Lecture 2 - The impact of humans on biodiversity, automated transcript
May 25, 2021
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So in the first lecture in this series of three we looked at what biodiversity is
and how its measured and Quantified in this lecture, we're going to look at the
impacts that humans are having on biodiversity around the world and why that's important.
So this I'm sure you're all aware of the impacts that humans are having on the natural
world. Not only does it feature in lots of news and lots of science but also not
so popular culture. So there's lots of films and books and other things that look
forward into the future and often with a sort of a negative view. So if we continue
down the same path of the strong nature, where we end up in one of these,
Slightly post-apocalyptic or negative Future's. So we have things everything from
kind of Wally from Disney to Philip k--, dicks Do Androids Dream of Electric sleep
sleep, which is the basis for the film Blade Runner. And then these are the kind
of projections of future where humans have destroyed the natural world.
I'm so human impact on the natural world are not new. They've been going on for
thousands of years and this slide here just shows the rough time. That the late
pleistocene mass extinction started in different parts of the world. As to what
this was was the extinction of mostly large-bodied. Mammals, and other species that
seemed to coincide with the movement of humans around the world.
So the one of the hypotheses, what caused this, there are many hypotheses but there's
good evidence that humans had at least a fairly large part to play in the extinction
of these animals. So you can see that it's different in different parts of the world
because it took humans evolved in Africa and then move it out. So, as this movement
happened, you tend to see large body mammals, especially going extinct.
Bleah due to overhunting, by humans are humans arrived. They need food. And they
had these animals to Extinction it may be that this would coincide with other factors.
There's some theories about climatic factors and things like that and but it seems
that humans have been causing you think shins for a long period of time so you can
see that the places that humans got to first so Australia. Humans, managed to get
there very quickly as lots of theories about how that happened.
The ancestors of the Aboriginal Australians got there, roughly 50,000 years ago
and that's when you see large-bodied. Mammals go extinct there and then different
places around the world until finally New Zealand. Madagascar another Pacific Islands.
It was more recently when humans finally managed to colonize other places. So that's
when we see extinctions and those places a bit of an exception here is Africa. So
lots of large. If you look at the Persistence of large, body mammals around the
world.
Forget has a largest concentration of them, and there's a lot of proportion of them
went extinct in this kind of time period, as lots of theories as to why, again,
one, is that humans coexisted with these large mammals there and evolve with them.
So they managed to evolve strategies to avoid humans and some other theories on
along those lines. But Africa is managed to hold on to a lot of its large body mammals
as, as southeast Asia. Really with elephant and different species of rhinos.
Yeah, that's just to say that human impacts natural world are not new and we've
been calling the sanctions for a long time. However, recent history has seen these
impacts and these effects accelerate very quickly. So, the IP Bes is the International
Panel for biodiversity and ecosystem Services. It's similar to the ipcc which some
people may have heard of. And what this is, is it brings together scientists and
experts from around the world to write reports on the state of biodiversity. And
then these reports are kind of some of the best evidence for
The current state of the natural world and and trajectories and predictions of what
will happen in under certain scenarios in the future. And as we can see, lots of
animals are threatened with Extinction, but it depends. It's quite a dependent on
the taxa that we're looking at. And Sam will be more.
Susceptible to Extinction than others due to human impacts. Some things to consider
which is that certain mammal species made all we're going extinct. Like we talked
about on the last slide it is late place the exemptions. So you know, if they're
correct a bit low, might be because all the sensitive ones have already gone extinct
or a lot, the sensitive ones help, but the basic takeaway is that Extinction rates
as we see in the bottom left here, have gone up very sharply since since kind of
historical times. But more recently during the 20th century,
And after the start of industrialization and into the 20th century, as technology
has improved as human, populations have grown and has resource. Use has shot up
really quickly.
And what this is doing is it's causing significant and largely irreversible changes
to species diversity on Earth. So we are causing extinctions at a much faster rate.
So they've humans have increased, the species Extinction rate by as much as 1,000
time times over the background rates, typical in the planets history.
Extinction is a natural process and has happened as long as there's been life on
Earth, but the difference in the modern day is that were causing us at a much greater
rate. As you can see in this chart on the right here, we have the extinction rates
per thousand species per Millennium in purple. There, you can see that there. They
would tend to be quite low on average, through the fossil record. The most of this
Extinction rates are estimated using the fossil record.
