Systemic Causes

Question 1

The U.S. nation-state is an institution that embraces and advances which three institutional practices?

Answer 1

1. Imperialism
2. Environmental Racism
3. Ecological Violence

Question 2

Tell me about pluralism.

Answer 2

Pluralism is the idea that democratic politics is a process in which various associations (i.e. trade unions, business groups, faith-based organizations, and activist organizations) engage in a competition for access to state resources and governmental influence. In theory, this allows groups to share power with the state and avoid dominance by government or by any single interest group.

In practice, the U.S. political process is less pluralist than we hope.

Question 3

Tell me about the Treadmill of Production.

Answer 3

Developed by Allan Schnaiberg and Kenneth Gould, the Treadmill of Production is a theoretical framework that explains how market forces and political institutions interact with each other to produce ecological disorganization, wealth disparities, and social inequality. In this system, we observe increasing accumulation of wealth and investments into capital-intensive technologies, rising social inequalities, and greater ecological “withdrawals” (extraction of ecosystem materials) and “additions” (pollution). These processes are deeply antiecological and antihumanist and are facilitated by the nation-state.

Question 4

One of the ways to increase profits is to not only ignored polluting processes but to reduce labor costs. How do businesses accomplish this?

Answer 4

• Introducing computer automation
• Cutting wages
• Downsizing employment rolls
• Reducing workers’ benefits

Question 5

What are some indicators of increasing levels of economic inequality and instability?

Answer 5

• The number of temporary workers has increased dramatically.
• The richest 85 people on the planet possess as much wealth as do the poorest 3.5 billion.
• 1% of the population in the United States possesses around 40% of the wealth in the country.
• Real wages have declined since the early 1970s.

Question 6

Increased levels of economic inequality and instability lead to a workforce where a growing percentage of people… (4)

Answer 6

• Are non-unionized
• Hold temporary jobs
• Receive low wages
• Are at risk of experiencing high levels of under- and unemployment

Question 7

A small elite class of white-collar “knowledge workers” enjoy what five benefits?

Answer 7

• Higher pay
• Higher education
• Higher social status
• Greater career mobility
• Safer jobs

Question 8

Why does the state offer corporations billions of dollars in subsidies?

Answer 8

To convince corporations to remain operating within state borders

Question 9

What are the two results of the prevailing ideology of “economic growth at all costs”?

Answer 9

1. Less political will or sympathy for downsized workers

2. Declining public support for labor union demands for better working conditions

Question 10

The post-1945 political economy can be defined as an implicit contract between what three entities?

Answer 10

Industry, labor unions, state

Question 11

What are the three pillars of the post-1945 political economy?

Answer 11

1. Industry needed reliable labor force, so trade unions were able to grow stronger and collectively bargain for wage increases and safer working conditions.
2. Workers’ need for jobs and general satisfaction leads to a “no strike” pledge with management.
3. The state strengthened public education to produce a high-quality labor force and expanded consumer credit to make sure that domestic demand for goods kept pace with increased production.

Question 12

Increasing international competition via economic globalization of the 1960s pushed industry to cut costs. This was accomplished in what four ways?

Answer 12

1. Weakening the labor movement
2. Reducing workers’ wages
3. Downsizing positions in firms
4. Relocating to lower-cost regions of the country or to other nations

Question 13

What were the three results of industry’s response to 1960-era economic globalization? What is the implication?

Answer 13

1. Massive unemployment in urban areas
2. Economic downturns during the 1970s and 1990s
3. Increased use of chemicals and toxins in industrial production

Implication: This is why in many urban areas we now have extensive unemployment, abandoned factories, and toxic waste sites. Ecological disruption and social disruption co-exist and go hand-in-hand.

Question 14

Tell me about the Risk Society.

Answer 14

Developed by Ulrich Beck, the Risk Society posits that at this point in history (“late modernity”), we have witnessed an exponential increase in the production and use of hazardous chemical substances. These practices emanate from the state and industry to civil society through production, consumption, and disposal.

This theory concludes that the very existence of the modern U.S. nation-state is made possible by the production of toxins (chemical poisons) that permeate every social institution, human body, and the nonhuman world. To be modern, then, must include the subjugation and control of otherized populations.

Question 15

Race is the best predictor for where ___ ___ ___ are located in the United States.

Answer 15

hazardous waste sites

Question 16

Tell me about dominionism.

Answer 16

Dominionism, coined by Jim Mason (a pioneering author within the animal liberation movement), is “the worldview of the human supremacist: the view or belief held by one species, Homo sapiens sapiens, that it has a divine right — a God-given license — to use animals and everything else in the living world for its own benefit.”

