Topics Flashcards
Agriculture altered the quantity and quality of key resources.
Per capita intake of calories and protein, dietary deficiencies due to limited range of crops, malnutrition, tooth wear, decline in human size.
Agriculture transformed human societies.
Population growth, increasingly complex political and economic organization, trade and transport, deteriorating health and the rise of endemic diseases.
Agricultural societies’ expansionary drive and military advantage.
Expansion from hearth areas, displacing, assimilating or exterminating groups of hunter-gatherers.
Military: larger armies, political organization enabled resource reserves, transport increased speed of travel, disease resistance.
Global environmental impacts of early European exploration and colonialism
Ecological imperialism, introduction of new species, alter environment through emphasis on select species, reduction in plant and animal variety as foreign species take over ecological niches, mass extrication ad extinctions.
Four outcomes of lasting impacts of colonialism in Africa.
Ecological change, economic reform, control of trade and information
Arbitrary division of lands
European political, administrative, economic, and legal institution
Infrastructure development.
Money vs Wealth
Money: a number.
Wealth: combination of different types of assists that help to support our particular material needs or goals.
Arithmetic vs Physiological density
Arithmetic: number of people per unit of area.
Physiological: density of population per unit of cropland
Why are 90% fo the global population concentrated on less than 20% fo the world’s land area?
Climate, topography and soil, economic factors, cultural factors, political factors.
What are the three drivers of consumption and how/in what way do each of these shape consumption?
Need: how we gain sufficient nutrition, living conditions, employment, mobility and education for a full life, poverty is marked by a lack of consumption and opportunity.
Culture and society: identity, social contract, shaped by worldview.
Political economy: supply and demand.
Power: informed purchase, often overstated.
Culture and transformation types
Culture: the shared set of values that are lived though the material and symbolic practices of everyday life. Bundle of behaviours, values, ideas, and beliefs shared by a group of people, includes language, religion, fashion, art, etc.
Evolutionism and diffusionism.
Global trends of democratization
Democracy: all citizens (eligible) have an equal say.
Autocracy: political power is concentrated in one person.
Anocracy: political power is concentrated among an elite group or class within society.
Overall increase in democracy, oversimplification of measurements.
Indicators of Globalization
Foreign direct investment and trade.
Global vs Regional/World Economy
World: capital accumulation moves through the region/world (trade)
Global: capacity to work as a unit, in real time, on a planetary scale (collaboration)
Duel Economies
Export vs Domestic
Global economy seeking access to cheap labour and resource, export oriented, not as interested in domestic markets (limited spending)
Global penetration of the periphery uneven (export and internal orientations)
Economies run parallel with differing degrees of interaction, often limited to low end wages earned in export oriented economies being spent in domestic economy
Export Processing Zone (EPZ)
To encourage foreign investment, developing countries offer a range of incentives to foreign companies
Special areas set aside by the state that have favourable investment or trading conditions in order to attract export-oriented industries
Offshore Financial Centres (OFC)
TNCs need to be registered somewhere.
Provide financial services to non-residents, discretion or secrecy in financial transactions, shelter form taxation and regulation
Low or no tax setting and discreet trading and financial transactions
Large percentage of global wealth (60%) resides offshore
What is measured using HDI? Overall trend since 1980?
Health: life expected at birth
Education: expected years schooling for school-age children and the average years of schooling in the adult population
Income: measured by the gross national income per capita
Measurement used to determine and classify countries according to these key indicators of societal “progress” and the impact of economic policies on quality of life
Has been increasing, greatest in developed nations, still needed in developing countries
Why is inequality a problem?
Inequality breeds social problems, instability, conflict, crime, economic problems
Five functions of the atmosphere
Protection, temperature/energy balance, planetary energy distribution, planetary precipitation patterns, biochemical and geomorphological processes
Four characteristic of persistent organic pollutants that make them environmentally problematic
Resistance, non-selective, mobility, persistence, damage to human health
Global impacts of air pollution
Mortality and economic
Radiative forcing
Introduction of an agent that causes imposed perturbation in the radiative energy budget of Earth’s climate system. Change in net irradiance.
Greenhouse gases: Increases forcing
Aerosols: decreases forcing
Five roadblocks to atmospheric agreements
Lack of political will, slow international response, rapidly changing science, conflict in setting goals and targets, non-legally binding
Of the four atmospheric issues discussed, what progress has/hasn’t been made?
Stratospheric ozone: emission decrease, no increase in ozone or decrease in UV radiation infiltration.
Persistent bioaccumulative toxins: concentrations have been reduced across most of the world
Air pollution: burden of health
Climate change: temperature increase
