Exam 1: Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and Sustainability

Use the Figure above to answer the following question(s). -What is the percentage of the per capita ecological footprint for a person in China as compared to a person in the United States?

_______________ is the capacity of the earth's natural systems and human cultural systems to survive, flourish, and adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinitely.

Environmental degradation, also known as __________ __________ __________ is the process of wasting, depleting, and degrading the earth's natural capital at an accelerating rate.

Pollution cleanup is usually the best way of dealing with the release of a pollutant.

Which of the following would not be considered a nonrenewable resource?

Research by social scientists suggests that it takes ____ percent of the population of a community, country, or the world to bring about major social change.

While heavily dependent on the environment, we are not dependent for everything we need to stay alive and healthy.

The harmful effects of poverty are serious but those of affluence are ____.

Some of the world's countries are called low-income, __________-__________ countries, and include Congo, Haiti, Nigeria, and Nicaragua.

-In the figure above note that following the Black Death, the line representing the total human population rose dramatically.This rise indicates a fundamental relationship between births, deaths, and growth rates.Discuss this relationship, indicating why the steep rise occurred, and why an expected leveling off may occur soon.

It has been estimated (Rees and Wackernagel) that it would take the land area of five additional planet earths to meet the consumption of the people now on earth if they all consumed at the level of the United States.Discuss what the implications are of this statistic and any solutions that you see.

The exhaust pipe of an automobile or the smokestack of a coal-burning powerplant are examples of ______________ sources.

Use the Figure above to answer the following question.Assume that the total world population is 6.9 billion people, and the total population of the United States is 310 million people. -What percentage of the world's total population lacks adequate sanitation facilities?

A key component of environmental science is

The U.N.Millennium Ecosystem Assessment reports that human activities have degraded what percentage of the earth's natural services, mostly in the last 50 years.

The people of the United States are often said to have more of an impact on the environment than the citizens of other countries.Using the concepts of per capita resource use and per capita degradation, explain why that is true.

Which of the following is not one of the types of property or resource rights?

Overall, the air quality is poorer and drinking water more polluted today than in the 1970s.

An often irreversible shift in the behavior of a natural system is caused when an environmental problem builds slowly until it reaches an __________ __________ __________.

As China and India become developed nations, their combined populations of nearly 3 billion people will be approximately 10 times more than that of the United States.As their per capita ecological footprint nears that of the United States, competition for resources will become more intense.What, if anything, should the developed countries of today do to lessen or avoid potential conflicts in the future?