Geographer David Harvey extrapolates this concept to the domination of humans by other humans: the rich rule the poor, men control women, and powerful nations rule over weaker nations — all made possible by human exploitation of ecosystems.

Question 17

What is imperialism?

Answer 17

A system of foreign power in which another culture, people, and way of life penetrate, transform, and come to define a colonized society

Question 18

What is the unresolved tension in U.S. history and present-day politics?

Answer 18

The contradiction between our ideals of freedom and our predilection for conquest

Question 19

The propensity for conquest is driven by a desire for what three things?

Answer 19

1. consumer markets
2. cheap labor
3. access to ecological wealth in the global South

Question 20

Tell me about the Monroe Doctrine.

Answer 20

The Monroe Doctrine, established in 1823, declared the Americas off-limits to any new European colonization, creating a U.S. sphere of influence.

Question 21

Tell me about the Marshall Doctrine.

Answer 21

In 1823, Justice John Marshall reinterpreted the “doctrine of discovery” in Johnson v. McIntosh to assert that the sovereignty of “discoverers” was superior to that of indigenous peoples.

This signaled a shift from international law expectations of Europeans to engage in treaty making. The “Cherokee opinion” established that Native communities were nations because they were ruled by governments and able to engage in commerce and treaty making. However, they were special kinds of nations in which they were “domestic” and “dependent on” the United States, legally binding Native peoples to a subservient role.

Question 22

What did the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 do? What was the outcome?

Answer 22

The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 registered and forced Native peoples to live on small, individual private property lots in an attempt to “civilize” natives. This liberated “surplus land” for white settlers, private companies, and the federal government.

Natives lost ⅔ of previously-held land and were left poor or extremely poor with land that the federal government deemed to be of little economic value with few natural resources.

Question 23

What is one of the world’s greatest producers of pollution and one of the leading purveyors of institutional violence?

Answer 23

The U.S. military

Question 24

What are the two core elements of the new global media corporate ideology?

Answer 24

1. Markets allocate resource efficiently and should provide the means of organizing economic and perhaps all human life (privatization)
2. Freedom is equated with the absence of any state business regulations, but in reality, economic freedom often does not lead to or guarantee political freedom.

Question 25

What six firms control the bulk of the news, commentary, and daily entertainment?

Answer 25

1. Comcast/NBC Universal
2. 21st Century Fox/News Corp
3. Walt Disney Company
4. CBS Corporation/Viacom
5. Time Warner
6. Sony

Question 26

What is vertical integration, and what does it allow for?

Answer 26

Vertical integration is increased ownership over all aspects of production and distribution; in this case, we’re talking about media. This allows for price control and monopoly, and despite more information, there is less and less diversity in the content of this information, thus news becomes less democratic.

Question 27

What is an example of a news story untold by news outlets regarding environmental degradation at the hands of corporations?

Answer 27

The “cloud” – Data centers generate a massive amount of emissions by relying on heavily on fossil fuels and back-up diesel-fueled generators.

Question 28

If we are to understand the human interaction with the natural environment and to overcome the environmental problems we face, we must follow a fine line between what two extremes?

Answer 28

1. The rejection of science

2. The uncritical valorization of the scientific establishment

Question 29

What are the two different aspects of science?

Answer 29

1. The logic of science, the philosophy of knowledge that underlies the scientific enterprise, informing its methods and theories
2. The establishment of science–the practice of science and the social, economic, political, and culture institutions which support it; the research centers where scientists work, and scientists themselves

Question 30

Francis Bacon is considered a key figure who initiated the scientific revolution. What was his argument?

Answer 30

Empiricism. We should reject the long-established medieval practice of looking for truth in texts and, rather, seek knowledge form an examination fo the natural world. All true knowledge comes from our senses–sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell.

Question 31

Who are the three names associated with rationalism?

Answer 31

Pythagoras, Plato, then Descartes in the ancient modern era

Question 32

What is rationalism?

Answer 32

The idea that knowledge must be based on what can be logically deduced from a parsimonious set of assumptions that is not based on sensory experience, as the senses can be easily tricked (think The Matrix)

Question 33

Combining two philosophies of knowledge, how can the logic of science be described?

Answer 33

An approach to gaining knowledge about the world based on the rational analysis of empirical evidence

Question 34

Environmental debates are founded on both ___ and ___ questions.

Answer 34

factual, ethical

Question 35

What is the “factual” question in environmental debates? What is the “ethical” question in environmental debates?

