Well, it wouldn't be too long after we started developing Ecology that we would try to control the environment. In some ways this was helpful and likely prevented a lot of people from starving. But, there have been a few downsides.

There is no denying the effect that our environment has on us. Things like water and air pollution are detrimental to our health. In this episode of Crash Course Public Health, we’ll take a look at some of the ways our environment impacts us, why marginalized and low-income populations are disproportionately exposed to environmental pollution, and what we can do about it.

Chapters:
Introduction: The Environment and Your Health
Defining our Environment
Air Pollution
Water Pollution
The Neighborhood Factor
Environmental Justice
Climate Change
Review & Credits
Credits

Today we wrap up the first half of our series on physical geography by taking a closer look at natural hazards - which are physical processes like heat waves and cyclones, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and floods and droughts. And when these natural events cause significant harm to humans, we call them natural disasters. So today we'll explore the ways geographers analyze and track these events, and take a closer look at the human impact of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and The Boxing Day Tsunami on the Andaman and Nicobar islands.

From towering skyscrapers covered in trees to zero carbon smart cities, there are so many ways to imagine what a sustainable city of the future might look like. But what does it really mean to be sustainable anyway? Today, we’re going to look at environmental planning and how it intersects with people and the communities they form.

Today we’re going to talk about glaciers. These behemoth globs of compressed ice and snow moving across the land created fertile soils and physical features while also serving as frozen time capsules. They recorded both Earth’s climatic history over several million years and contain clues to its climatic future. By now we hope it’s become clear that the Earth is ever-changing, and glaciers have often been a crucial part of that change from the erratic boulders found in New York City’s Central Park to the beautiful spire of the Matterhorn in the Alps on the border of the Italy and Switzerland.

Much like a cell membrane, our atmosphere forms a protective boundary between outer space and the biosphere that allows for all life to exist on Earth’s surface. Today, we’re going to talk about its composition and layers (the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere), follow the path of a sunbeam of light as it travels through space and (potentially) reaches Earth’s surface, and discuss how the greenhouse effect can be both a good and bad thing!

Today we’re going to talk about climate change which is when there is a change in the average weather patterns in a region over a long period of time - these changes can be natural or human-caused. We’ll discuss the main driving forces of climate change in the past and show you how what’s happening now is unlike anything in the past. Global warming, or when there is an increase in the average surface temperature of the planet, has been well-documented since the Industrial Revolution, and scientists have concluded that there is a 95% probability that human activities like burning fossil fuels, industrialization, modern agriculture, and deforestation have caused most of this most recent warming. And while individual actions do matter in helping to curb the disastrous implications of a warming planet, it’s also up to us to hold corporations and governments responsible for the policies and the large-scale emissions that play a disproportionate role in impacting our atmosphere and climate.

We’re all susceptible to infectious disease of some kind or other, but not everyone is equally likely to be the victim of an outbreak. The fact is, inequalities both between and within communities mean that some people are at higher risk than others. In this episode of Crash Course Outbreak Science, we’ll look deeper at the factors that lead to this uneven distribution of outbreaks.