TABLE OF CONTENTS According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science Population and Environment Atlas (AAAS, 2004)
Consumption and technology impact on the environment by way of two major types of human activity.
First, we use resources. We occupy or pre-empt the use of space, and so modify or remove entirely the habitats of many wild species. We extract or take resources - growing food, catching fish, mining minerals, pumping groundwater or oil. This affects the stock of resources available for humans and for other species in the future.
Second, we dump wastes - not just those that consumers throw away, but all the waste solids, liquids and gases that are generated from raw material to final product. These affect the state of land, groundwater, rivers, oceans, atmosphere and climate.
These activities are essentially the take and waste impacts of what I shall call the techno-process [5] which describes our primitive and unconnected industrial metabolism and the linear flow of matter through our economy.
The techno-process is a mostly enterprise-based linear process of extracting resources, manipulating them as required (modifying substances), making something with them, using what is made and then throwing away what no longer has utility. [6] The impact of the techno-process on the planet is significant. Resources are not unlimited and the planet does not have an infinite capacity to reabsorb wastes. Given the diverse nature and huge scale of the techno-process and the many linkages of this process to...