Answer 35

1. What are the effects of human activities on the natural environment?
2. Are the consequences of human activity good or bad, desirable or undesirable?

Question 36

Scientists are not free of biases and prejudice. Thus, scientific findings and theories may reflect to some degree the ___ ___ in which they were formed.

Answer 36

social milieu

Question 37

What are some examples of the link between the scientific establishment and those in power?

Answer 37

1. Military funding for weapon development
2. Experimentation on animals to test cosmetics
3. GMOs

Question 38

Why is it dangerous to outright reject the logic and methods of science?

Answer 38

Generating skepticism toward science at times has been a key tactic of powerful interests seeking to subvert environmental protection. The fossil fuel industry has campaigned to discredit science demonstrating the emerging crises of human-generated climate change.

Question 39

What do environmental sociologists study about scientific claims?

Answer 39

1) How they are produced, contested, and presented to the public
2) How the environment is perceived by society and how some perceived conditions and changes in the environment come to be identified as “problems”
3) The extent to which social (and scientific) perceptions of the environment are “socially constructed” – that is to say, perceptions are created in the social realm through discourse rather than reflections of the real external natural world

Question 40

How does taking a strong social constructionist position undermine the entire field of environmental sociology?

Answer 40

It denies that there is an environment independent of human perception of it, or at least that we can have reliable knowledge of the natural world.

Question 41

How have milder forms of social constructionism been helpful to the field of environmental sociology? (2)

Answer 41

They are valuable in helping us understand

1) the social and political processes through which scientific and other claims are shaped and manipulated by social actors and
2) how these social processes often can create public perceptions of the environment that are at variance with objective environmental conditions.

Question 42

Science bears an ideal of objectivity, but what aspects of the scientific establishment conflict with this?

Answer 42

Social influences on scientific findings. Research agendas are often determined by those with the resources to fund research, and what data are collected and how data are collected, analyzed, and interpreted are not independent of the social context of research.

Question 43

How does private funding affect scientists/university researchers?

Answer 43

1. As public funding for education is slashed, universities are increasingly looking towards private funders for research dollars. Even the best scientists are then limited in the type of research they can do and present.
2. Scientists increasingly have financial stakes in their research and the technologies they advocate. Thus, their cost-benefit analyses may be born of conflicting interests.

Question 44

Summarize the three lessons from The Science of Nature and the Nature of Science.

Answer 44

1. Environmental sociologists recognize that the concern for the environment is in substantial part due to real changes occurring the natural world.
2. Environmental sociologists recognize that social perceptions of the environment are formed through political, economic, and social processes; thus, we must situate scientific knowledge in its social context.
3. The effects of environmental knowledge are double-edged: the logic of science has allowed for a growing understanding of the natural world and how humans have changed the biosphere. However, science has also given humans unprecedented power to manipulate nature, and this has contributed to a growing suite of tech that generate new and greater threats to ecosystems.

Question 45

What is technology?

Answer 45

In simplest terms, it’s how we make “stuff” and do “stuff.” Humans invent technology to overcome the obstacles to surviving and thriving that they perceive in nature and to modify the natural world in ways that meet certain human needs and desires.

Question 46

Technological change is most commonly produced by ___ ___ and ___.

Answer 46

social actors, institutions

Question 47

Imagine a classroom. When all of the chairs are facing a single focal point, what does this organization say about the social relationships in the classroom? What about when all of the chairs are in a circle?

Answer 47

When facing a single focal point, there is a more authoritarian, hierarchical dynamic created, in which a single power holder (the professor) commands most of the attention. When the chairs are in a circle, the classroom is more egalitarian, with each participant playing a more equal role.

Question 48

Three main points about technology

Answer 48

1. Reveals social systems and dynamics
2. Transforms physical things that have their origins in nature into something else to meet human goals
3. Connects you to other social systems and ecosystems; a variety of relationships with the natural world and other sets of social relations

Question 49

In Technics and Civilization, what three distinct eras of modern technological development does Lewis Mumford identify?

Answer 49

1. Paleotechnic - use of wood as the primary material and the use of moving water and wind as the primary energy sources
2. Eotechnic - use of iron as they primary material and use of coal to generate steam as the primary energy sources
3. Neotechnic - use of steel as the primary material and the use of electricity for energy

Question 50

What did human societies do prior to the advent of agriculture?

Answer 50

Early humans pursued a hunting and gathering survival strategy and developed patterns of migration that followed the season availability of food plants and the seasonal migration of other animals.

