From Environmental Technology
Ecological Footprint
(www.footprintnetwork.org) Ecological Footprint : Overview
The Ecological Footprint is a resource management tool that measures how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its wastes under prevailing technology.
Renewable Resources
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_resource) Renewable resource
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A renewable resource is any natural resource that is depleted at a rate slower than the rate at which it regenerates. A resource must have a way of regenerating itself in order to qualify as renewable.
Renewable resources include oxygen, fresh water and biomass. Renewable resources may include materials such as wood and leather.
Plastics, gasoline, coal, natural gas and other items produced from fossil fuels are nonrenewable because no mechanisms replenish them. The abiogenic petroleum origin theory may be such a mechanism but petroleum is currently being depleted at a rate far exceeding discoveries of fields which could qualify as abiogenic in origin.
Environmental Sustainability
(www.ecoearth.info) Featured Link: Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index - measures the environmental performance of each of the world's countries, assessing how close each comes to specific targets for environmental performance, providing benchmarks for current national pollution control and natural resource management
Sustainable Development
(www.iisd.org) For development to be sustainable it must integrate environmental stewardship, economic development and the well-being of all people-not just for today but for countless generations to come. This is the challenge facing governments, non-governmental organizations, private enterprises, communities and individuals.
Enviromentalism
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmentalism) Environmentalism is the support or involvement with the environmental movement by environmentalists.
It is a social movement which seeks to influence the political process by lobbying, education, activism and setting an example in order to protect natural resources and ecosystems. Some of the issues of concern for the environmental movement are pollution, species extinction, waste reduction, recycling, the threat of global warming and ozone depletion, and genetically engineered foods
Emission Reduction Credits
(www.evomarkets.com/emissions/index) Emission Reduction Credits (ERCs) are required for new major emission sources, or sources undergoing major expansions, by various state air agencies in regions that do not meet the EPA's national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). Offsets are available for a variety of pollutants, including nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOC), carbon monoxide (CO), particulate matter (PM) and reactive organic gases (ROG). ERCs are a concern for developers of new electric generation facilities or major industrial plant developers such as steel mills, chemical refineries, paper plants, arc furnaces, etc.
enviromental ethics
(plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-environmental) Environmental Ethics
Environmental ethics is the discipline that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its nonhuman contents. This entry covers: (1) the challenge of environmental ethics to the anthropocentrism (i.e., human-centeredness) embedded in traditional western ethical thinking; (2) the early development of the discipline in the 1960s and 1970s; (3) the connection of deep ecology, feminist environmental ethics, and social ecology to politics; (4) the attempt to apply traditional ethical theories, including consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, to support contemporary environmental concerns; and (5) the focus of environmental literature on wilderness, and possible future developments of the discipline.
environmental impact statement
(ohioline.osu.edu/cd-fact/0188.html) Whenever projects or programs are planned, there are potential impacts upon the environment. When these proposed projects are federally funded, such impacts become important to the public. What these impacts may be and the magnitudeoftheir effectare reported in Environmental Impact Statements. This fact sheet addresses both the purpose and the limitations of these written public documents.
Earth Day
(www.earthday.gov) Earth Day is a time to celebrate gains we have made and create new visions to accelerate environmental progress. Earth Day is a time to unite around new actions. Earth Day and every day is a time to act to protect our pl
Chernobyl
(www.chernobyl.co.uk)On April 25th -26th, 1986 the World's worst nuclear power accident occurred at Chernobyl in the former USSR (now Ukraine). The Chernobyl nuclear power plant located 80 miles north of Kiev had 4 reactors and whilst testing reactor number 4 numerous safety procedures were disregarded. At 1:23am the chain reaction in the reactor became out of control creating explosions and a fireball which blew off the reactor's heavy steel and concrete lid.
The Chernobyl accident killed more than 30 people immediately, and as a result of the high radiation levels in the surrounding 20-mile radius, 135,00 people had to be evacuated.
