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Abiturvorbereitung / Maturavorbereitung

Environm­ental awarenes­s in the US- an analysis

5.429 / ~23 sternsternsternsternstern_0.5 Pia P. . 2016
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Abiturvorbereitung
Umweltwissenschaften

Landesgymnasium Sankt Afra zu Meißen

2+, Englisch, 2016

Pia P. ©
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Landesgymnasium Sankt Afra


Environmental awareness in the US- an analysis

Table of contents


5.1 Environmental friendly places 14

5.2 Exhaust gases 15

5.3 Waste 16

7Conclusion 16

8Bibliography 18

5.1 Internet sources 18

5.2 Book sources 21

9Appendix 22


  1. Introduction

Climate change is happening, humans are causing it, and I think this is perhaps the most serious environmental issue facing us.” 1

. With that quote, the American scientist and presenter Bill Nye touches a topic, which play a major role in our society. In fact, our climate is changing from year to year and humans are causing it for a major part. We as humans are the biggest problem, it's a fight against ourselves, because we are overstraining our environment. The negative consequences of climate change are visible all over the world.

The weather is affected by climate change too, what is recognizable in some regions much more than in others.

For example, the ice of the poles is melting faster and faster, resulting in the destruction of the natural habitat of many species. These environmental damage can be attributed to various factors. First of all, the emissions, produced during the generation of energy and through exhausts in traffic, are damaging the environment critically. But a wrong waste disposal damages our environment as well.

The USA contributes to that environmental damage in a major way, because the emission of carbon dioxide is very high, compared to other countries. In addition, in the most of the federal states of the US, the separation of waste is not as important as it is supposed to be. Furthermore, the consumption of fossil sources of energy is not regulated. This are reasons to claim, that the United States are not supporting environmental consciousness.

In the paper, the author is going to analyse the environmental consciousness of the United States of America. Therefore, the author will concern oneself with the generation of energy in the US as well as the emission of carbon dioxide released on the public traffic. The waste disposal and the separation of waste in the US will be taken under further consideration. The following question results of that topics:

How far is the behavior of the US citizen environmentally conscious? Out of the named topics, the following structure is resulting: At first, the term „environmental consciousness“ is defined, to provide a better understanding of that term. Next, the general situation of our environment will be evaluated. In that chapter, the consequences and reasons for climate change will be explained.

In addition to that, the author will give an insight into the environmental consciousness of the USA whilst showing the generation and consumption of energy.Furthermore, the emission of greenhouse gases and the separation of waste will be explained. Finally, a chapter about California will follow, in which some of these criteria are applied individually for that state.

After the collection of every available data and material, a subjective conclusion by the author will follow, in which the topic is going to be summarized and the research question is answered. It is worth to mention, that it turned out to be very difficult to find reliable sources because of the fact that this topic is very topical and the available data is changing during the time.

That’s the reason that predominantly internet sources were used, books with suitable information could not be found. Nevertheless, the author was able to collect many information dealing with the topic of this paper.

  1. Definition of “Environmental awareness”

What is actually to be understood by the term “Environmental awareness”? For a better comprehension of the main topic of that paper, it is necessary to ask the previous question. It is difficult to give a definition, because the term does not show a scientific background in its development.2 The definitions reach from global assessments and specific concerns to general but very environmentally relevant political settings and are therefore very different. 3The definition of the Council of Experts on Environmental Issues 1978 was:4„Einsicht in die Gefährdung der natürlichen Lebensgrundlagen des Menschen durch diesen selbst, verbunden mit der Bereitschaft zur Abhilfe“5.

Today this is current too, but in the literature the term is used various. There is a one- and a multidimensional concept of environmental consciousness. One-dimensional concepts understand environmental awareness as a uniform notion. This includes concepts which sees that as an affective and consistent component and concepts, which understands it as values. However, in multidimensional concepts three components are considered.

These are environmental knowledge, environmental behavior and environmental performance.6 Environmental knowledge is to understand the level of information of a person about the environment and the nature. Environmental behavior describes among other things the views about questions of environmental protection such as fears, anger or consternation as well as personal values, which apply to the environment.7

  1. Our environment – the general situation

This chapter is about the general situation of the environment all around the world. All humans living on this planet are affected by climate change as well as the loss of habitats and the extinction of species.

