week1-201701/lecture1-outline-links.html

opening screen

LECTURE

• Impact depends on three major driving factors.
  • ipat
• We are going to go through these factors but focus on technology and how scientific approach can help.
  • see D2L course content tab
• Population and growth must be considered.
  • crucial but not the focus of this course
  • growth rate of a population - Excel simulation
  • similar compounding of growth of consumption (increase in resources/(person*year)
  • comparison from Schumacher 1973
• General categories of energy use
  • energy and social structure
  • new category is a post-carbon society
  • transition scenarios
    • A prosperous way down - Odum and Odum - pulsing
    • transitionnetwork.org
    • transition PDX
• Environmental impact is most severely felt by the poorest third of our society
  • environment-poverty
  • examples
• Portland and Portland State as a laboratory to understand how to lower impact
  • www.pdx.edu/sustainability
  • sustainability tour
• Critical look at IPAT relationship
  • it's not just a multiplication - it's shorthand for sets of relationships
  • there are interactions between the factors
    • Demographic transition - population growth rate changes with affluence and technology
    • low economic growth can lead to a poverty trap
    • sometime higher affluence can reduce impact - Kuznets curve
• What are we going to do?

COURSE DETAILS

• Lecture section
  • expectations (interaction)
  • work (show in D2L)
  • weekly rhythm
• Lab
  • mandatory