Hot Mess

What is “the environment”? Well, it’s everything, and it’s everywhere, including you and me. Just about every part of human civilization depends on a healthy and stable environment. Yet, human activity is causing pollution, climate change, and species loss, all of which disrupt that health and stability. So how do we study our environment in order to understand these changes and how we might fix them? That’s the purpose of environmental science.

The air we breathe is this extremely precious thing. Especially, because there is so little of it - the atmosphere is really thin, it’s like if you wrapped a single layer of plastic wrap around a basketball. That thin sheet is what makes this tiny little planet in the vast solar system, and as far as we know - universe - able to sustain life. In this episode of the Essentials of Environmental Science, we’re going to look at some ways in which human beings have negatively affected the thin layer of earth’s atmosphere by filling it with pollutants, how we study the atmosphere, and how we can protect it.

I imagine you’re familiar with the concept of water. Maybe you’ve gotten caught unprepared in a rainstorm, watched ducks hang out in a pond, had a snowball fight, or swam in the ocean. If so, you were witnessing part of the water cycle. But the water cycle, or the hydrologic cycle, if you want to get multi-syllabic about it, is more than just what we can see. The hydrologic cycle links together the atmosphere, the soil, and all the living and nonliving parts of this planet.

Let me make something super clear. If you take nothing else away, remember this: Soil is NOT dirt. Soil is productive, it’s useful. It’s fundamental to life as we know. It is an essential natural resource, a major component of most ecosystems, and has been celebrated in art and song for millenia. Dirt is just soil in the wrong place. Soil is the thin layer of inorganic and organic material wrapping the earth like a cozy blanket. It is where the abiotic lithosphere (that is, the upper mantle and crust of the Earth, the airless, unmoving underground stuff) meets all the living things in the biosphere.

When I first took an environmental science class, I didn’t quite get why energy got its own section. Because in a lot of ways, energy feels so detached from the environment. In order to produce and move energy, we dig deep into the ground for fuel, we burn that fuel to create electricity, and we clear trees to make room for power lines. It all seemed in opposition to the environment. And in a lot of ways, it is, most energy production is entirely extractive. The extraction, and the resulting pollution from most energy sources has an immense impact on the environment, and that’s why we’ve got to talk about energy in the context of environmental science.

Over the last few years it feels like young people have taken over the climate movement. They’re out striking, suing national governments, occupying congressional offices, and taking to the streets. And according to polls, they care more, with 70% of young adults saying they worry about global warming compared to 56% of people over 55. But of course - climate action isn’t new - people have been marching, protesting, and demanding change since the 60s and 70s. People who were grandparents today were fighting for the climate when they were young people, and many are still at it today. It made us wonder: What’s changed since the early days of the environmental movement? How are the stakes different today? And what’s the best way to speak up about climate change?

More Americans than ever believe climate change is happening. Two in three registered voters say they’re worried about it. Four in ten say it’s a “very important” factor in their vote in the 2020 presidential election. And 49% say that they’d be more likely to vote for a candidate who “Strongly Supports Taking Action to Reduce Global Warming” vs 16% who say they’d be less likely. But that popular support for action hasn’t been translated into actual bold steps to reduce America’s reliance on fossil fuels. And the greenhouse gases those fuels cause are a big reason that the planet is on course to exceed the 2 degrees of global warming scientists say would mean permanent, dangerous climate change. So why’s there this big discrepancy? Meet the biggest obstacle to US action on climate change: the Attitude-Behavior gap.

If you’re in the United States and you turn on the TV, accidentally open twitter, or start to read a newspaper app, chances are you’ll see a bunch of people talking about the upcoming federal election.