And the recent past we're up to about a hundred times, which it may be even higher
than that, up to 1,000 times as just said and then if we continue on the same trajectories
with resource use and human impacts on the natural world then it may get 10 times
the current rate. So right up to 10,000 and past the normal background Extinction
rate,
Not only that but we having other impacts as well. So it's not just Extinction.
We're moving animals and plants around and having species around the world so that
the bio to you find in different places becoming more homogeneous. So species such
as rats and pigeons are very ubiquitous around the world now and other species as
well. Are spreading around. So we're seeing the same species everywhere so everywhere
become more homogeneous which means more similar to everywhere else rather than
An heterogenous, which is a word that I can't figure heterogeneous. I think so.
There are declines happening everywhere, but they are geographically variable. So
this is a an index called the biodiversity intactness index as won't get massively
into how this is calculated, but if you want to have a look, this is rather than
the ipbs reports. As we looked at here, this is the WWF living planet report, which
is just another summary of the evidence for human impacts the
Old. So we can see that by diverse intactness is lower in the asia-pacific and it
is higher in the Americas. So this is slightly geographically variable
but even places where it's less compromised, the grinds of this absorbing very significant
are definitely reason to be you to be worried. They're not only geographically variable,
but they're also taxonomically very well. So here on the left, we have the index
of species survival to the lower. You are the worse, it is. And you can see that.
Whilst there's been reductions everything bony fishes, are having have a better
index of species of I will then confers and Crustaceans and corals which on which
I much lower in the kind of towards the present day now. So there are bendable happened,
Klein's and impact everywhere but these things that are variable and it's not just
Extinction that's relevant. So Extinction is the whole species dying out there.
Every individual, that's why she's dying but it's not just that it's important.
We also want to think about abundance, so if we've got lots and lots of species
that persists but a very low abundance has, it's not really much better than having
everything go extinct. And there's many reasons for this including ecosystem function
and service that we talked about the last lecture. So it's not just diversity. That's
important. Is also abundant, as we can see, there's been huge declines in abundance
of of species over the last 50 or so years.
So here, we're looking at over 20,000, almost 21,000 populations of over 4,000 species
and this showed average decline of around 60% of two-thirds of you. The individuals
of these species have disappeared. So this is again we can see the evidence for
the very big impacts that humans are having on the natural world.
So, and again, this is just more evidence, more indicators that show the impact
that humans are having and how its accelerating. So that's another thing to think
about is that, whilst human impacts have been going on for a long time. So thousands
of years and in - Revolution happened in the 1700 s. So we've had kind of modern
industrial technology and Industrial technology for a few hundred years now. There's
been a real acceleration throughout the second half of the
Century of resource use and other things. Which we will talk about how the end of
this lecture but these are just some indicated that. So more land was converted
to cropland in a 30 years after 1950 and in the hundred fifty years between 79 June
1850 and we're losing lots of lots of different ecosystems and we're also increasing
our resource use very, very quickly.
Yeah. So this is again is that it looking at different species. We're looking at
the the conversion of different habitats and you can see again this is quite geographically
very well and it varies by biome. So lots of places have already lost much of their
natural biome. So the green there is the original by and lost by 1950. So as we
can see there's a few
the bottom that haven't lost very much so Tundra and boreal forest unless very much,
but if we look at the topic,
Yeah, the next rain forests temperate, forests have lost, almost up to 70% of their
extent by 1950 and what this reflects which we'll talk about a bit in a while, is
the the value of these different habitats for human use? So the large thing here
is whether or not these different biomes suitable for agriculture and there's other
things well by the history of human habitation. So Tundra, boreal forests, very
cold. Not very good at agriculture. Haven't had a very long history
If dense human settlement, therefore, they haven't been converted to a great extent.
However, the ones at the top, here are places that are probably very suitable for
agriculture and I've also been inhabited by humans for a long time at quite a high
densities. So, there's a up until 1950. There's been a large large amounts of these
vitamins have been converted and then the red, the orange, and the red here, what
Orange shows lost between V 1950 1990 and then red is a projection
Ian. So some of these places that haven't actually been converted to a very large
extent up until now. So if we look at Tropical and subtropical coniferous, forests
there, the projection is in the future in the next, 50 years, or 30 years. Now,
I guess there's going to be a huge conversion of those places as human. Populations
expand as Agricultural and expands and as resource, use by humans gets larger.
And as I mentioned before, a lot of this is because the land is being converted
for human use to. This is what's driving this reduction in the size of these, habitats
or reduction, the extent of these habitats. So this work here which is talked about
bit more in the conservation. Set of lectures looks at the potential vegetation
in different places so it largely aligns with the different habitats outlined here.
