Explores the human impacts on environment that lead to serious ecological crises, an innovative resource for students, professionals, and researchers alike
Ecosystem Crises Interaction: Human Health and the Changing Environment provides a timely and innovative framework for understanding how negative human activity impacts the environment, and how seemingly disparate factors connect to, and magnify, hazardous consequences under a changing climate. Presenting a coherent, holistic perspective to the subject, this compelling textbook and reference examines the diverse, often unexpected links that connect our complex world in context of global climate change.
The text illustrates how eco-crisis interaction - the synergistic interface of two or more environmental events or pollutants - can multiply to produce harmful health effects that are greater than their additive impact. This concept is highlighted through numerous real and relatable examples, from the use of sediment rock in hydraulic and drinking water filtration systems, to the connections between human development and crises such as deforestation, emergent infectious diseases, and global food insecurity. Throughout the text, specific examples present opportunities to consider broader questions about the extinction of species, populations, and ways of life. Presenting a balanced investigation of the interaction of contemporary ecological dangers, human behavior, and health, this unique resource:
- Explores how complex interactions between global warming and anthropogenic impairments magnify the diverse ecological perils and threats facing humans and other species
- Discusses roadblocks to addressing environmental risk, such as global elite polluters, the organized denial of climate change, and deliberate environmental disruption for financial gain
- Describes how the production and use of fossil fuels are driving a significant rise in carbon dioxide and other pollutants in the atmosphere and in the oceans
- Illustrates how industrial production is contributing to an array of environmental crises, including fuel spills, waste leakages, and loss of biodiversity
- Examines the critical ecosystems that are at risk from interacting stressors of human origin
Ecosystem Crises Interaction: Human Health and the Changing Environment is an ideal textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in courses including public and allied health, environmental studies, medical ecology, medical anthropology, and geo-health, and a valuable reference for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers in fields such as environmental health, global and planetary health, public health, climate change, and medical social science.
Table of Contents
Preface xi
1 Introduction: public health, EcoHealth, planetary health, and you 1
1.1 Connections 1
1.2 Is this a dangerous book? 1
1.3 Three alternative approaches to health and the environment 5
1.3.1 EcoHealth 6
1.3.2 One Health 8
1.3.3 Planetary health 10
1.4 Global warming or climate change? 12
1.5 Depth of the human footprint 13
1.6 Introducing ecocrises interactions and health 15
1.7 Thresholds in the environment 18
1.8 Sustainability of human life on Earth 18
1.9 How did things get this bad? 20
1.10 Age of the Anthropocene 21
1.11 The hottest year on record 23
1.12 Organization of this book 23
References 24
Part 1 Impact on ecosystems 31
2 Intricacies of ecosystems 33
2.1 The nature of nature and the pathway to understanding 33
2.2 Developing a historic understanding of ecology and ecosystems 33
2.2.1 Ancient Greece 33
2.2.2 Indigenous environmental knowledge 36
2.3 Modern ecology 41
2.3.1 Ecosystems 42
2.3.2 Biodiversity and the multitude of species 45
2.3.3 Regional and planet-wide natural interconnecting structures 53
2.3.4 Human-dominated ecosystems 54
2.3.5 Human ecology 55
References 58
3 The social and technological making of environmental crises 63
3.1 Earth is now a different place 63
3.2 The longue durée and the rise and development of capitalism 63
3.2.1 Toward environment crises: critical turning points in human history 64
3.3 Environmental neoliberalism and the polluting elites 76
