Week 12: Environmental Problems

Question 1

How does George Monbiot describe the feeling he felt upon returning home from his 6 year expedition in the tropics as an investigative journalist?

Answer 1

Ecologically bored

Question 2

What does Monbiot claim has been the dominant aim of industrialized societies?

Answer 2

• To know what comes next
• To conquer uncertainty

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Question 3

What is the word/concept that Monbiot is obssessed with, and what does it mean?

Answer 3

“Rewilding”:

The mass restoration of ecosystems

The rewilding of human life

Question 4

What example of species reintroduction does Monbiot use?

Answer 4

Re-introduction of Wolves into Yellowstone National Park in 1995

Question 5

What was significant about the re-introduction of the Wolves into Yellowstone? What effects did it have on the ecosystem?

Answer 5

• Changed the behavior of the deer
• Caused trees to grow much bigger, and grow in new areas. Berries became more plentiful
• Birds, Beavers, Bears returned
• The rivers changed, from the stabilization of the banks from the growing vegetation.

Question 6

How much farmland will be vacated in Europe between 2000 and 2030?

Answer 6

30 Million hectares (the size of Poland)

Question 7

What does Monbiot suggested be re-introduced or implemented into the ecosystems of Europe?

Answer 7

Megafauna species (large or giant animals)

Question 8

What is Paleoecology?

Answer 8

The study of past ecosystems

Question 9

How much of the previously forested part of the US have started to “reforest”?

Answer 9

Two-thirds

Question 10

200 years ago, Thomas Malthus claimed that population growth occurred ______, and food production increases _________

Answer 10

Population Growth: Geometrically

Food Production: Arithmetically

Question 11

How does Stephen J. Scanlan see food scarcity?

Answer 11

He sees it as a myth

Question 12

This view says that modern values and activities contribute to the pollution fo our natural surroundings and over-harvesting of our resources

Answer 12

Structural Functionalism

Question 13

What is the “Cornucopian” view of nature?

Answer 13

That nature exists as an endless plethora and storehouse of resources that exist only for use by humans

Question 14

A cultural or subcultural commitment to the idea that economic growth is good in of itself, whatever it’s social effects

Answer 14

Growth Ethic

Question 15

Belief in the primary importance of the individual and the need to protect individual liberty and choice against collective social or governmental restriction

Answer 15

Individualism

Question 16

This viewpoint argues the problem isn’t a lack of resources, but problems with distribution

Answer 16

Conflict Theory

Question 17

A social movement linking the exploitation of marginalized groups within society and the degradation of nature in Western values

Links the destruction of the environment and patriarchal domination of the political and corporate world

Answer 17

Ecofeminism; coined by Françoise d’Eaubonne

Question 18

The creation of policies that address climate change, and the systems that create it and perpetuate inequality

Answer 18

Climate Justice