Test 3 Flashcards
Ethics
A set of moral principles that provides guidelines for our
behavior
which philosopher is the deontological ethical approach associated with?
Immanuel Kant
What are the two basic principles that define deontological ethics
duties that ought to be upheld and rights that ought to be protected
Which ethical approach was used the basis for the establishment of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970?
assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, and aesthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings
The idea that every form of life has intrinsic value was a declaration from this initiative established in 2000
Earth Charter
utilitarianism definition
what is right by determining what actions would bring as much good (or as little harm) as possible
anthropocentrism definition
Moral concerns are focused on the
interests of humans ex. World hunger,
future generations of humans
Biocentrism Definition
where the interests of all living things are
considered ex. protect endangered species
Ecocentrism definition
concerned with all the living and nonliving
components of ecosystems.
Aldo Leopold
Ecocentric
Gifford Pinchot -
Anthropocentric
John Muir
ecocentric
Who Cofounded the Sierra club
John Muir
first head of the U.S. Forest Service
Gifford Pinchot
Who wrote , A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold
True or false: Goods that have negative externalities associated with them are typically underproduced
False they are overproduced
What is growth referred to as
Neolithic Revolution
when are where did the domestication of wheat, corn, and rice
10,000 years ago in Southeastern china and Asia
In 1804 we crossed an important threshold of ____ people
1 billion
The climate began to cool on the planet around 1280, known as the “little ice age”. This is a likely cause of
Climate began to cool
Which actions did the Rapanui take on Easter Island that, in addition to changes in weather patterns and European explorer related-issues, resulted in their downfall?
Disease from European explores in 1722
Name the 3 specific factors associated with the empowerment of women that the United Nations predict will significantly affect how the human population will change by the end of the century
birth control , education and employment
Which specific outcomes have studies linked to an increased empowerment of women?
Lower fertility, age at first birth increases, longer intervals between births, lower rates of unexpected pregnancy
Which specific outcomes are linked to women completing a secondary education?
Have children later, use birth control, work &earn more, invest more in children
Demographer
Social scientists who studies the characteristics and consequences of human population growth
Total Fertility Rate (TFR)
The average number of children a women would have in her reproductive years in a given population
Why could using the TFR instead of the crude birth rate provide a
better estimate of how populations may change?
TFR is not influenced by population age structure (its calculated based on women reproductive age)
replacement fertility
A TFR of 2.1 children which is the rate at which a population does not grow or decline
Advances in which two factors could help us increase the carrying capacity of Earth for humans?
Health and agricultural
Why might it be difficult for us to estimate the carrying capacity of Earth for humans?
Lifestyle, Resource use and impacts of future generations
How many humans are projected to live on the planet in 2100?
10 billion
Why might it be difficult to raise a TFR for a country once it has fallen below the replacement level?
Lower TFR levels typically associated with higher standard of living and more investment per child
Demographic Transition
A decrease in the birth and death rates of a population linked to improvements of living conditions, birth control technologies, economic growth
Each stabilization phase
- Morality Transition 2. fertility transition 3. stability transition
Demographic Window
Time when countries population is dominated by people of working age. less than 30 and 15 percent of the population is younger than 15 or older that 64
___ & ___ created the environmental impact formula to connect populations to their consumption in the 1970s
John Holdern and Paul Ehrlich
environmental impact formula and how each variable is measured
I = P x A x T (Affluence = grow domestic product) (Technology, total impact, technology)
Agriculture
The process of cultivating plants and domesticating animals for consumption
The carrying capacity of the planet for hunter-gatherer humans was ___
30 million
What trait did humans select for in the wild relatives of wheat during its domestication process? Would this trait that was selected for be evolutionarily beneficial for these plants?
Modern wheat and its harder to harvest.
___is the name of the wild relative of corn that was __over many generations to produce the corn we have today
Teosinte and selective breeding
True or false:Animals used as a food source for humans were domesticated by humans before any others
False dogs were domesticated first
What was the Green Revolution and who was responsible for kickstarting it?