3.4 The Anthropocene or the Capitolocene? 81
3.5 The future of Eaarth 83
References 83
4 Engaging catastrophe 90
4.1 Introduction to a dismal theme 90
4.2 Prepping for doomsday 91
4.3 The record of past radical environmental change 94
4.3.1 Planetary change and mass extinction 94
4.3.2 The sixth mass extinction? 97
4.3.3 Planetary change in the archeological record 101
4.4 Popular concern with the environment 104
4.4.1 History of the environmental movement 105
4.4.2 Environmental crisis and the media 111
References 112
5 A home in peril: major contemporary environmental crises 119
5.1 Case studies in contemporary environmental crises 119
5.2 Deforestation 119
5.3 Acidification of the oceans 122
5.4 Eutrophication of estuarine and coastal waters 125
5.5 Depletion of the oceans 132
5.6 Pollution of waters 137
5.7 Oil spills 141
5.8 Desertification 144
5.9 Concluding remarks 145
References 146
6 The threat of ecocrises interaction 157
6.1 Compounded perturbations and ecological surprises 157
6.2 Climate change and polluted Superfund sites 158
6.3 Global toxic sites and climate change 164
6.3.1 Camp Century, Greenland 167
6.4 The ecocrises of unfettered mining 169
6.5 Cement, asbestos, and climate change 171
6.6 The climate change-nuclear ecocrisis nexus 177
6.6.1 Radiation and health 178
6.6.2 Climate change and nuclear facilities 180
6.7 Concluding remarks 183
References 184
Part 2 Environmental crisis 193
7 Encountering degrading environments 195
7.1Complexities of the environment-health nexus 195
7.2 Ecosystem distress syndrome 199
7.3 Case studies of degraded environments 201
7.3.1 Degrading Arctic permafrost 201
7.3.2 Drugged aquatic environments 208
7.4 Case studies of fragmented environments 209
7.4.1 Fragmenting sky islands 212
7.4.2 Fragmenting forests 213
7.4.3 Fragmenting grasslands 215
7.5 The dilemma of simplified environments 216
7.6 Fragmented environments, ticks, and human health 217
7.7 Solastalgia: distress linked to environmental change 219
References 220
8 Climate change, crisis enhancement 229
8.1 Consensus on climate change 229
8.2 Driving climate change 230
8.3 How serious is climate change? 232
8.4 Drought and heatwaves 236
8.5 Melting and ice and tundra 241
8.6 Coastal flooding 245
8.7 The polar vortex 248
8.8 Hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, and tropical storms 249
8.9 Infectious diseases 250
8.10 Food loss to heat and insect pests 253
References 262
9 Business as deadly usual: resisting environmental science 272
9.1 A consistent pattern of climate change denial 272
9.2 A time of questioning environmental science 274
9.3 Skirting accountability: polluters, innocence, and the victim slot 278
9.4 Fighting for the “right” to pollute 279
9.5 Deadly business: Big Energy and the denial of climate change 282
9.5.1 Phase I: claiming global warming is a hoax 284
9.5.2 Phase II: admitting global warming is real, denying its urgency 290
9.5.3 Phase III: arguing we’re all in it together 292
9.6 The politics of climate change denial 294
9.7 The institutions of the climate change denial machine 295
9.8 Taking climate change deniers to court 298
9.9 Fundamentalist denial 299
References 300
Part 3 Human health risks with changing environment 309
10 Crossing boundaries and thresholds 311
10.1 Are there biophysical boundaries for humanity? 311
10.2 Key biogeochemical and biophysical Earth system processes 311
10.3 Exploring planetary boundaries 313
10.3.1 Global environmental governance and planetary boundaries 314
10.3.2 Modification of values used to define specific planetary boundary dimensions 316
10.3.3 Sustainable development goals and planetary boundaries 317
10.3.4 Downscaling planetary-level to subglobal boundaries 320
10.4 Environmental tipping points 325
References 332
11 Time for change? Toward sustainability, toward life 337
11.1 Why go to school? 337
11.2 Social movements 340
11.2.1 The local level 341
11.2.2 The regional/national level 346
11.2.3 The global level 354
11.3 Stepping toward change 359
11.4 Toward changing the system: addressing ultimate causes 362
11.5 The solidarity economy 363
11.6 Stateless democracy 365
11.7 Ecosocialism 367
References 368
Index 376
