Sustainability and Water Pollution

Sustainability

• Sustainability means meeting the needs of the present population without compromising the needs of future generations.
• Sustainability includes three components: environmental, social, and economic.

Water Pollution

• Water pollution can occur through natural causes such as volcanoes, algae blooms, animal waste, and dirt from storms and floods.
• Human activities that can cause water pollution include littering, driving cars, operating factories, and dumping chemicals.
• Main causes of water pollution can be through waste from cities, fertilizers, and other chemicals used to grow crops.

Climate Change

• Tree rings provide evidence of climate change from year to year in growth rings in their trunks.
• The greenhouse effect is a process where gases in the Earth's atmosphere trap the Sun's heat.
• The enhanced greenhouse effect is the impact on the climate from the additional heat retained due to the increased amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released by humans.

Greenhouse Gases

• The main human activities that create additional greenhouse gases include burning fossil fuels and farming and land use changes, especially deforestation.

The Greenhouse Affect on Earth

• The gases in the atmosphere keep the planet warm through the natural process of the greenhouse effect.
• The greenhouse effect traps outgoing radiation from the Earth, keeping the planet warm.

Carbon Cycle

• The carbon cycle describes how carbon moves between the atmosphere, soils, living creatures, the ocean, and human sources.

Space

• Changes to the Earth's orbit affect the planet's temperature, with a circular orbit resulting in a cooler planet and an oval orbit resulting in a warmer planet.
• Changes to the Earth's tilt also affect the planet's temperature, with a greater tilt resulting in cooler summers and warmer winters.
• The axis of the Earth wobbles over time, affecting the planet's temperature, with the North Pole pointing towards the Sun resulting in a warmer planet.

Human Wellbeing

• Human wellbeing means the ability for people to access the things they need to live a happy, healthy, and contented life.
• Wellbeing encompasses quality of life and happiness.

Measuring Human Wellbeing

• Key factors of human wellbeing include economic, health, education, political, and social components.
• Economic wellbeing includes access to basic needs such as food, clean water, shelter, education, and healthcare.
• Health wellbeing includes individuals' health, diet, strength, and fitness, as well as countries' health metrics such as life expectancy and infant mortality rate.
• Education wellbeing includes literacy, student-teacher ratio, and government expenditure on education.
• Political wellbeing includes free and fair elections, representation, and access to political information.
• Social wellbeing includes crime rate, cultural diversity, gender equality, and environmental sustainability.

GDP and Gini Coefficient

• GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is the total market value of all finished goods produced in a year.
• GDP per capita is the total value of goods and services divided by the population.
• The Gini coefficient measures the distribution of wealth.