Learning Objectives
- Explain what is meant by the assertion that environmental problems are social problems.
- Differentiate between climate change and global warming.
- Summarize the classical theoretical perspectives and other perspectives on environmental problems.
- Explain how climate change and global warming are caused by human activities.
- Describe other environmental problems facing the world today and their consequences.
- Analyze how social location helps us understand the experience and consequences of environmental problems.
- Explain the concepts of environmental injustice and environmental racism.
- List local, national, and international policies and practices that could help improve environmental problems.
- Describe how individual agency and collective action could support environmental and social justice.
At first glance, the environment may not seem to be a sociological topic. Isn't the natural and physical environment is something that geologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and other scientists should be studying, rather than sociologists? In fact, the environment is very much a sociological topic for several reasons.
First, environmental problems are the result of human activity, and this activity like many human behaviors is a proper topic for sociological study. This textbook has discussed many human behaviors: Socialization and social interaction, racist and sexist discrimination, criminal behavior, and others. Just as these behaviors are worthy of sociological study, so are the human behaviors that harm (or try to improve) the environment.
Second, environmental problems have a significant impact on people, as do the many other social problems that sociologists study. We see the clearest evidence of this impact when a major hurricane, an earthquake, or another natural disaster strikes. In January 2010, for example, a devastating earthquake struck Haiti and killed more than 250,000 people, or about 2.5% of that nation’s population. The effects of these natural disasters on the economy and society of Haiti will certainly also be felt for many years to come.
As is evident in this photo taken in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, changes in the natural environment can lead to profound changes in a society. Environmental changes are one of the many sources of social change.
United Nations Development Programme – Haiti Earthquake – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Slower changes in the environment can also have a large social impact. Industrialization and population growth have increased the pollution of our air, water, and ground. Climate change threatens the whole planet, in ways that researchers have documented and will no doubt be examining for the rest of our lifetimes and beyond. We return to these environmental problems shortly.
A third reason is that many environmental problems reflect and illustrate social inequality based on various areas of social location such as social class, race/ethnicity, and gender. As with many problems in our society, marginalized groups often fare worse when it comes to the environment. We return to this theme later in our discussion of environmental racism.
A fourth reason the environment is a sociological topic is a bit more complex: Solutions to our environmental problems require changes in economic and environmental policies, and the potential implementation and impact of these changes depends heavily on social and political factors. In the United States, for example, the two major political parties, corporate lobbyists, and environmental organizations regularly battle over attempts to tighten or loosen environmental regulations.
Finally, efforts to improve the environment include social movements and, as such, are again worthy of sociological study. Sociologists and other social scientists have conducted many studies of why people join environmental movements and of the impacts of these movements.
Environmental Sociology
All these reasons suggest that the environment is quite fittingly a sociological topic, and one on which sociologists should have important insights. In fact, so many sociologists study the environment that their collective study makes up a subfield in sociology called environmental sociology, the study of the interaction between human behavior and the natural and physical environment. Simply put, it is the sociological study of the environment. According to a report by the American Sociological Association (Nagel, Dietz, & Broadbent 2010), environmental sociology has provided significant insights into such areas as public opinion about the environment, the influence of values on people’s environmental behavior, and inequality in the impact of environmental problems on communities and individuals.
Environmental sociology assumes “that humans are part of the environment and that the environment and society can only be fully understood in relation to each other” (McCarthy & King 2009: 1). Because humans are responsible for the world’s environmental problems, humans have both the ability and the responsibility to address these problems. As sociologists Leslie King and Deborah McCarthy (2009: ix) assert:
“We both strongly believe that humans have come to a turning point in terms of our destruction of ecological resources and endangerment of human health. A daily look at the major newspapers points, without fail, to worsening environmental problems… Humans created these problems and we have the power to resolve them. Naturally, the longer we wait, the more devastating the problems will become; and the more we ignore the sociological dimensions of environmental decline the more our proposed solutions will fail.”
Environmental sociologists emphasize two important dimensions of the relationship between society and the environment: (a) the impact of human activity and decision making and (b) the existence and consequences of environmental inequality and environmental racism. We now turn to the first dimension and will discuss the second on the Patterns of Environmental Problems page.
Human Activity
Perhaps more than anything else, environmental sociologists emphasize that environmental problems are the result of human decisions and activities that harm the environment. Masses of individuals acting independently of each other make decisions and engage in activities that harm the environment, as when we leave lights on, keep our homes too warm in the winter or too cool in the summer, and drive motor vehicles that get low gas mileage. Moreover, corporations, government agencies, and other organizations make decisions and engage in practices that greatly harm the environment. Sometimes individuals and organizations know full well that their activities are harming the environment, and sometimes they just act carelessly without much thought about the possible environmental harm of their actions. Still, the environment is harmed whether or not individuals, corporations, and governments intend to harm it.
A major example of the environmental harm caused by human activity was the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill that began in April 2010 when an oil rig leased by BP exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and eventually released almost 5 million barrels of oil (about 200 million gallons) into the ocean. Congressional investigators later concluded that BP had made a series of decisions that “increased the danger of a catastrophic well,” including a decision to save money by using an inferior casing for the well that made an explosion more likely. A news report paraphrased the investigators as concluding that “some of the decisions appeared to violate industry guidelines and were made despite warnings from BP’s own employees and outside contractors” (Fountain 2010).
The April 2010 BP oil spill occurred after BP made several decisions that may have increased the possibility of a catastrophic explosion of the well.
