Lecture 1

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McMaster University *

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1SO3

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Geography

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Oct 30, 2023

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docx

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What is Sustainability?  Enduring into long-term future systems operate on their own Sustainable development  Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs o Ecological sustainability o Economic sustainability o Social inclusion Triple Bottom Line  Three pillars of sustainability are connected o Economic o Environmental o Social Systems Thinking  Interconnected parts  Whole is greater than sum of its parts  Properties are emergent properties (if we add something or take away something then properties will change)  Systems are nested within other systems (Russian doll kind of thing) o One change can lead to multiple changes Carrying Capacity  Maximum number of individuals a given environment can support indefinitely Ecological Footprint  Demand placed on nature for resources consumed and wastes absorbed, expressed as land area Natural Capital  Plants, animals, soil, water air  Ecosystem services  Planetary “saving account”

Resilience  Capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and retain its basic function and structure What makes a system resilient?  Diversity  Redundancy  Modularity (somethings exist within systems but are not interconnected to everything else)  Connectivity Complex Adaptive Systems  Emergent properties – outcomes cannot be predicted  Can have more than one stable state  Tipping points o Critical thresholds: small changes cause state changes o Systems crossing a critical threshold into a new regime  LAKE EXAMPLE Living in the Anthropocene Earth has entered Anthropocene epoch  International commission on stratigraphy o Official body for establishing geological time scale  Anthropocence working group

o Has determined a new epoch should be officially designated o Now studying: what physical evidence should be used as its marker? Planetary Boundaries  9 boundaries identified to maintain stable, Holocene-like state SEVERN CULLIS – SUZUKI AT RIO SUMMIT 1992  Organization called ECCO  Talking about her future and for all generations to come  World hunger, animals dying  Holes in ozones, chemical in air  Telling the adults to get their chit together; talking about wealth differences between countries  Make their actions reflect their words Watch this video and then watch the next one with Greta Thunberg. Are the messages different? Has anything changed in the 27 years between meetings?  They are both children trying to get the adults to take action  Severn’s focus was more on taking action whereas Gretta’s was also on educated the public and presenting the entirety of the problem to them  Based on the speeches nothing has really changes, the leaders and scientists have sidelined the crisis and it has only gotten worse GRETA THUNBERG'S SPEECH AT THE R20 AUSTRIAN WORLD SUMMIT, VIENNA, MAY 2019  Climate activist from Sweden  Talking about changing the way they deal with and speak of the climate crisis; it is an emergency  People in general aren’t well educated on the topic, they know about greenhouses gases but don’t know the effects  Talks about Paris agreement, runaway greenhouse effect

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