The three somewhat different approaches to health and the environment described in this section are all products of the increasing risk of anthropogenic environmental and climatic changes on species health on the one hand, and the growing awareness of this fact and of living in the Anthropocene on the other. The objective in introducing these concepts, their histories, and their core values was not to choose the best or most useful among them but to illuminate the ways our comprehension of our role in the environment and of the fundamental role of the environment in health have been changing in the contemporary world. Collectively, the emergence of these approaches affirms the importance of accessing not simply the health–environment nexus but specifically within this initiative the role of the growing number of interacting ecocrises in health.
1.4 Global warming or climate change?
Anthony Leiserowitz is a Senior Research Scientist and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. His research investigates the psychological, cultural, and political factors that influence environmental beliefs, attitudes, support of policy, and human behavior. His scholarly work is widely published and often cited by his peers. He is invited regularly to speak at scholarly conferences and concerned citizen meetings, and with CEOs and politicians on climate issues. After he gives an address, one of the most common questions he encounters is: “Is it global warming or climate?” (Christensen 2019). Both of these terms have become familiar to people around the world in the last 25 years, but is one of them more accurate or preferred?
The climate is changing and Earth is warming. In fact, however, neither term fully captures the entangled set of significant atmospheric and environmental changes that stem from the release of greenhouse gases (e.g., ocean acidification) or other changes such as the effects of black carbon pollution on solar reflection. Warming of the planet certainly is the force driving a complex array of transformations taking place around us, but the everyday understanding of warming does not adequately describe the erratic nature of what is occurring, nor does it quite encompass the sudden and ever more frequent occurrence of extreme weather events, including extreme cold spells. The world is not just increasing in temperature—weather is becoming less stable, less predictable, weirder, and more deadly in various ways (Climate Central 2012). And while it is accurate to say that the climate is changing, this has been the case for the whole history of Earth (Brooke 2014). What is critical is the clear pattern of that change (an uptrend in average annual temperature) over the last 150 years since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and especially the last 50, and our own role in pushing that change. Moreover, climate‐related changes are not occurring in isolation from other dramatic planetary changes resulting from human activity. In short, it is not all about warming or climate. Both terms only cover part of the contemporary problem of environmental/climate turmoil (Baer & Singer 2018).
The first recognition of the relationship between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and atmospheric temperature dates to the work of Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius (winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry), who in 1896 linked what would come to be called the greenhouse effect to the use of fossil fuels. Of historical note, early on Arrhenius “strongly advocated remedies to stop the indiscriminate waste of fossil energy and chemical resources, oil, gas and coal” (Arrhenius et al. 2008). By the 1970s, the connections among fossil fuel burning, CO2 emission, and climate were becoming clear to scientists, and the terms “global warming” and “climate change” were becoming increasingly frequent in the scientific literature. Both terms began to filter into the mass media during the 1990s, and then into everyday discourse. In the contemporary scientific literature, “climate change” is generally used unless the focus is on the pattern of increase in Earth’s surface temperature. Those who deny or downplay the changes that are occurring on Earth tend to prefer “global warming,” however, as it allows them to argue during extreme cold events that surely the planet cannot be warming, just step outside your front door—or, in the case of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, author of The Greatest Hoax (2012), bring a snowball on to the floor of the U.S. Senate (Bump 2015). In Inhofe’s view, it is a “scientific scandal … to make it sound like man is responsible for all these things [i.e., climate change]” (MSNBC 2015).
In this book, both terms are used, but it is with the understanding that there is a need for a broad picture of the patterns of change, the components of change, the causes of change, the consequences of change, and, most especially, the interactions at the heart of the vast changes occurring around and because of us.
1.5 Depth of the human footprint
As Lewis (2006, p. 195) states:
Humans moved more rock, sediment and soil than all natural processes combined, by an order of magnitude … Between a third and half of all land was appropriated for human use … By the [21st] century’s end three to six times as much water was held in reservoirs as in natural rivers … Two predictions stand out: changes in land‐use will cause the sixth mass extinction in evolutionary history … while atmospheric CO2 concentrations will reach their highest levels for 60 million years.
The human footprint on Earth is already very deep, and each year that passes without significant reversal of course will make our presence an ever‐greater disrupter of Earth ecological, climatic, atmospheric, hydraulic, and other systems. As Vitousek et al. (1997, p. 494) observe, “[u]ntil recently, the term ‘human‐dominated ecosystems’ would have elicited images of agricultural fields, pastures, or urban landscapes; now it applies with greater or lesser force to all of Earth.” Quite literally no location on the planet is totally untouched by our species. One place you would not expect to find a human footprint is at the bottom of the ocean. While our knowledge about the complexities and lifeforms of the deep ocean (below 10 000 feet) remains limited, of one thing we are certain: human activities are increasingly affecting deep‐sea habitats. This is the conclusion of an international study conducted by over 20 deep‐sea scientific experts who participated in the Census of Marine Life project SYNDEEP (Towards a First Global Synthesis of Biodiversity, Biogeography, and Ecosystem Function in the Deep Sea). They grouped the impacts they detected into three types: waste and litter dumping, resource exploitation, and evidence of the effects of climate change (Ramirez‐Llodra et al. 2011).
The routine dumping of many types of waste from ocean‐going ships was legally banned by the London Convention of 1972. An even stricter convention went into force in 2006. Before these bans, a wide array of human litter regularly was dumped from ships, large and small, in ocean transit. New litter continues to accumulate as a result of illegal disposal, lost or discarded fishing gear, and being washed from the coast and through river discharges. It is estimated that 6.4 million tons of litter is deposited into the oceans each year, part of which sinks to the deep ocean bottom (Jeftic et al. 2009). In places like the Mediterranean and North East Atlantic, the most common litter types found on the deep ocean floor are soft plastic (e.g., bags), hard plastic (e.g., bottles, containers), and glass and metal (e.g., cans) (Galil et al. 1995; Galgani et al. 2000).
Expanding technological capabilities have facilitated the exploitation of biological, mineral, and petrochemical resources from the oceans. Trawl fishing can reduce the biodiversity and biomass of deep‐water invertebrates, such as cold‐water corals, with long‐term effects persisting even after fishing has ended. Deep ocean mining is also of increasing concern. Three forms of mineral resources have been identified for commercial exploitation: manganese nodule mining on deep ocean plains, cobalt‐rich crusts on seamounts, and polymetallic sulfide deposits at sites of hydrothermal vents. An additional threat is ultra‐deep‐water oil and gas drilling, the potential adverse consequences of which were exposed by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico (Michel et al. 2013).
Rising levels of anthropogenic (human‐generated) greenhouse