people consume and suffer harmful effects from like birth defects and crippling terminal diseases.  The researchers also explain that the only way to eliminate the dioxin contamination is through incineration, which is time consuming and extremely costly in Vietnam.

The primary source of dioxin in the environment stems from the industrial chlorination process, incineration of MSW, and certain herbicides.  It’s formed as a byproduct of many industrial processes, most commonly involving chlorine.  The most common form of human contact with dioxin comes from our diet.  93% of our dioxin intake comes from consuming meat and dairy products with traces of dioxin.  The dioxin bioaccumulates up the food chain so that the food we consume contains the problematic toxin.

Dioxin has the potential to cause cancer in humans and animals alike.  In 1997, the IARC announced that TCDD is a type 1 carcinogen, meaning that it is now a known human carcinogen.  Dioxin also has been known to cause birth defects, and interfere with hormone systems.  In this way, it acts as a sort of endocrine disruptor, causing potential pregnancy problems, reduced sperm counts, diabetes, and lung problems.

Works cited:

MedCrave Group. “Dioxins: Source, Origin and Toxicity Assessment.” Biodiversity International Journal, MedCrave Publishing, 6 July 2018, medcraveonline.com/BIJ/dioxins-source-origin-and-toxicity-assessment.html#:~:text=The%20major%20source%20of%20dioxin,also%20from%20backyard%20burn%2Dbarrels.&text=Dioxin%20is%20released%20by%20paper,factories%20and%20by%20all%20incinerators.

University of Illinois Studies. “Deadly Dioxin, An Agent Orange By-Product, Continues to Contaminate Vietnam.” Beyond Pesticides Daily News Blog, 12 Mar. 2019, beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2019/03/deadly-dioxin-an-agent-orange-by-product-continues-to-contaminate-vietnam/.

1.  Cardboard, loose-leaf reams, newspapers, gloss paper, and printer paper are all common products made from the material we know as paper.
2. In 2018, the total generation of municipal solid waste (MSW) in 2018 in the United States was 292.4 million tons, and this number has been increasing for years.  The largest portion of this 292.4 million is due to paper and paperboard, making up 23.05%, or 67,390,000 tons. The total amount of MSW recycled in 2018 was 69 million tons.  Paper and paperboard accounted for essentially 2/3 of that amount with a total 45,970,000 tons. In comparison, Austria, one of the world’s leaders in recycling, recycles nearly 80% of paper products.  In fact, in Austria, more waste paper is reused than new paper is consumed.  More than 1 million tonnes of waste paper is imported to Austria each year to cover the demand.
3. Reusing recycled paper saves energy because energy isn’t being exerted to create new paper products from trees and plants.  Recycling one ton of paper equals out to saving enough energy to power an average U.S. home for 6 months, and it also saves roughly 7,000 gallons of water. This is because the number of steps and water usage is decreased in recycling paper rather than creating new paper from trees. If that’s just for one ton of paper being recycled, we can imagine the drastic effect that recycling paper on a grand scale has on saving energy.
4. The recycling rate for paper is high compared to other materials because in my opinion, it’s simple and well known.  Teachers and educators push for paper to be recycled and not thrown away when children are young.  I think that it’s more infused in the American mind that paper can be recycled, as opposed to other recyclable materials.  If such initiative is shown towards other materials as there is towards paper, there could be different results in the future.

Bibliography:

Blue, Marie-Luise. “The Advantages of Recycling Paper.” Education, 29 Sept. 2016, education.seattlepi.com/advantages-recycling-paper-3440.html.

Earth Media Partners. “Everything You Need to Know About Paper Recycling.” Earth911, 17 Feb. 2021, earth911.com/business-policy/paper-recycling-details-basics/.

EPA. “National Overview: Facts and Figures on Materials, Wastes and Recycling.” EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, 28 Jan. 2021, www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/national-overview-facts-and-figures-materials#recycling.

General Kinematics. “U.S. Recycling Facts Compared to Other Countries.” General Kinematics, General Kinematics, 16 Sept. 2019, www.generalkinematics.com/blog/recycling-facts-us-compared-to-others/.

The price of conventional oil extraction is rising as the resource becomes more valuable.   There’s an immense amount of wealth in the oil industry, and a new way of extracting that oil has been found.  Canada’s oil sands are the largest deposit of crude oil on the entire planet.  And now that the price of extracting oil has gone up, extracting oil from these sands has become profitable.  However, there is an environmental cost to this extraction.

To extract oil from Canada’s oil sands, the soil, rocks, and current landscape must be uprooted and destroyed to get to the sands and tar from which the oil is extracted.  This destruction of the surface layer environment in Canada has increased greenhouse gas emissions because Canadian forests have been destroyed for oil.  Additionally, a gallon of gasoline made from oil sands produces nearly 15% more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than a gallon of gasoline made from conventional oil.  The water sources around these oil sands have also been affected by mining in Canada.  Although there is limited research, excess waste in nearby ponds could potentially prove harmful to people, animals, and the environment.  Diluted bitumen (oil from the oil sands) has higher concentrations of sulfur than conventional oil, and sulfur has proven to potentially cause harmful effects on humans, like skin conditions and nervous system problems.