People lining in the poorer countries suffer for the most from the impacts the global warming. Crop failures are one of the several consequences natural disasters like floods or droughts are bringing with, what leads often to hunger and poverty.8

How could such enormous environmental problems happen? On the one hand the ignorance about the consequences of the human interruption in the natural cycle of environment can be observed, on the other hand one reason is the conscious destruction of ecosystems for economic and politic interests and in due to the exploitation of our planet for human’s sake our environment is threatened.Relevant causes of global warming are the constantly increasing of wealth as well as the endless construction of new buildings.

But environmental problems are developing in a rather long period of time and therefore in smaller steps. This makes an exact assess of the consequences and connections between different factors very difficult.9

The cause of global warming are pollutants, which are released through different ways.

Pollutants are currently produced in the agricultural sector for example, by industrial productions, during the generation of electricity, during the process of deforestation as well as transport of materials. Thus greenhouse gases like Carbon dioxide and Methane which are probably the most important and influencing greenhouse gases, but not to forget black carbon in gas, sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) as well as Carbon monoxide (CO), butane (CH3CH2CH2CH3) and nitrous oxide (N2O), which are affecting global warming in different ways too, get in our atmosphere, which was build up in the past by thermal eruptions.

Such as volcanoes are setting free, and resulting release of carbon dioxide.10 This global warming pollutants prevent sun’s ray transformed into long-wave heat radiation by reflection on the earth’s surface into space.11 The rarer methane has a sharp greenhouse effect too and is released by the livestock farming, rice growing, the processing of coal, oil, natural gases and at dumps.

The greenhouse effect and its impacts is causing environmental problems like melting of glaciers, whereas the sea level rises and therefore the pattern of downfall does change.13 More than a half million people lost their life because of climate related disasters in the last twenty years. 14 Particularly in Africa, humans are suffering due to climate change, even if they did not contribute to its development.

Overfishing in West Africa is a central problem because industrialists fishing fleets fished the seas in front of the coast empty.

DR Congo will pay attention to that problem and stop the mostly illegal clearing of the rainforest. Deforestation of rainforest is a problem too in Brazil,15 because this has dramatic results for the inhabitants of the rainforest as well as for the climate in the world. Every day more than 100 plant species become extinct in the rainforest, which is the most obvious effect of climate change.16 The focus in South-East Asia is also on rainforest conservation, because often huge areas are cleared for the production of palms.

Many rare plants have already lost their natural habitat. People in this region will suffer from massive storms or floods too. But Chinese people have to fight with other problems too: They have not only a great economic power, but also very big environment problems. Air and water are polluted by the industry. And here the effects of environmental change in the form of heat waves is visible, droughts and water shortages are a common consequences too.

Australia has to fight for the conservation of the riffs, which are endangered by coal industry17 and harmful fishing methods. The riffs are of enormous importance, because they prevent the removal of many islands and coasts. Furthermore the riffs are home to up to one million particular animal and plant species.18


  1. Environmental awareness in the US

5.1 Energy

Fossil fuels are still important energy sources for humans today. Fuels can be counted to that category, which are produced out of dead, organic material in lengthy, but natural processes. Natural gas, oil as well as coal belong to this group of fossil fuels. All these combustibles are mixtures of organic substances that can emit heat with oxygen supply. This makes the production of energy from these substances very easy for people.

The combustion of these fossil fuels produces large quantities of carbon dioxide and methane that leads to global warming.19

Therefore oil reserves in the United States are limited. The USA ranks among Russia, Mexico and Saudi Arabia and is considered as one of the most important countries with the highest occurrence of crude oil.20 Coal is a crucial form of energy too. It is distinguishes between lignite and hard coal, which are a result of deposits of peat.21 Brown coal is to find below the surface of the earth, it can removed very inexpensively.

This coal contains sulfur to a big extend and that is why its incineration pollutes the environment very much.During difficult industrial transformation processes, valuable parts of brown coal are produced, which are processed to petrol or oil. These are subsequently processed to gasoline or oil. 22A fossil fuel that is thoroughly more climate friendly is natural gas. This is considered to be true for the most part of methane and it is often a natural by-product of petroleum.23 A very eco-friendly fossil source of energy is natural gas, which contains huge amounts of methane.

