Week Seven: Environmental Economics

Environmental economics focuses on the effects that various environmental issues and policies have on the local, national and international economy. Although the study of environmental economics encompasses all of the effects that can occur due to a variety of environmental issues and policies, the United States' National Bureau of Economic Research's Environmental Economics program is specifically concerned with the costs and benefits of policies geared towards air pollution, air quality, toxic substances, solid waste and global warming. Environmental economics in general, however, is focused more on the idea of market failure, which is what occurs when the market fails to apportion resources efficiently, or, as stated by Nick Hanley, Jason Shogren and Ben White, authors of Environmental Economics: In Theory and Practice: "A market failure occurs when the market does not allocate scarce resources to generate the greatest social welfare." In my opinion, environmental economics is one of, if not the most, important factors in the environmental mess we've gotten ourselves into. Because big businesses are so close interwoven with all levels of the government, those who own and are a part of those big businesses are the ones who are going to have to be argued with and swayed if any large-scale environmental policies and procedures are going to be inacted. I think that the best way to go about approaching these big businesses and through them, the government, about potential solutions to environmental problems, would be by gathering evidence through the application of environmental economics. Environmental economics is so perfect because not only is it concerned about environmental issues and policies, which is what we ought to care the most about, it is also concerned about the effects of environmental issues and policies, which is what a majority of us, unfortunately but nevertheless, care more about.

Environmental Economics Articles:

• Political and Social Foundations for Environmental Sustainability
  Andrew B. Whitford, Karen Wong
  Political Research Quarterly
  Vol. 62, No. 1 (Mar., 2009), pp. 190-204
  Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the University of Utah
  Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27759856

• The Limited Potential of Ecotourism to Contribute to Wildlife Conservation
  Jack Coburn Isaacs
  Wildlife Society Bulletin
  Vol. 28, No. 1 (Spring, 2000), pp. 61-69
  Published by: Allen Press
  Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4617284
  
  Jack Coburn Isaacs, the author of The Limited Potential of Ecotourism to Contribute to Wildlife Conservation, argues about a topic that I've always been in support of, but am now re-thinking about because of his article. As is obvious by the the title, that topic is ecotourism. I personally have always liked this solution to protect the environment because, very simply, the environment is beautiful. Not only does it deserve to be preserved, but it deserves to be preserved in places that I or any other tourist would be able to enjoy it fully. Before reading this article, I both enjoyed this solution and thought it was one of the best out there. Isaacs, however, argues that the benefits ecotourism can provide are limited because conservations and preserves are not considered long-term solutions. What came as a surprise to me was that ecotourism often, actually, leads to further environmental degradation because it gives off the impression that the environment is actually doing incredibly well and doesn't need to be protected, backfiring completely. Isaacs ties his argument in with economics by stating that because the main purpose of ecotourism (promoting the protection of the environment) fails, the entire ecotourism market is prone to market failure.

• Evaluating Environmental Investments: A Real Options Approach

  Gonzalo Cortazar, Eduardo S. Schwartz, Marcelo Salinas
  Management Science
  Vol. 44, No. 8 (Aug., 1998), pp. 1059-1070
  Published by: INFORMS
  Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2634685

Additional Information:

• http://www.env-econ.net/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_economics
• http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eed.nsf/webpages/homepage
• http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622870/description
• http://ec.europa.eu/environment/enveco/index.htm

Week Five: Environmental Psychology

What Is Environmental Psychology?
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Environmental psychology is essentially the core of the disciplinary major, environmental studies: it is the field dedicated to the analysis of the interplay between human beings and their surrounding environments, including natural, social, and learning environments. Factors that can influence the reactions associated with various environments include everything and anything from the color of the walls and pieces of furniture; to how hot or cold the area is; to how much sunlight is let in. Each aspect, no matter how miniscule, plays an important role in how comfortable a person is in his or her living, learning, and working spaces. Accordingly, environmental psychology is most often applied by professional designers, such as architects and urban planners, who are attempting to create an environment that is both effective and inviting for those who exist within it. For example, city officials have recently begun to commission pieces of large-scale street art to be placed throughout the busiest areas so that all citizens can enjoy them; couples wishing to sell or improve upon their homes hire an interior designer to aid in "maximizing the potential" of each room. The tiniest details can greatly influence one’s reaction to surrounding environments; environmental psychology studies and alters these details to provide the best, most effective, and most comfortable outcomes.