Image courtesy of International Bird Rescue Research Center, http://www.flickr.com/photos/ibrrc/4670207222
Sociologists McCarthy and King (2009) cite several other environmental accidents that stemmed from reckless decision making and natural disasters in which human decisions accelerated the harm that occurred. One accident occurred in Bhopal, India in 1984 when a Union Carbide pesticide plant leaked forty tons of deadly gas. Between 3,000 and 16,000 people died immediately and another half million suffered permanent illnesses or injuries. A contributing factor for the leak was Union Carbide’s decision to save money by violating safety standards in the construction and management of the plant.
Another preventable accident was the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster, in which the tanker hit ground off the coast of Alaska and released 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound. Among other consequences, the spill killed hundreds of thousands of birds and marine animals and almost destroyed the local fishing and seafood industries. The immediate cause of the accident was that the ship’s captain was an alcoholic and left the bridge in the hands of an unlicensed third mate after drinking five double vodkas in the hours before the crash occurred. Exxon officials knew of his alcoholism but let him command the ship anyway. Also, if the ship had had a double hull (one hull inside the other), it might not have cracked on impact or at least would have released less oil, but Exxon and the rest of the oil industry had successfully lobbied Congress not to require stronger hulls.
Hurricane Katrina was an environmental disaster in which human decision making resulted in a great deal of preventable damage. After Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and especially New Orleans in August 2005, the resulting wind and flooding killed more than 1,800 people and left more than 700,000 homeless. McCarthy and King attribute much of this damage to human decision making: “While hurricanes are typically considered ‘natural disasters,’ Katrina’s extreme consequences must be considered the result of social and political failures” (2009: 4). Long before Katrina hit, it was well known that a major flood could easily breach New Orleans levees and have a devastating impact. Despite this knowledge, US, state, and local officials did nothing over the years to strengthen or rebuild the levees. In addition, coastal land that would have protected New Orleans had been lost over time to commercial and residential development. In short, the flooding after Katrina was a human disaster, not a natural disaster.
Our Greatest Concern
Scientists believe global climate change is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. But what exactly is climate change? How did we (humans) cause it?
Climate change refers to the long-term shift in global and regional temperatures, humidity and rainfall patterns, and other atmospheric characteristics. Unlike changes in weather that occur on a local level that can be measured in hourly, daily, or weekly fluctuations, climate change refers to longer-term fluctuations (both regionally or globally) that take place over a time scale of seasons, years, or decades.
Climate change is inclusive of a wide variety of changes in the climate including temperature and rainfall patterns, as defined above. Global warming refers specifically to increases in the average temperature of the earth's surface. Scientists often use 'temperature anomalies' rather than actual temperatures to track global warming. A temperature anomaly compares the observed temperature with a baseline average temperature, with positive anomalies indicating a warmer temperature than the baseline. We see clear evidence of global warming in the chart below, which displays measurements for several different organizations including NASA (the GISS Surface Temperature Analysis, or GISTEMP).
This chart displays the rise in global temperature since 1860. Berkeley Earth explains, "All of the monitoring agencies with data available concur that 2023 is the warmest year in the observational record, and by a large margin."
Source: Rhode, Berkeley Earth 2024
In the past two centuries, an exponential increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have been released into the earth’s atmosphere, as the next chart below shows. Although there are some natural processes that affect the earth’s climate, such as volcanic eruptions, the vast majority of scientists worldwide attribute the speed at which global warming has recently occurred to human activity, most notably the burning of fossil fuels. Scientists examine ocean sediments, ice cores, tree rings, and changes in glaciers to understand variations in Earth’s climate over time.
This graph shows the level of Carbon dioxide (CO2) over time, starting from 800,000 years ago. Although some fluctuation is normal, CO2 levels have never been as high as they are now. The change is predominantly caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas.
“Proxy (Indirect) Measurements” from “Carbon Dioxide” from NASA Global Climate Change/NOAA is in the Public Domain
Industrialization is one reason for the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Since the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of greenhouse gasses is higher than at any other time in the past 800,000 years. This increase in greenhouse gasses is called the greenhouse effect, an imbalance between the energy entering and leaving the earth’s atmosphere, resulting in a rise in global temperature. Because certain gasses absorb energy, such as carbon dioxide and methane, they trap heat and prevent it from being released into space, causing a rise in global temperature.
The burning of fossil fuels is not the only human activity contributing to the greenhouse effect. Other activities such as deforestation, urbanization, and unsustainable agricultural practices contribute to global climate change.
Climate change is a social problem because humans are causing the problem and are differently impacted by the problem. Climate change is a critical problem, no matter how we approach it. Scientists have consistently found that climate change is already a threat to societies and communities worldwide. Scientists are also studying how to minimize its effects on people and the environment more broadly and, with any hope, successfully plan for the uncertain future.
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We share our planet with far more than just members of our species. Because a great deal of our daily life is centered around the world humanity has built, it’s easy to forget that we are part of a greater whole – a whole in which we are but one of the billions of life forms that inhabit Earth, all equally dependent on a healthy and safe environment to live and to thrive. Human society and the natural environment are interconnected parts of this whole. However, the world we share with the larger circle of life is increasingly impacted by human activity. These impacts are so pervasive that scientists around the world name the current geological period of Earth’s history the Anthropocene, or the age of humans.
In this chapter, we explore the causes and consequences of climate change. We find out why climate change is both an environmental issue and a social problem due to the inequitable power dynamics that place some communities at greater risk than others. We also discuss other environmental problems, such as those that target marginalized groups in the US and across the world. We examine how individuals and communities are responding to climate change and environmental problems. We take action to adapt to the current effects of climate change and to prevent further social and ecological harm. We want to leave behind a cleaner and safer environment for future generations. All of us deserve clean air, clean water and a healthy earth. Environmental justice is social justice.