Question 51

What is the technology of agriculture allow early humans to do?

Answer 51

Modify their local ecosystems to meet their food needs, rather than modifying their societies (through migration) to meet local ecosystem conditions

Question 52

Just as the agricultural revolution made the large-scale production of food possible, the Industrial Revolution made the large-scale production of ___ possible.

Answer 52

goods

Question 53

Just as agriculture required the growing transformation of natural ecosystems into farm fields, industry required the growing conversion of (3) into (3) in the production of products.

Answer 53

elements of ecosystems, production of products

Question 54

As industrial production expanded and new markets for new products were expanded to meet increased supply, the pace and scale of the extraction fo natural resources and their conversion to products increased. What were the two major results of this?

Answer 54

1. Ecosystems and habitats were pillaged to meet the needs of industry for raw materials. These are withdrawals.
2. The capacity of industry to product on increasingly vast scales resulted in the world being increasingly full of social products and byproducts (think landfills and incinerators). These are additions.

Question 55

List four socioenvironmental problems of the modern city.

Answer 55

1. Urban smog and resulting respiratory disease
2. Accumulation of trash and the difficulty of adequate disposal
3. Contamination of freshwater supplies and the threat of waterborne illness
4. Social inequities in exposure to these urban environmental hazards

Question 56

What does the democratization of technological innovation look like?

Answer 56

Empowered citizens playing an active role in determining the goals of research and development, the prioritization and funding of that research, and the manner in which technologies will be implemented or prohibited. This input needs to occur at the earliest stages of the innovation process, not “public consultation” methods arranged by the very institutions that sponsor technological research to gain acceptance of innovations after new technologies are created.

Question 57

What is population?

Answer 57

The number of people living in a specific geographical area at a specific point in time

Question 58

What is demography?

Answer 58

The discipline in the social sciences that studies the characteristics of human populations, including how they change

Question 59

What do demographers do? (2)

Answer 59

1. Count the number of people in a population

2. Collect and public data on population characteristics (age, gender, consumption, race, ethnicity)

Question 60

What is Thomas Malthus’ assertion on population growth and environmental quality?

Answer 60

Population grows exponentially, while natural resources grow in a linear fashion. This means that human population growth will exceed the production of food, resulting in resource wars, disease, and famine.

Question 61

According to Thomas Malthus’ assertion on the population growth and environmental quality, what is the most ethical course of action?

Answer 61

To limit human population growth, beginning with the working classes of European cities whose lack of moral control created large families that the poor could not feed on their own.

This would be accomplished by restraining sexual impulses, moral condemnation of the poor, and opposition to charity designed to improve the situation of the poor.

Question 62

What is Herbert Spencer’s assertion on human societies?

Answer 62

Human society is evolutionary and progressed from less to more complex. More evolved human groups would come to dominate weaker groups via “survival of the fittest.” Thus, European geographical expansion and subjugation of African, Asian, and Native American groups were legitimized by supposed European moral superiority.

This is central to Social Darwinism.

Question 63

What does Social Darwinism posit?

Answer 63

The relationship between humans and their environment has a “natural” evolution course, but this course can be overcome through social action, particularly restraint on population growth among those groups considered less evolved.

Question 64

How does modernization theory explain global inequality?

Answer 64

A result of different levels of economic and cultural progress rather than as a set of innate, inherited, or moral characteristics

Question 65

What is the green revolution? What technologies does it include? (5)

Answer 65

A set of technological innovations to the production of food crops that were designed to increase productivity; more food to support more people.

1. Monocropping
2. Mechanized tools
3. Chemical fertilizers
4. Chemical pesticides
5. High Yield Varieties, allow plants to grow faster in marginal environments and withstand the use of fertilizers and pesticides

Question 66

What are the effects of the green revolution? (6)

Answer 66

1. More chemical input
2. High water demands → negatively altered freshwater resources
3. Raised cost of production → larger producers dominate market and buy out small producers
4. Displacement/movement of rural farmers to urban centers
5. Nutritional deficiencies for small farmers
6. Urban expansion

Question 67

What does a demographic transition to a modern society entail?

Answer 67

Low death rates (made possible by bettered healthcare and sanitation) and low birth rates (made possible by controlled fertility).

Premodern societies had high birth and death rates.

Question 68

What is cultural lag?

Answer 68

A phenomenon in which technological development improves lifespans, but birth rates remain high

Question 69

In his work The Population Bomb (1968), Paul Ehrlich attempted to avoid the elitist trappings of Malthus by proposing the equation I = PAT. What does this mean?