Despite these environmental and safety concerns, oil sands have an economic benefit.  In 2019, oil and natural gases provided $110 billion dollars to the Canadian economy.  Due to strict environmental regulations in Canada, the oil sands industry is expected to pay roughly $17 billion dollars in taxes over the next 10 years.  The Canadian government’s regulations on land restoration and strict rules on the oil sands are an attempt to preserve and maintain the environment, and the environmental impact that oil extraction from the sands cause.

The environmental and health costs associated with oil sand mining in Canada should be included with the price of the resource.  There is much more to be considered than merely the cost of the nonrenewable resource, for example the potential health risks of extraction and the potential environmental damage that the extraction causes.

Works Cited:

“Canada’s Economic Contribution: Canada Natural Resources & GDP.” CAPP, 24 Feb. 2021, www.capp.ca/economy/canadian-economic-contribution/.

An advertisement ran by Spies Rejser called “Do it For Denmark” received over 12 million views on it’s 2014 2 minute commercial on youtube.  The company addressed an ongoing problem in Denmark – a problem shared only by a select few countries on Earth.  Nations at the end of the demographic transition model, nations like Japan, Italy, and Denmark all face the problem of how to deal with an aging population and declining birth rates.  These countries are so highly developed that the death rates exceed birth rates because of a multitude of reasons:  Women offer more to society than simply childbearing and many women reproduce at an older age compared to countries in a lower stage of the transition model.  Additionally, contraceptives and sexual education and awareness is more emphasized in these higher developed countries, as well as better medicine leading to the average age increasing and more people living longer, as shown by the population pyramid above (Víal).  In Denmark, the average age is 41.5 years and the life expectancy is 79 years for men and 83 for women  (Doe).  Countries like Denmark whose population pyramid is more of an inverted pyramid with more older people making up the general population face several problems.  The economy will eventually suffer as the number of people that are in the workforce becomes too low to sustain the economy of the country.

To combat this, a popular Danish tourist company created an incentive program.  Spies Travel offered discounts on holiday getaways for Danish couples, and if the couple could provide proof that a child was conceived on the holiday, the company offered prizes such as an additional free holiday trip, and baby supplies for 3 years (Spies Rejser).  This attempt to halt the decreasing birth rates in Denmark is an example of a potential problem that arises at the other end of the spectrum.  While some underdeveloped and overpopulated countries face the problem of high birth rates and low death rates, there are a few nations that have advanced far enough on the demographic transition model to the point where they now are attempting to increase their populations.

Works cited:

Doe, John. “Population: Demographic Situation, Languages and Religions.” Eurydice – European Commission, 29 Mar. 2019, eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-policies/eurydice/content/population-demographic-situation-languages-and-religions-22_en.

I glanced over several other people’s blogs this week and found that some people were choosing a specific country and analyzing its ecological footprint – the causes, explanations, etc.  I thought that it would be a disservice to motherland if I didn’t at least look at the data regarding Ireland’s ecological footprint.  Upon reading more about the data, I couldn’t help but write about it for my blog post.

Before reading about Ireland’s ecological footprint, I had some preconceived notions: The Irish are a relatively environmentally friendly people.  The grass is green, the people are understanding, and nation is overall pretty healthy in comparison to the rest of our planet.

I was wrong.  Ireland’s in trouble.  We’re all in trouble.

.(Global Footprint Network)

Ireland’s ecological footprint per person is 5.0 gha.  For comparison, the global average is 2.8 gha – and even the global average requires almost 4 earths to be a sustainable number (Global Footprint Network, 2021).  Ireland’s expected overshoot day for this year is April 27th, which ranks well into the top half of earliest overshoot days for any nation (Earth Overshoot Day, 2021). I was shocked and confused when I first read that the old sod, the land in which I consider if nothing else to be in tune with nature and not overcome by technological advances and the evolving world, this same place is nearly twice the global average in terms of sustainability.

But why?

I dug a little deeper into why Ireland is ranked poorly in terms of ecological footprint.  The National Trust of Ireland, An Taisce, claims that Ireland’s mass importation of goods takes a significant toll on the environment.  Specifically, the mass importation of steel and fossil fuels drastically effect and degrade the environment.  Ireland’s an island nation, and naturally many goods must be shipped to the country that cannot be produced there.  Feed for animals and caged fish, plastics, and home goods such as clothes also play a significant factor in the footprint (Cliodhna, 2014).

Overall, Ireland is one of the world’s biggest players in terms of damaging the Earth and consuming its resources.  Despite recent increased attention drawn to problems such as the mounting ecological footprint of Ireland and the world, we as humans continue to consume an unsustainable amount of resources.

Bibliography:

Donnelly, Margaret. “Ireland Has One of the Largest Ecological Footprints.” Agriland.ie, 30 Sept. 2014, www.agriland.ie/farming-news/ireland-one-worst-ecological-offenders/.

Global Footprint Network. Open Data Platform, 2021, data.footprintnetwork.org/#/?

Earth Overshoot Day. “Country Overshoot Days 2020.” Earth Overshoot Day, 25 Jan. 2021, www.overshootday.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days/.

Russell, Cliodhna. “International Report Puts Ireland as Bottom of the Class in Global Environmental Ratings.” TheJournal.ie, www.thejournal.ie/global-report-environment-1701766-Oct2014/.