2.5.1 Physical and weather-related indicators The indicators collected in Table 4 have been observed to change over large regions of the Earth during the 20th century. According to the TAR, there is now a good level of confidence that what is being recorded is the result of long-term change rather than short-term natural fluctuations. As we noted earlier (Section 2.2.2), the most recent period of warming has been almost global in extent, but particularly marked at high latitudes. So are the changes in Table 4 consistent with rising tempe
References Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to: understand why systems thinking might be useful and know something about how it can be applied in the context of environmental responsibility; describe the significance of environmental pragmatism and cognitive justice as tools for supporting environmental policy and action. 1.2.8 In praise of cheap offshore labour? continued There are two points which are central to this line of thinking. One, according to Wolf (2004), is that the whole process, as odd as it may sound, is about mutual exploitation. Outside firms do indeed exploit the poor by taking advantage of the profitable opportunities that a pool of cheap labour represents. But Indonesian or Chinese workers, for instance, could be said to exploit the incoming firms by extracting higher pay from them and taking advantage of opportunities that previousl 1.2.7 In praise of cheap offshore labour? Claims over the benefits of globalisation and the exploitation of cheap offshore labour generate strong feelings and, not surprisingly, divide opinion between those who favour the global marketplace and its detractors. The issue turns on whether the constant search for ever-cheaper manufacturing and service locations is seen as a good or a bad thing. It may appear odd, at first, to suggest that exploiting the poor of another country can, on any measure, be regarded as a good thing, but 1.1.2 Activity 1 You have already glanced at Figure 1 and some of the worki 1.1.1
Introduction Many of the smaller branded goods on sale to consumers in Europe and North America – the latest in clothing and footwear or the smart toys and electronic gadgets on offer – are made in factory ‘sweatshops’. Found in the backstreets of modern, Western cities, but more often than not a feature of the poorer parts of the world, factory sweatshops are an integral part of today's global economy. Increasingly, as you can see from Author(s): Introduction Sweatshops and the exploitation of workers are often linked to the globalised production of ‘big brand’ labels. This unit examines how campaigners have successfully closed the distance between the brands and the sweatshops, while others argue that such production ‘kick starts’ economies into growth benefiting whole communities. This unit is an adapted extract from the Open University course Author(s): 6.6.2 The World Energy Council scenarios What are the possibilities for radical changes in our energy systems when viewed from a world perspective? There have been numerous studies of the various future options for the world's energy systems. One of the most recent and most comprehensive was produced in 1998 by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the World Energy Council (WEC), a version of which was published in 2000 as part of the United Nations’ World Energy Assessment (United Nations Dev 6.6.1 The Royal Commission on environmental pollution scenarios The UK's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution produced (RCEP) its 22nd report Energy: the Changing Climate in June 2000. The Commission examined what changes would be needed in Britain's energy systems if, as suggested by the various reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2001), it should prove necessary to reduce the country's emissions of greenhouse gases by about 60 per cent by 2050. The Commission investigated the various possibilities very tho 6.3 (b) Switching to renewable energy sources The use of renewable energy usually involves environmental impacts of some kind, but these are normally lower than those of fossil or nuclear sources. Approaches (a) and (b) are essentially ‘supply-side’ measures – applied at the supply end of the long chain that leads from primary energy production to useful energy consumption. 6.2 (a) ‘Cleaning-up’ fossil and nuclear technologies This means mitigating some of the adverse ‘environmental’ consequences of fossil and nuclear fuel use through the introduction of new, ‘clean’ technologies that should substantially reduce pollution emissions and health hazards. These include ‘supply-side’ measures to improve the efficiency with which fossil fuels are converted into electricity in power stations; cleaner and more efficient combustion methods; the increasing use of ‘waste’ heat in combined heat-and-power scheme 4.4.2 Geothermal energy Geothermal energy is another renewable source that is not derived from solar radiation. As the name implies, its source is the earth's internal heat, which originates mainly from the decay of long-lived radioactive elements. The most useful geothermal resources occur where underground bodies of water called aquifers can collect this heat, especially in those areas where volcanic or tectonic activity brings the heat close to the surface. The resulting hot water, or in some cases steam, is used 4.4.1 Tidal Energy The energy that causes the slow but regular rise and fall of the tides around our coastlines is not the same as that which creates waves. It is caused principally by the gravitational pull of the moon on the world's oceans. The sun also plays a minor role, not through its radiant energy but in the form of its gravitational pull, which exerts a small additional effect on tidal rhythms. The principal technology for harnessing tidal energy essentially involves building a low dam, or barrag 4.3.2 Wave power When winds blow over the world's oceans, they cause waves. The power in such waves, as they gradually build up over very long distances, can be very great – as anyone watching or feeling that power eventually being dissipated on a beach will know. Various technologies for harnessing the power of waves have been developed over the past few decades, of which the ‘oscillating water column’ (OWC) is perhaps the most widely used. In an OWC, the rise and fall of the waves inside an encl 4.3.1 Wind energy When solar radiation enters the earth's atmosphere, because of the curvature of the earth it warms different regions of the atmosphere to differing extents – most at the equator and least at the poles. Since air tends to flow from warmer to cooler regions, this causes what we call winds, and it is these air flows that are harnessed in windmills and wind turbines to produce power. Wind power, in the form of traditional windmills used for grinding corn or pumping water, has been in use 4.3 Indirect use of solar energy The above examples illustrate the direct harnessing of the sun's radiant energy to produce heat and electricity. But the sun's energy can also be harnessed via other forms of energy that are indirect manifestations of its power. Principally, these are bioenergy and hydropower, already discussed in Section 3 above, together with wind energy and wave power. 4.2 Solar energy Solar energy, it should firstly be stressed, makes an enormous but largely unrecorded contribution to our energy needs. It is the sun's radiant energy, as noted in Box 2, that maintains the Earth's surface at a temperature warm enough to support human life. But despite this enormous input of energy to our ci 3.6 Summary This section has described how fossil fuels provide the majority of the world's energy requirements, with bioenergy, nuclear energy and hydropower also making major contributions. The other ‘renewable’ energy sources currently supply only a small fraction of world demand, although the contribution of these ‘renewables’ seems likely to grow rapidly in coming decades, as we shall see in the following section. 3.5 Hydroelectricity Another energy source that has been harnessed by humanity for many centuries is the power of flowing water, which has been used for milling corn, pumping and driving machinery. During the twentieth century, its main use has been in the generation of hydroelectricity, and hydropower has grown to become one of the world's principal electricity sources. It currently provides some 2.3 per cent of world primary energy. However, the relative contribution of hydroelectric power (and of other electri