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Related Articles:

☼ - Tonello, G. "Seasonal affective disorder: Lighting research and Environmental psychology." Lighting Research & Technology 40.2 (2008): 103-110. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 11 Oct. 2011.

Article Summary: This article examines the effects of indoor lighting on people diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder, a depression that reoccurs with the change of seasons. Its author, G. Tonello, suggests that professional designers, such as architects and engineers, ought to focus on the effects that natural light, throughout ALL seasons, has on a building's occupants, and take those effects into consideration when installing lighting systems.

☼ - Stewart, Alan E. "Individual Psychology and Environmental Psychology." Journal of Individual Psychology 63.1 (2007): 67-85. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 11 Oct. 2011.

☼ - DAVID MELLOR, et al. "Environmental mastery and depression in older adults in residential care." Ageing & Society 31.5 (2011): 870-884. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 11 Oct. 2011.

Additional Information:

☼ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_psychology
Wikipedia's article on environmental psychology.

☼ - http://environmentpsychology.com/
An entire website dedicated to the ways in which an ordinary person can improve his or her living space.

☼ - http://www.psychology4all.com/EnvironmentalPsychology.htm
Psychology4all's in-depth description of environmental psychology, including its various concepts and influences. 

☼ - http://sensingarchitecture.com/1456/environmental-psychology-what-every-architect-should-ask-themselves/
An interesting article on how important a role environmental psychology plays in the field of architecture.

☼ - http://www.iaapsy.org/division4/index.php?page=About-Division4

The IAAP's (International Association of Applied Psychology's) list of published, academic journals about environmental psychology.

Week Four: Semiotics

The shortest, simplest definition of semiotics is the study of signs. It does not, however, cover only the conventional meanings of the word, what one would normally think of upon hearing or reading "sign": road signs, neon signs that advertise businesses, restaurants, and places of entertainment, the signs of everyday life. Semiotics also studies the signs represented by and through drawings, paintings, photographs, words, sounds, and body language, even flavors, acts and objects, all of which vary in meaning between countries and cultures. Semiotics, closely related to and at times considered to be a subgroup of the field of linguistics, can be further broken down into three branches: semantics (the relationship between signs and the people, objects or ideas which the signs refer to), syntactics (the relationship between signs in formal structures, such as language or mathematics), and pragmatics (the relationship between signs and the effects that they have on the people who use them). Obviously, semiotics covers a lot of ground, including ground shared between it and linguistics, mathematics, cultural diversities, and countless other fields of study.

Articles:

• Masks and the Semiotics of Identity
  Donald Pollock
  The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
  Vol. 1, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 581-597
  Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
  Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3034576
  
  This article discusses the relationships between one's identity and masks (literal masks, not figurative ones), the meanings associated with masks, and how, not why, people tend to see masks in certain ways. It provides cultural examples of how specific masks relate to a person's overall identity, and how the meanings of masks broaden through the connections that people associate masks with, so that masks transcend traditional and stereotypical definitions of the word.
• Experimental Music Semiotics
  

  Morag Josephine Grant
  International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music
  Vol. 34, No. 2 (Dec., 2003), pp. 173-191

  Published by: Croatian Musicological Society

  Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30032129
• Men, Dogs, Guns, and Cars: The Semiotics of Rugged Individualism
  

  Elizabeth C. Hirschman
  Journal of Advertising
  Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring, 2003), pp. 9-22

  Published by: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.

  Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4622146

Additional Information:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics
  
  The Wikipedia article dedicated to semiotics.
• http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/
  
  An online version of Daniel Chandler's Semiotics for Beginners.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEgxTKUP_WI
  
  An animated Youtube video about semiotics.

• http://www.uvm.edu/~tstreete/semiotics_and_ads/terminology.html
  
  A list of definitions, including that of semiotics as well as the words related to the study of semiotics.

• http://semioticon.com/
  
  An open semiotics resource center that provides definitions, articles, journals, reference tools, connections to semioticians, and much more.