5.4 Discussion We seem to have travelled a long way from the Industrial Revolution in Europe, but many of the impacts on New Zealand's ecosystems described here can be traced, in part at least, to reverberations from these developments. What lessons can be drawn from this example? Perhaps I should start by emphasising this is not meant to be a complete account of the environmental history of New Zealand. For example, I have not discussed any responses from the population once they realised that harm w
5.3 Settlement, deforestation and endangered species The proportion of New Zealand converted to farmland is large by world standards (52 percent compared to the world's 37 percent in 1993). Although our human population density is comparatively low (13 people for each square kilometre (km2 5.1 Food preservation and the development of refrigeration Most societies have had traditional methods of preserving food: drying, baking, pickling, salting, smoking, the use of sugar, and in cold climates, freezing or chilling, with the use of ice houses in the summer. These techniques were usually carried out at a local level, which meant that most perishable food was consumed near to where it was produced, and any food processing was usually small-scale and localised. Cattle and livestock, for example, were moved ‘on the hoof’ from their pastu 4.4 Discussion In this second case study, I have described two different trends in energy use by cold appliances over the last few decades. On the one hand the efficiency with which appliances use electrical energy has improved but, in spite of this, their consumption of electricity has increased significantly in recent decades. Since 2000 consumption has started to decline, probably as a result of the introduction of minimum energy standards. The trend will only continue if we demand and use the most energ 4.3 The UK experience: competing trends But one striking example does not make an argument. To try to get a fuller and possibly fairer picture of energy use by domestic refrigerators I'd like also to look at the UK experience over the past few decades. To start with it helps to have a feel for which parts of the UK economy use the most energy. The UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI, 1998), identifies four main economic sectors: domestic (households), industry, services and transport. In 2003 the domestic sector (h 4.1 Domestic appliances and fossil fuels For this second case study I shall look specifically at the energy use of domestic ‘cold appliances’, that is freezers and refrigerators, and discuss whether efficiency measures can play a significant role in reducing their energy consumption. The reason for this is quite simple. For many years there has been well-documented evidence of the damage to the environment and cost to human life associated with the extraction, transport and consumption of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, from 3.3 Greenfreeze: the Greens fight back Some campaigners were not convinced by the arguments of refrigerator manufacturers and suppliers (who also happened to own some patents for HCFCs and HFCs) that the only solution, in the short to medium term, was to use the transitional compounds. They tried to demonstrate that there were practical alternatives. A group of scientists working with Greenpeace International designed a domestic refrigerator based on the use of hydrocarbons, using a mix of propane and isobutane for the refrigerant 3.2 The agreement to protect the ozone layer After a decade of controversy about the possible effects of CFCs, in 1985 British scientists discovered over the Antarctic a quite unexpected ‘hole’ in the ozone layer which was the size of the USA. This helped to galvanise the international community into action (though some who took part in the negotiations claim it played little part). By 1987 the first international agreement to control substances damaging to the ozone layer, the Montreal Protocol, was established. Interestingl Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence The material acknowledged below is contained in: Ordering the International: History, Change and Transformation (eds William B 2.1.1 Where did the attempt to define notions of rights internationally come from? To some extent, this ideology of rights was new because it was expressed at the international level with new vigour, with the horrors of the Second World War and the calculated extermination of Jews, gypsies and others in mind. The discourse of individual rights had a stronger impact on international politics than at any time previously, as did the notion of a right to national self-determination. Yet this new departure for international politics also built upon ideas about rights that had be References 2.4 Worlds in motion: the importance of flows ‘The sea had welled up suddenly through thousands of tiny holes in this atoll's bedrock of coral.’ Do you recall this passage in Lynas's (2003) account of his first days on Tuvalu in Reading 1A? For me, this gives an impression of the islands being quite literally porous, a solid ground that reveals itself, now and again, to be not so solid after all. Lynas offers this particularly striking example of the island's openness to the world around it as evidence of a growing vulnerability that 2.2 Positive feedback and change Simple positive feedback loops are easily illustrated since they are the mechanism through which anything changes rapidly. Take for example the explosion of water hyacinth when introduced into new environments: Water hyacinth is a floating plant that has spread from South America to waterways around the world. It can cover the water so completely that it obstructs the movement of boats. Imagine a lake that is 10 2.2 Introduction to communication In Reading 2.1 I identified communication with others as being an important way in which humans learn. Unlike many other animals, we don’t have to interact directly with our Author(s): Introduction This unit will facilitate your own exploration of key environmental, social and economic threats that will converge to challenge communities in the near future. You will be required to develop this exploration according to three modes of modelling and communication: verbal, visual, and numeri 4.2.3 The significance of the distribution of energies Near room temperature (300 K), the average bundle of thermal energy associated with a particle is 0.026 eV (look back at Box 2 Temperature and energy). This is not going to do much damage to something stuck together with bonds that have an energy of a few eV – just as the average wage earne 3.9 News sources Many news sources are now available online. Searching an online version of a newspaper is easier, quicker and more effective than searching through printed indexes, microfilm or actual newspapers.
Box 4: Some indicators of New Zealand's environment*
