SOC 105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 24: World Resources Institute, Holocene Extinction, Planetary Boundaries
Document Summary
Stems from the 1960s and 1970s cultural revolutions. Set in motion our greater attention towards environmental problems. People began to realize there are limits to growth. There has been recent research to understand the planetary conditions. They have mapped planetary boundaries, the ecological conditions necessary to maintain the earth. They have found that we have exceeded the planetary boundaries in many areas. Agriculture, drought, fire, logging, and ranching will damage 55% of amazon rain forests in next 20 years. World resources institute: more than 80% of the earth"s natural forests are already degraded. Harms biological productivity and millions of livelihoods. We are living in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. Measure: species lost per million species per year. On the pace we are currently on, it is projected that we will lose upward of of all living species by the end of the century. Roughly 1 billion lbz/day of synthetic chemicals eventually released into the environment.