So this is dependent on
Environmental conditions. Why we get certain habitats in certain areas is covered
in the tropical diversity, set of lectures. But this work did it is it compared
these potential vegetation zones to the land, use that you actually see on the ground.
And instead of biomes, which is this potential vegetation type at the bottom here,
we have an anthro which takes account of the vegetation type but also human impacts.
So as you can see, there's large areas of the world, almost
Everywhere really apart from the kind of the deserts, the tundra, and the very far
north. Some of the deep jungles the Congo in the Amazon. Some of Southeast Asia
has been converted all around the world so we have villages in purple identical
Mountain red which contrary see here but they'll be the cities and then large amounts
of croplands. So the yellow areas. So these are places that can support a durable
and culture since the grown crops and if you can't grow crops, then lots of places.
Convert to converted to rangeland. So this is places that way they raise people
raise livestock. So this tends to be drier areas. So, lots of Australia, a lot of
sub-Saharan Africa, that's too dry to maintain crops. Lots of Southern USA, and
Central America. Lots of Central Asia, and those places have Range Line. So you
can see here that it's almost all of the world that's being converted to human,
use to some extent, there's only
smallish areas that are either semi-natural or wildlands still
And what the slat? What this line has been converted for is slightly variable. So
briefly talks about how it's restricted by how it's restricted by the environment
that's available such as the rainfall and temperature. So in very dry air is your
struggle to grow crops. So in you tend to people tend to raise livestock instead
what this looks at is the food production per area as a fraction of total cropland.
So the
Are these places are the more the crops that are grown there. Go directly to feed
humans. So in the area, just south of the Sahara in lots of India and East East
China, and Southeast Asia, the mainland southeast. Asia is re almost all of the
crops are grown there. Go director future humans, the more you get towards yellow
green and then finally blew the more that the crop there doesn't directly go to
feed humans, what these cops are used for instead is biofuel and sometimes feeding
livestock
One. And what this is is what this means. Why this is important rather is that the
less crop land is used for human consumption, the less efficient the system is really.
So yes, we are getting food from the livestock but the general rule of thumb is
that each level of the food chain. Got Peach, trophic level, you lose 90% of your
energy so you only maintain 10%. So if we eating animals that have eaten the plants,
it's a much lower.
It's much less efficient system because we're getting much less of the energy from
the animals. A lot of it's been lost in the system then if we were eating the plants
directly so that's why this is important and this is why
It's not just.
What is happening like the land that's been converted directly this important source
of what's being used for because the more Blue Area we have on the world here, the
more area will need in total to feed ourselves.
So it's not just land, use change. That's important for it's not the only impact
that humans have in the natural world. Rather climate change is another one of these,
very important things. One of the very important and ubiquitous impacts that humans
are having on the natural world. So, this is data from a particular climate science
Special Report, which is outlined on the left there.
What these graphs here show is the increasing temperature, plaintiff is the top,
see service in the middle. So an anomaly here is where 0 would be the expected,
expected, long-term approach, and then positives show warmer than that woman average
or greater than average sea level, the bottom there and then - is show lower than
expected. I temperatures and sea level. So you can see lots of indicators, lots
of sources of data.
Show that the Earth is definitely warming which leads not only to greater temperatures,
but other impacts such as sea level change and some of these other impacts here.
So it's not just temperature is changing. We're also losing a lot of snow cover
and Ice extent glaciers like my right here and then other things as well, including
ocean acidification, as the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, dissolves in the sea
and other impacts. So
so climate change is having impacts on the natural world everywhere globally and
it's another one of the very important drivers of anthropogenic change around the
world. So this is one thing that's causing the natural well to change rapidly and
it's one of the causes of the extinctions that we were looking at at the start of
this lecture.
So we cannot just measure the the current pass changes and into the present, we
can also predict future changes under different different possible scenarios of
omission production and different scenarios Of Human Action.
And the different lines on these graphs just show some of these different scenarios.
So RC p on the right here. Something that the ipcc uses which is a representative
concentration pathway. So basically it just means that it shows how the temperature
projects to change under different scenarios of emissions reduction by countries
around the world. And the ones on the left there are just are similar just projections
on the different scenarios. So we can see that no matter what we do, the temperature
is going to rise.