In common, it is one of the by-products during the extraction of oil. Because of the big diversity of natural gas and due to the higher degree of effectiveness, natural gas is gaining more and more importance compared to the fossil sources of energy, for example oil and coal. In addition, natural gas doesn't produce any soot and during its incineration, no by-products are released and because of that, natural gas is friendlier to the climate than oil and coal.Biogas, which is produced by rotting processes or in sumps, is very similar to natural gas and is therefore used as an alternative.24

It is used for heating rooms, for power generation as well as for fuel of vehicles.25 The generation of energy through renewable sources has many advantages. The production of electricity is way friendlier to our climate than the production through fossil sources of energy, because during the generation, much less carbon dioxide is emitted. Furthermore renewable energies are available without any limits and are cheaper than, for example, crude oil.

Electricity generation by wind power depends on the weather and is therefore badly predictable. But all in all renewable energies have more advantages than disadvantages, whereby the general resultis positive.26

Since many states in the USA have the goal to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, the demand of what is climbing.27 The importance of sun, wind, biomass and geothermal energy is increasing steadily, these sources of generating energy are playing a role in the production of electricity in the US with a tendency to increase in future. While the production of electricity by fossil fuels like coal and crude oil slowly decreases, the interest in green energy does actually increase.

Although it is to see a decline in the production of electricity by using the power of water, however, the energy generation using the sun and wind leads to an increase of green power. Above all, those two energy sources will be used in the US more and more in future.28 The market of wind power grows as one of the fastest compared to the one of the other forms of energy.

The US Department of Energy (US-DOE) indicated that from the electricity production in 2014 4,4 percent were gained of wind power.29 In 2008 nowhere more new wind turbines were added to the network than in the US.30 In other parts of the US very good wind resources are to found, which on an average are about 25 percent better than in Europe. By legal requirements of the federal states it comes to increasing demands of wind power.

5.2 Transportation

United States are coming up with 17,4 percent of the world wide released amount of carbon dioxide and are therefore number two in the charts. But it is recognizable, that a new way of thinking about climate is developing, indicated through the switch of winning energy from natural gas instead of oil and coal, resulting in a decrease of carbon dioxide emissions.

Traffic contributes to a relatively big part to this pollution. In the year 1960 Americans had four times as many cars as the FRG. In the year1969, 21 percent of the households had no car, in contrast to that, in 2001 it amounts to only eight percent. In Germany 19 percent of the households had no automobile in 2002. Since 1977 cars have become very important for the people in the US, because at that time, already 80 percent of the ways had to be driven by car.

In the United States the cost of unleaded petrol is significantly lower than in Germany. From 1990 of 2000 it was comparable in both countries but now it has increased daily. The price of petrol was $ 0,4 per litre in the USA in 2002, in 2007 the costs increased up to $ 0,8 per litre. It is recognizable that the price has doubled in five years. The theory of “Ecosozialisation” tries to explain environmental attitudes as a result of collective learning process.

In contrast, in the United States the benefits of the automobile is emphasised in public debates. Public transport in the US usually works very irregular and slowly. Whereas the importance of cars there is very high, public transfer does strongly differ from the high standards in Europe. In countries with lower importance it would considered to be insufficient. To meet the demands of the citizens concerning the public transport, no strategy has been developed yet.

There are many passengers that preferably count on cars.35

In 2014 there was a big scandal in the US. “Rollin’ Coal” became known as the new trend of American environment polluter and Obama-haters. Many people installed a special tailpipe and removed the particle filter from their diesel trucks to blow out black soot when driving. They did not only damage the health of people inhaling the smoke, but also destroyed the environment.

But there is a political message too. Environmental activists protest against the climate policy of Obama as well as the way of protecting the climate.36Their opinion is: „Wenn er für Umwelt ist, dann sind wir dagegen. Einen dicken Auspuff auf meinen Truck zu bauen – das ist mein Weg, ihm den Mittelfinger zu zeigen[…]“37

Since the beginning of September 2015 diesel engines has to be cleaner because the coming into effect of Euro 6. Hardly any new car comes out without a special catalyst, but the cleaning of exhaust gas is not always clearly available. 39 In 2015 there wasa further serious incident, which affected the car producer VW. The agency Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and the California Air Resources Bureau (CARB) accused VW of manipulating emission tests of vehicles with diesel engines.

