A short powerpoint on the carbon cycle, natural capital, and rights for ecosystems based on readings for the Pratt Sustainable Design Foundations Course.

1. Models for Valuing Natural
Resources
Sustainable Design Foundation | Sam Bleiberg

2. Selected Readings from The Sustainable
Urban Development Reader
Defining the Problem
The Rights of Nature
Valorizing Natural Resources
What Is an Ecological Footprint

3. Defining the Problem: Climate Change and
Environmental Collapse
Bill McKibben’s article, The End of Nature, identifies the physical
phenomena behind climate change.
He points out human behaviors causing global climate change and
argues avoiding catastrophe will require dramatic change.

4. Burning Fossil Fuels Disrupts the Carbon Cycle

5. CO2 and the Greenhouse Effect

6. The Warmest Years on Record (1880-2018)
1. 2016
2. 2015
3. 2017
4. 2018
5. 2014

7. An Important Update
The International Panel on Climate Change released its second report in
2018, marking one of the most important policy documents on climate
change.
A previous report found two degrees Celsius as the tipping point for
many catastrophic effects of global warming. The new report identified
one and a half degrees as a new tipping point. It also identified that in
the most probable model, we will need to hit aggressive emissions
reductions targets by 2020 to avert this scenario.

8. What are negative effects from climate
change?

9. “The sacrifices demanded may be on a
scale we can’t imagine and won’t like.”

10. The Rights of Nature
Aldo Leopold’s essay, The Land Ethic, makes the moral case for
protecting natural resources.
He argues that the natural environment deserves rights similar to
human and property rights.

11. Land as an Energy Circuit
Leopold describes land as an “energy circuit”, with inputs and outputs
from different organisms. Interlacing food chains form complex webs
where energy from the sun migrates from bacteria and plants through
the food chain up to predators.

12. A Moral Obligation to Conserve Shared
Resources
Leopold argues that how an individual, business, or institution impacts
natural resources should be a topic of moral concern. He finds
economics alone too limited to inspire sustainable land use.
He argues for a “social evolution”, with “social approbation for right
actions” and “social disapproval for wrong actions”.

13. “An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on
freedom of action in the struggle for
existence. An ethic, philosophically, is a
differentiation of social from antisocial
conduct.”

14. What is a natural resource that you feel a
moral obligation to protect?

15. Valorizing Natural Resources
Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawkins argues that our economic system
should change to incorporate the value and costs of our impact on the
natural environment.
In other words, economic “prices” should incorporate the costs and
values of resource limitations, waste, and other externalities.

16. What GDP Is Missing
Hawkins argues that GDP only captures a limited picture of the wealth
of society.
For example, GDP does not currently represent the depletion of natural
resources or economic activity towards something harmful, such as the
production of weapons.

19. Amory Lovins and De-Coupled Growth
Hawkins summarizes the writings of Amory Lovins, who argued that
focusing on energy conservation and efficiency would result in more
dynamic, productive, and diversified economic activity.
For example, building a coal plant invests millions of dollars in research
and training to burn coal. The same money spent on conserving energy
could inspire many different strategies and skill sets.
Following this “soft path” will conserve more energy and employ more
people.

20. Policy Levers for Natural Capitalism
Hawkins argues that we need to reevaluate subsidies and taxes to limit
negative externalities and encourage positive externalities with regards
to natural resources.

21. What is an example of one subsidy and one
tax that impact natural resources?

22. Calculating Ecological Footprints
In What is an Ecological Footprint?, Mathis Wackernagel and William
Rees put forth a methodology for calculating the dependency of
individuals and communities on natural resources.
They define an ecological footprint as the amount of land required to
support an individual or community’s lifestyle.

23. Factors in an Ecological Footprint
Their model factors in several types of land uses:
• Energy: the amount of land operating as a carbon sink necessary to
absorb CO2 emissions from energy consumption
• Degradation: land rendered useless from impacts of activity
• Garden: land for vegetable and fruit production
• Crop: land for crops
• Pasture: pasture for meat, dairy, and wool
• Forest: forest area, replenished every 70 years

24. What is one way you could reduce your
ecological footprint?