Little bit, but is very dependent on how much action governments and other people
around the world take to cut emissions. So there's potential scenarios which are
business as usual. Where we end up with 8 degree warming by the end of the century,
which would be catastrophic. Not only for humans, but for the natural world. However,
if we start to take action, much more quickly than we are now, we can limit warming
to below 2 degrees. The Paris agreement Target is 1.5. It seems unlikely that we're
going to meet that, but if we can get below to, we can hopefully,
Manage some of the potential problems is going to cause any more than that. I'm
going to start seeing really a huge changes to the natural world and huge problems
for humans. Again, the amount of warming amount of change isn't the same everywhere.
It's very specially variable so we can see that generally in some of these Continental
areas. That's we're expecting the greatest amount of change and so those are the
areas that we potentially want to.
Think about when we're planning conservation, the face of climate change, it's not
just see my god. Really, this is talk about more in the conservation. So lectures
again. So we, I go through some of the effects of this climate change on different
types of species, but the other type of species were like to think about here, are,
and those in polar regions and in cold regions. So with melting snow is going to
be huge changes in those places and melting permafrost, which not only changes
System. But also will have a positive reinforcement effect because when permafrost
melts you get a lot of production of methane as organic matter starts to rot
But it's not just polar species species at high altitude that also in danger because
generally as you go higher it gets colder. So as the warming happens there temperatures
soared move up in altitude and that means that species can migrate up. But if they're
really at the top of those mountains though, if there's nowhere else highest to
go and the warming continues, then they may eventually go extinct.
So, all these changes which includes climate change, biodiversity loss itself, as
I said, ocean acidification chemical, pollutants, chemical pollution we can look
at whether or not these are sustainable. Lot of means is that can we continue to
have these effects natural world and stay within what this paper terms planetary
boundaries?
I'm out these authors. Describe these planetary boundaries are as is a safe operating
space for Humanity. So if we stay Within These boundaries and we can probably either
avoid changes natural world or we can manage those changes without kind of catastrophic
impacts. However, once we cross these boundaries, we might reach things that are
often termed thresholds, or tipping points. And what this means is you reach a certain
point.
It so, say with climate change and the climate very quickly and probably irreversibly
changes to a new stable State, some amount of we got stable, but to a new state
where the natural world looks very different to how it used to. So Crossing these
planetary boundaries becomes very difficult to predict what's going to happen, but
it is likely to be catastrophic for humans and nature.
And these are some of these, a system processes that I've just put up in the table
on the previous one. So it's not just climate change. Also looking at interference
with nitrogen and phosphorus Cycles, ozone to split depletion. So that's something
that was very big tall. The end of the 20th century with chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons,
which were part of refrigeration units. So they released in the atmosphere, they
reacted with ozone which is a type of oxygen that protects the surface of the world
from
Some solar radiation that can be damaging and these this reaction with creating
be called in the ozone, mainly at the poles. And that was causing problems for again,
humans and nature. So it's not just, this is we need to conserve the natural world.
We also need to protect ourselves from a lot of these impacts.
This is a diagram looking at whether or not we're passing Crossing these planetary
boundaries. So the pantry boundaries here are the things in green. So for certain
things we might be still Within These boundaries. And so whilst ozone, depletion
was a huge problem in the 20th century. There was a very effective treaty sign called
the Montreal protocol, that effectively banned CFCs for a lot of uses. And the ozone
layer started to re-establish and it's been one of the
Success, stories of environmentalism globally with the ability to avoid that. There's
several reasons why that's been successful at other things hasn't as it was mainly
one source of this. Pollutant, it's quite easy to tackle it and they're also Alternatives
available so it's quite easy to switch from one to the other things. Like climate
change burning phosphorus is so integral to developed economies that it becomes
much more difficult to agree, but how to tackle these things
So, some of the other ones we're probably staying Within These boundaries at the
moment. However, other ones either, haven't been Quantified, so chemical pollution,
and I'm its atmospheric aerosol loading there and other ones we've shot bypass these
boundaries, so climate change and the nitrogen cycle and you can see here, biodiversity
loss is the one that these authors identify this really being a huge problem. So
and that's one of the reasons why we're focusing on that in this course.
So yeah, this is again, just a very similar similar diagram but from a slightly
different set of authors with some slightly different sections on it. So there's
green here we're staying within the boundary and yellow its uncertainty and in red
it's very high risk and we've gone past the tone there's only one certainty and
way it would definitely causing huge problems. So again
Nitrogen phosphorus cycles and loss of genetic diversity. Here are the big big problems.
The ones that have really shot past those boundaries.