Norman Borlaug: A large increase in crop production in developing countries
Name the 4 specific factors responsible for increasing crop yields during the Green Revolution and be able to give an
example of each
fertilizer, pesticides, high yield crop varieties.
Pesticide resistance
A heritable change in the sensitivity of a pest population that results in the repeated failure of a product to achieve the expected level of control
Plasmid
A small circular DNA strand of bacterial or protozoal origin that can replicate independently of chromosomes
Which agricultural practice is involved with erosion, leaching, and salinization?
Irrigation,
Which 3 practices can be put into place to help restore soil health?
Minimal soil distribution, cover crops and Adopting complex crop rotations
Environmental Hazards
Biological, chemical or physical factors in the environment that threaten the health of humans and living things
What are the 3 main branches of environmental health?
Toxicology, epidemiology and public health
Researched the outbreaks of Cholera in London in 1854
Dr John Snow
True or false: All microorganisms are pathogenic for humans
false
Infectious diseases cause around ___% of human deaths worldwide
25%
What are 3 common respiratory diseases
Common cold, Influenza and Bronchitis
what is the magnitude of the effect of respiratory diseases on humans across
the world?
Each disease causes thousands of death per year
Which continent had the highest percentage of its countries with high death rates from diarrheal diseases in 2019?
Asia
Name the 3 most common blood-borne infections in the U.S.
Hepatitis C, Hepatitis B and HIV
Where does Malaria primarily occur and how does it spread?
In tropical region and it is spread through mosquitos
Can you tell me which waste stream processes are upstream and which are downstream?
upstream –> resource extraction and other material
Downstream –> Landfill, litter and incineration
Municipal Soils Waste (MSW)
Waste consumers dispose of from their households and businesses
Why might the waste associated with a product be much higher than simply the physical weight of the product itself?
Upstream processes generate a massive amount of waste before it even reaches you
True or False: Globally most of the trash we generate is placed in open dumps
True
____ & ____ are two greenhouse gases that are produced as
waste decomposes in open dumps
Methane and Carbon Dioxide
Be knowledgeable on what leachate is, what it can contain, how it is formed
Foul smelling soupy liquid forms when rainwater or groundwater combines with waste, goes into soil and water
where it moves, how it can affect environmental and public health, and its lifespan ( leachate)
Creates plumes and can effect people directly (through drinking water) and indirectly (through plants and other things harmed by the waste)
What are the two main sources of city-based ocean waste and what effects can they have on either environmental or public health?
Sewage sludge (causes eutrophication depletes oxygen level in water) and dredge soils (contains heavy metals and waste)
3 modern waste management
strategies overall
isolation, incineration and conversion
True or False: Incineration is the dominant disposal strategy in the U.S.
False it is isolation
How do sanitary landfills deal with some of the key issues that open dumps have?
Infrastructure - drainage, treatment systems
True or False: Landfills account for the largest human-generated source of
methane gas at 37%
True
True or False: Most of the waste stream in the United States is incinerated
False only 12%
What could be done to mitigate some of the issues we see with incineration of our waste?
Storing waste prior to incineration, removing metal, glass, batteries
True or False: We recycle more of our plastic MSW than we do our paper MSW
here in the U.S.
False paper is recycled more
True or False: In many developing countries, rapid urban growth is occurring in high density cities
true
Infrastructure in suburbs requires (more/less) energy to construct while being less resource efficient than high-density urbanization
More energy
Per capita energy use and greenhouse gas emissions may (decrease/increase) as urban density increases
Decrease
Where does most of the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage patch come from? Describe the relationship between the
amount of plastic entering the ocean and the size of the plastic pieces present in the ocean
It mostly comes from land. the amount of plastic in the ocean is increasing while the average size of plastic pieces is decreasing