Thereby the American environmental law had been violated. According to the information of the EPA this could mean a punishment for the company up to 18 billion dollars.40

5.3 Waste

Especially in China, Europe, Japan, India and the USA produced much waste in particular. Many resources are lost due to the destruction of waste.41 About 40 percent of all waste will burned without control on the outside worldwide and will release a lot of pollutants during the process.42 The USA comes up with more than 254 million tons waste in 2013. Only 78 million of them had been recycled.43 The citizens of the United States are producing the most electronic waste of all countries. 2012 an average US-citizen had 29,8 kilogram electronic waste compared to an average German with only 23,2 kilogram.

After the Natural Resources Defense Council, a huge variety of food and shops overcrowded with products are contributing to an increase of the amount of waste.And this induces the people to consume. Because a big part of the food will be already thrown away due to external faults and arrives in the shops with an additional loss of about 15 billion dollar per year.45

The USA is leading with more than 730 kilogram waste per head in one year-and the trend is rising.46 Much more than a third of the waste produced in households are actually recycled, but the departments want to increase that rate. Mostly packages, garden trimming, leftovers as well as sofas, tires and computers will be recycled.47

For recycling car batteries achieved the highest rate of recycling, but the least for recycling plastic bottles. This is partly due to the problem with the deposition system. Just in some federal states a deposit is levied. However, this are only a few cents, and the consumer is not going to be motivated so much to bring back the bottles into the supermarket.48 Experts have claimed, that a further increase of awareness in matters of recycling can be expected.

Furthermore, more and more companies like Coca-Cola have set several objectives, which had performed to provide for sale all PET-bottles from raw material on base of vegetable basis up to 2020.49 More and more companies like Coca-Cola want to achieve, that until 2020, every PET-bottle is produced out of plant-based resources. But waste is not only a problem. This rubbish that we humans are producing daily are also a chance for enterprises.

Since the business is stable the most waste companies make a profit in good as well as in bad times because the production of waste goes on and on. Moreover, the population in the United States is continuing growing, and due to that the production of waste will increase.50

  1. California

California will have to fight heavier with the climate change and the rising temperatures as other federal states in the United States. Because the state has some problems today too. There is a great lack of water to drink and large forest fires are regularly occurring so many people have to be evacuated.51 Over the past four years there was an extreme drought which had aggravated the situation for California.52

In addition to a planted roof and a planetarium there are many other thinks to find too. The electricity is gained partially from solar energy and the insulation consist of recycled jeans. From the US-Authority the draft got for the environmental friendly construction the LEED-54certificate in platinum. The US-office honored the sketch with the LEED-Certificate in platinum grade for the climate friendly design and construction.

The first Ferris wheel, which is completely driven by solar energy, is to find in Santa Monica. In Santa Barbara people are actually driving with Electricity-Shuttlebuses around the city and in Silicon Valley firms compete about the best patents for green technologies. In San Francisco the Orchand Garden Hotel not only impressing with the good position but with their green image too.

Because the furniture is gained from recycled material, they segregate the waste and the houses are isolated ideal.55

At the Glass Beach a natural wonder can be seen too. The shingle beach is littered with rubbish. This makes him, located in the north of the United States, to one of the most beautiful places. More than one million glass stones are scattered at the beach, which were made of waste and now they are shining in all colors. Since the 21st century about decades the habitants of Fort Bragg centenary disposed their waste at this coastal region.

Because of that you can walk barefoot over this shining beach today.56

6.2 Exhaust gases

The beginning of the worldwide emission legislation lays in California. For example the climatic and geographic conditions lead to the determination of emission limits.57

The federal state announced the war against carbon dioxide and decided strict rules to aim at a lower emissions. In the US, California got the sharpest provisions concerning the reduction of gases cars are exhausting. With the beginning of 2017, the car companies are forced to sell vehicles, which are more climate-friendly than today. These includes for example hybrid models and electric cars.

The responsible supervisory authority for emission legislations CARB (California Air Resources Board) decided, that California has to own more than 1,4 million emission-free vehicles until 2025. The US-federal state introduced with this program even stricter guidelines for burdens smog and greenhouse gases are posing: Until 2025, the emission of smog and pollutant in the new cars should be reduced about 75 percent.


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