The Environement Flashcards
the number and variety of species and the range of their genetic makeup.
Biodiversity
when an organization or individual produces net zero emissions of greenhouse gases.
Carbon neutrality
investments in projects that remove carbon dioxide or its equivalent from the atmosphere.
Carbon offsets
changes in the Earth’s climate caused by increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other pollutants produced by human activity.
Climate change
a regulatory approach where the government “commands” business to comply with certain standards (such as amounts of particular pollutants) and often directly “controls” their choice of technicality to achieve these standards.
Command and control regulation
any shared resource, such as land, air, or water, that a group of people use collectively.
Commons
the efforts to prevent inequitable exposure to risk, such as from hazardous waste.
Environmental justice
the U.S federal government agency responsible for most environmental regulation and enforcement.
Environmental protection agency (EPA)
the idea that companies have a continuing responsibility for the environmental impacts of their products and services, even after they are sold.
Extended product responsibility
the gradual warming of the Earth’s climate, believed by most scientists to be caused by an increase in carbon dioxide and other trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere resulting from human activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels.
Global warming
designing factories and distribution systems as if they were self-contained ecosystems, such as using waste from one process as raw material for another.
Industrial ecology
collecting information on the lifelong environmental impact of a product in order to minimize its adverse impacts at all stages, including design, manufacture, use, and disposal.
Life-cycle analysis
oceans and the salt marshes, lagoon , and tidal zones that border them, and well as the diverse communities of life that they support.
Marine ecosystems
a form of regulation, used in environmental policy, based on the idea that the market is a better control than standards imposed on corporate behavior.
Market-based mechanism
a bluish gas composed of three bonded oxygen atoms.
Ozone
