Exam 1: The Environment and Sustainability

Biodiversity is defined as the variety of genes, organisms, species, and ecosystems and plays an important role in the long-term sustainability of life on Earth.

What does it means to live off the earth's natural income?

____________________ is the study of varying beliefs about what is right and wrong with how we treat the environment.

A shift to restore natural capital and reduce its degradation and depletion requires using technology, not lessons from nature.

The field of environmental science is considered interdisciplinary because it ____.

About 900 million people live in extreme poverty, struggling to live on the equivalent of less than ____ a day.

Resource use per person is higher in the United States than it is in middle-income countries like China.

____________________ is the biological science that studies how living things interact with one another and with their environment.

Which activity is an example of environmental degradation?

Inexhaustible resources exist in a fixed quantity, or stock, in the earth's crust.

One social science principle of sustainability is that we should leave the planet's life-support systems in at least as good a condition as that which we now enjoy, if not better, for future generations.

The term "ecological footprint" can best be described as the ____.

Which of the following describes an example of living sustainably?

Middle-income countries such as India and China may have low ____, but they have a high ____.

Why is chemical cycling necessary for life on the earth?

There was a backlash against environmental laws and regulations in the 1980s that was led by some who argued that environmental laws were hindering economic growth.

Your text refers to the dependence on solar energy, biodiversity, and chemical cycling as three major ____.

Exponential growth occurs when a quantity such as the human population increases at a fixed percentage per unit of time, such as 0.5% or 2% per year.

Which school of thought argued that public lands should be managed wisely and scientifically, primarily to provide resources for people?

The ____________________ school, led by naturalist John Muir, wanted wilderness areas on some public lands to be left untouched.