Are there environmental limits to achieving equality between humans?

2021 ◽  
pp. 180-190
Author(s):  
Jen Gobby ◽  
Samantha Mailhot ◽  
Rachel Ivey
Keyword(s):  
2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (17) ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Romero-Mujalli ◽  
A. Roisenberg ◽  
A. Cordova-Gonzalez ◽  
P. H. P. Stefano

AbstractRadon (Rn), a radioactive element, has especial interest in medical geology because long-term exposure to high concentration is related to lung cancer. In this study, outdoor and indoor radon measurements were conducted in dwellings of the Piquiri Syenite Massif, located in southern Brazil, given the relative high Rn content in soils of this region. Measurements were done using CR-39 detectors and placing them inside and outside dwellings. Moreover, a one-dimensional diffusion model was performed in order to quantify the natural transport of Rn to the air in confined and aerated environments. Results indicate that the region presents relatively low air Rn concentrations, within the environmental limits; however, the health risk might increase in confined and ill-ventilated environments because of transfer from soil and exhalation from ornamental rock-material often found inside dwellings. The main north facies of the syenite, where most of the rock extractions are located, was found to have the highest air Rn concentration because of the higher soil Rn concentration, compared to other facies of the syenite.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 635-663
Author(s):  
Karin Mickelson

Abstract This contribution to the symposium on the economic exploitation of the commons focuses on the question of whether and to what extent the principle of the common heritage of mankind (CHM) imposes environmental limits on economic exploitation of the global commons. Focusing on the need to go beyond a unidimensional assessment of the principle, it considers how CHM was originally envisaged, the form it took in the deep seabed regime, in particular, how its role in that regime has developed over time and how it has been utilized as a basis for advocacy. It concludes with an assessment of CHM’s limitations and strategic advantages.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harald Desing ◽  
Gregor Braun ◽  
Roland Hischier

Non-technical summary Resources are the basis of our economy and their provision causes major shares of the global environmental burdens, many of which are beyond safe limits today. In order to be sustainable, our economy needs to be able to operate within those boundaries. As resources are the physical ‘currency’ of our economy, we present a method that allows translating Earth system boundaries into resource budgets. This ecological resource availability determines the global annual production of a resource that can be considered absolutely sustainable. The budgets can be managed like financial budgets, bringing absolute environmental limits one step closer to decision-makers.


Nutrients ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1122
Author(s):  
Bradley Ridoutt ◽  
Danielle Baird ◽  
Gilly A. Hendrie

Planetary boundaries are an important sustainability concept, defining absolute limits for resource use and emissions that need to be respected to avoid major and potentially irreversible earth system change. To remain within the safe operating space for humanity, there is a need for urgent adoption of climate-neutral diets, which make no additional contribution to warming. In the first study of its kind, a new climate metric, the Global Warming Potential Star (GWP*), was used to assess greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with 9341 Australian adult diets obtained from the Australian Health Survey. Dietary climate footprints averaged 3.4 kg CO2-equivelent per person per day, with total energy intake explaining around one quarter of the variation. Energy-dense and nutrient-poor discretionary foods contributed around one third. With lower climate footprint food choices, a diet consistent with current Australian dietary guidelines had a 42% lower climate footprint. Currently, it is not possible to define a climate-neutral dietary strategy in Australia because there are very few climate-neutral foods in the Australian food system. To bring Australian diets into line with the climate stabilization goals of the Paris Agreement, the most important need is for innovation across the agricultural and food processing industries to expand the range of climate-neutral foods available.


2009 ◽  
pp. 55-62
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Rizzi

- This article recounts the doubts and fears of an experienced analyst who is now an apprentice acrobat. He is forced to keep himself tiredly balanced between psychological and physical limits imposed by age, restrictions introduced by the National Health System and categories of patients who have precedence over others. He cannot receive all of the patients who ask for him and even those who he does receive will have to be discharged in the short term. Explaining to them, with intellectual honesty, that the community service has rules that limit his wishes as well. What can this be if not acrobatics? In the end it means combining the contradictory but perhaps also the most real aspects of life itself. [KEY WORDS: desires, personal and environmental limits, truth of the therapist]


Author(s):  
Ares Kalandides ◽  
Boris Grésillon

City Marketing has a strong tradition in Berlin, with two organisations, Berlin Partner and Visit Berlin, responsible for designing and implementing relevant strategies. Sustainability has been on and off the city marketing agenda, almost exclusively in its environmental dimension. In this article we examine the current representations of Berlin as a “sustainable city” in the official City Marketing strategies. We look at how sustainability is used and instrumentalized to create a specific city profile, and also to attract particular target groups in tourism. We propose an analysis of sustainable planning in Berlin since reunification, to show how it has moved into different directions over time and how this has (or has not) been followed by City Marketing. In this endeavour we move between the existing, and as we argue deeper and more sophisticated, environmental planning of the city on the one hand, and the reductions and simplifications of City Marketing representations on the other. Finally, we argue that there are inherent contradictions in marketing a sustainable city, where both in terms of tourism and economic development, the concept of growth seems to be reaching environmental limits.


Author(s):  
James Meadowcroft ◽  
Daniel J. Fiorino

This chapter provides a conclusion to the volume. It begins by synthesising some of the main findings of the eleven individual concept studies. It then considers the light these studies shed on processes of conceptual innovation in the environmental policy domain. Finally, it considers what these cases, and attention to concepts and conceptual innovation more generally, can tell us about the underlying structure and evolution of the environmental policy domain. In particular it discusses four cross-cutting themes which emerge from this enquiry: science and policy, environmental limits, economy and environment, and environmental equity.


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