And what they saw that also highlights is the the large areas of kind of missing
knowledge. We have. So, Jesse diversity is the diversity of of genes and genomes
within species. And so, we know we've got a lot of data on this kind of things,
and we can see that we're really getting rid of a lot of that diversity. Have a
functional diversity, is a bit harder to measure, it harder to Define as lock much
less data on the exact impact that humans are having on that. And so,
Ties into what we talked about the last lecture where with the relationship between
diversity and function. So as we saw in the last lecture and there's lots of evidence
that increasing diversity leads to higher ecosystem, stability. And there's positive
relationships between function and diversity. However, we're still building the
evidence of this and it's it's not as clear cut as some of these other.
Areas of degradation here. So there's still quite a lot of question marks over that
and how much functional diversity we're losing. So, is there going to be redundancy?
Will some species be able to take over the function of others and those kind of
things. And also Eco systems are very complex. So there's often unforeseen consequences
of particular actions. So it becomes difficult to predict what's going to happen.
If certain species are lost or certain abundance is go down,
That is why it's a big question mark down the other kind of the functional diversity
part of this diagram.
So with all these impacts that humans are having on the natural world, there is
a it's been proposed that we're now entering a new Epoch called the anthropocene
as the Holocene was the last 10,000 years and relative stability. So we still have
we still have glaciers and ice caps around but we're not in kind of one of these
huge basil.
It's where ice sheets get very, very far down from the poles at to higher latitudes,
to lower latitudes. So the last glacial maximum was before this around 21,000 years
ago. So we've since then the glaciers really look great and retreated and we've
had relative stability of the last 10,000 years as humans have been
Kind of settling down and becoming more sedentary, moving away from the hunter-gatherer
lifestyle into more farming communities, in the kind of the modern communities,
we see today. So there's a hypothesis that due to the ubiquitous impacts of humans
due to the pervasive nature of our effects on the natural world. We're now entering
the anthropocene which is defined by human activity. There was a question about
when it started with talk about in a minute. I think it's now been accepted as a
real
Classification. And not only, are we having serious impacts an actual world, but
it's likely that a lot of these impacts will be preserved in the geological record
for thousands millions of years into the future. So as I said the based architecture
humans have had impacts natural world for thousands of years. However, there's been
a change in the kind of the magnitude of these impacts. So as we move from a hunter-gatherer
lifestyle into
To farming communities, there's been changes in these impacts has been. It's been
great impacts on natural world. And then with growth in human population size there's
been more and more use and overuse of natural resources and there's loads and loads
of different examples just from deforestation to wailing to fishing.
To the land use change. We talked about before to the burning fossil fuels. So there's
been a real growth of human impacts on the natural world. Both over the last thousands
last few hundred years but really, very seriously over the last throughout, the
20th century and into the 21st century. And we can see that here. It's often called
the Great acceleration. So there's been lots of different theories about when the
Anthropocene should start one is the image that agriculture around 10,000 years
ago. Another one is the European colonization of America. And so it's not about
big events here. It's also about whether not they have been recorded in the geological
record. So can we Define a often called the Golden Spike? So a particular level
in rock strata. Can we observe a change that?
Will be that recorded into the future. So, the European colonization of America
led to a huge very noticeable, drop, in CO2 levels. Because it was that event, was
associated with the death of thousands and thousands of people of indigenous people
in America, due to direct killing due to disease and many other things. And then,
so, the changes that those people had had on those ecosystems, including
Pastoral Lifestyles and other things like that led to regrowth of forests revegetation
in some areas. And so there was a big drop in CO2 levels as those plants absorb
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Some other potential dates are the height of nuclear
testing. I think it was around 1946 so that's left a lot of radioactive isotopes
in rocks around the world that will be in place for years to come and then there's
The other one, which is what we can look at here which is this thing called the
Great acceleration which is around 1950 when lots of indicators of human impacts
natural world really started to ramp up. So this is socio-economic Trends such as
population, GDP water, use things like that and then this is impacts on the natural
world system Trends. So we can see there's a bit of an uptick here at for carbon
dioxide methane. Ocean acidification threshold, biosphere degradation, so this 1950
days
Other one that's been proposed as a start for the anthropocene due to all these
accelerating indicators. And so, why is this happening wise and been this great
acceleration? Why is she human impact on the natural world becoming so large in
the recent recent decades? The root of the problem is people and therefore the kind
of population of people around the world, I will talk a little bit about in a minute
about why just focus.
Population growth in population. Change is a bit disingenuous and it doesn't tell
the whole story. So here you can see that human population was very, very low for
a long time and only in the last few hundred years has it really started to grow.