Answer 69

Ecological footprint = Population * Affluence * Technology

Question 70

What is Ehrlich’s “ecological footprint”?

Answer 70

The amount of land necessary to sustain consumption and absorb waste

Question 71

List critiques of Malthus’ work.

Answer 71

1. Marx: “legitimates partisan interests of English elite”

2. Linear food production proven wrong by the green revolution

Question 72

What is the WTO?

Answer 72

The World Trade Organization, the main governing organization of the multilateral trading system, staffed by unelected bureaucrats that deny public participation in decision

Question 73

How do TNCs and global organizations work together?

Answer 73

TNCs work with/lobby global organizations to develop regional and global trade agreements that undermine the efforts of individual governments to regulate TNCs.

Question 74

What is Chapter 11 of NAFTA supposed to do versus what it is used for?

Answer 74

Chapter 11 is supposed to promote the free flow of goods and services among the United States, Canada, and Mexico and protect investors if foreign governments tried to seize TNC property. But it is often used to undermine environmental decisions of local communities.

Question 75

Give an example of when Chapter 11 of NAFTA was applied to undermine a local government decision.

Answer 75

In 1999, the state of California ordered for MTBE, a gasoline additive known to put water resources at risk. In response, Methanex, a Canadian company and the world’s largest producer of the key ingredient in MTBE, claimed that its market share (and future profits) were being expropriated by the governor’s action, and thus the company should be allowed to sell the product in California or be paid $970 million in compensation.

Chapter 11 does not set limits to what TNCs can demand for compensation, nor does it allow for an appeal to U.S. courts.

Question 76

Media conglomerates socialize each generation about ___, ___, and ___ ___.

Answer 76

politics, environment, personal values

Question 77

How do media conglomerates frame environmental debates?

Answer 77

In ways that ensure that corporations are never pointed out as a cause or source of environmental degradation. Further, by framing the debate around whether or not global warming is an issue, this stifles individuals’ and governments’ initiative to act, because there is enough manufactured doubt to be inactive.

Question 78

Name two think tanks.

Answer 78

The CATO Institute and the Heritage Foundation

Question 79

How do conservative think tanks try to undermine the global warming debate?

Answer 79

1. Cuts in energy consumption would hurt the world’s workers, the struggling poor, and the elderly
2. Renewable energy sources are expensive and environmentally damaging
3. Use emotive arguments and fear tactics

Question 80

What does democracy demand in order for the majority of voices and interests to be well-represented?

Answer 80

A well-informed, active citizenry

Question 81

Summarize the history of TNCs.

Answer 81

Historically, corporations were public institutions created and mandated by law to serve public interests. In legal theory, they were considered grants or concessions of the government.

The initial creation of private finance was to aid in the expansion of state colonial and imperial interests. As corporations became increasingly involved with the state’s imperial ambitions, corporations became wealthier and more politically formidable; thus, laws that tried to control them became more relaxed. Throughout the mid-19th century, corporations were increasingly privatized, and they were not longer beholden to the public, but their investors.

In an 1886 Supreme Court decision, private corporations were legally deemed to be “natural persons,” thereby granting corporations the right to free speech, or the right to influence government in their own interests and the right to use wealth to dominate public thought and discourse. Corporations were not free to lobby legislatures, to use mass media, and to construct a public image that would best serve their interests.

Question 82

How do corporations discourage local businesses?

Answer 82

Invoking 14th Amendment “discrimination” to discourage laws that protect local entrepreneurs

Question 83

What are the three core beliefs of TNCs?

Answer 83

1. A divide between the public and private (TNCs are private affairs)
2. Sustained economic growth is the one true path towards human progress
3. Privatization promises efficiencies, eliminates inefficiencies of the public sector

Question 84

What are the two international organizations that TNCs influence?

Answer 84

World Trade Organization and United Nations

Question 85

What is the impact of TNC mobility?

Answer 85

Owners can hire and fire employees at will → employees of TNCs are expendable, contributes to rising job insecurity

Question 86

How do TNCs take advantage of public institutions? How do TNCs take over public institutions?

Answer 86

1. Lobby legislatures (General Electric)
2. Research and development
3. Privatizing historically public institutions (education, healthcare, security, policing, public lands, public water)

Question 87

What two functions does the media play?

Answer 87

1. Central economic role by facilitating non-media firms’ interests
2. Global media’s news and entertainment provide an informational and ideological environment that helps sustain political, economic, and moral basis for marketing goods and having a dominant free-market agenda