So exponentially and populations are becoming much much bigger. So it's around two
points. Sorry to run seven point. Eight billion people on earth now and then there's
projections to get to almost 10 billion by 2050 if we continue on.
The current trajectory and then by 2100, who knows? So these things. The bottom
here is certainly true. So the exponential human growth cannot continue. We live
on a finite Planet. Got finite amount of resources to support everyone. So the more
people there are the less resources there are per person. So this is certainly true.
And these, this exponential growth has definitely led to more resource. Use the
thing. We need to consider a little about this first, and then I'll get on top of
what we need to consider.
so,
Developed Nations including Europe, USA someplace like that population growth is
slowly declining. I think in Japan, it's become negative their population. I think
is shrinking large population. Growths are now going to come from developing areas
of the world and half of the world's population growth expected to come from those
countries, that top that
India, Nigeria, the DRC Pakistan Ethiopia Tanzania. The USA, still actually growing
quite quickly, which is a slight exception to the rule, in terms of developed Nations.
But we can see at the bottom here, that 83 countries, now fertility rates below,
the level required, the replacement of successive Generations.
So we can see in these. So I don't think the USA supposed to be the top, that I
think it's mostly different country. I think the u.s. is supposed to come in the
bottom anyway. It doesn't matter too much. Basically, it's just a highlight that
there is a divide in the amount of population growth that we're going to predict
in the future. And it's going to tend to come from these less developed countries
as they develop. As Healthcare gets better. I things like that. The
Growth as technology, improves.
It means that population growth can really continue in a lot of these developing
countries.
However, what it doesn't mean is that we should persuade those developing countries
to stay underdeveloped. So there's two things about the two main sources here of
increasing resource. Use one is population growth. Absolutely. The other one is
that the more developed country becomes the more resources it since use.
As so, this can be seen in indicators of meat consumption, which tends to be less
effective than plant consumption as we talked about before car ownership. So the
use of fossil fuels to run cars, using airplanes to go on holiday or travel for
business or those kind of things. So the more wealthy country becomes the more developed
it is. The more resources, each citizen users on average. The more per capita resource
use we have
So this population growth is happening in these that country. So we have that side
of the equation. However, as they are relatively underdeveloped, compared to the
more the developed world, the their citizen average use less fewer resources. That's
not an argument for saying that these developing countries should should not develop
any further because they then they'll use more resources because it's hypocritical
or
The West to say, well we have these Lifestyles that give us all these benefits,
all these luxuries, but you can't do that because it's it's bad for the planet because
it's slightly hypocritical to say you can't do something we've already done.
And a big indicator of this is the current resource use which isn't evenly distributed
around the world. So some countries use far more resources than others. And as we
said, it's these some of these more developed countries. So we have on the left
here, we have cumulative, greenhouse gas emissions, but then we see them per capita.
So whilst China has some of the world's greatest greenhouse gas Emissions on a country
basis. If we look at it per capita, it's right.
Button here because there are many many people in China.
So we have to think about, not just the number of people but also the amount of
resources that each person is using. And
And think about this, when we kind of telling people what, you know, advising countries
about what to do in the face of climate change and the degradation of the natural
world.
So it's not the case that we can go and say as I just said to these countries and
say no you need to stay relatively undeveloped because we need to save the world.
Instead it's about trying to improve the quality of life and the living standards
for people in those countries whilst Trying to minimize the impact of the natural
world and also bringing down the resource use and impact on the natural world of
developed countries. So it's these industrialized countries such as
UK where I live and other places that have seen the benefits of industrialization
and development. There's a lot of those places people in those places. Now, that
are saying all we need to slow down and then a lot of the places like that that
are driving the International International movement to try and prevent climate
change. It's not to say that other countries aren't engage with it and other people
aren't. They definitely are. It's just it.
Can come across as hypocritical for those countries who've seen all these great
benefits and continue to admit are responsible for many of the historical, greenhouse
gas emissions and continue to be. So turn around to relatively undeveloped countries
and say no, you can't have the benefits that we have, so it's not population. Growth
is not the whole story, it definitely isn't. We also need to think about this difference
in resource use and how we tackle that whilst allowing countries to develop and
improve the
Quality of life that citizens and reduce poverty and all those other things that
go along with that.
I slept in this lecture, these are the like they're reading. So I recommend for
this one again. Lots of diagrams and stuff in this lecture or the citations are
in the notes on the PowerPoint. So if you want to look at any of those, just look
at the notes of the PowerPoint that should be uploaded along with this video. So,
great, thanks very much.