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Q:
You are installing solar collectors on the roof of your home to cut your use of the propane gas that heats both your hot water tank and the living spaces in your home. In doing so, you are using a(n) ____ resource rather than a(n) ____ resource.
a. renewable; nonrenewable
b. inexhaustible; renewable
c. renewable; inexhaustible
d. nonrenewable; renewable
e. inexhaustible; nonrenewable
Q:
Nonrenewable, nonmetallic mineral resources include ____.
a. copper
b. solar energy
c. sand
d. trees
e. clean air
Q:
Which term encompasses all of the others?
a. natural capital
b. natural resources
c. ecosystem services
d. renewable resources
e. nonrenewable resources
Q:
What is a social movement that is dedicated to trying to sustain the earths life-support system for all forms of life?
a. ecology
b. environmental science
c. environmentalism
d. preservationism
e. sustainability
Q:
Environmental science can be described as interdisciplinary because it ____.
a. allows for a rigorous study of the environment
b. includes topics that are not explored in other disciplines
c. often assigns responsibility to causes of environmental degradation
d. is rapidly evolving over time into a different form of science
e. includes biology, chemistry, geology, social sciences, and the humanities
Q:
What is one of the three goals of environmental science, as proposed by your text?
a. Reduce affluence.
b. Understand how we interact with the environment.
c. Acquire a life-centered environmental worldview.
d. Enhance environmental degradation.
e. Reduce the use of technology.
Q:
Which term best describes the processes provided by healthy ecosystems that support life and human economies at no monetary cost to us?
a. nonpoint sources
b. point sources
c. sustainable principles
d. natural resources
e. ecosystem services
Q:
The tragedy of the commons refers to a situation in which the cumulative effect of large numbers of people trying to exploit a widely available or shared resource can degrade it and eventually exhaust or ruin it.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Affluence always has negative environmental effects.
a. True
b. False
Q:
The per capita ecological footprint is the total ecological footprint for a given country or area.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Indirect forms of solar energy, such as wind and flowing water, provide us with inexhaustible power that we can use to produce electricity.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Natural capital degradation is a consequence of living unsustainably.
a. True
b. False
Q:
The tragedy of the commons is a phenomenon that occurs only when the number of users of a resource is small.
a. True
b. False
Q:
One social science principle of sustainability is that we should leave the planets life-support systems in at least as good a condition as that which we now enjoy, if not better, for future generations.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Inexhaustible resources exist in a fixed quantity, or stock, in the earths crust.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Biodiversity is defined as the variety of genes, organisms, species, and ecosystems in which organisms exist and interact, and plays an important role in the long-term sustainability of life on Earth.
a. True
b. False
Q:
In order for the social changes to occur that will produce sustainable economies, fully 50% of the population of a country must support the change.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Resource use per person is higher in the United States than it is in middle-income countries like China.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Pollution cleanup efforts focus on greatly reducing or eliminating the production of pollutants.
a. True
b. False
Q:
According to the human-centered environmental worldview, all species have value as participating members of the biosphere, regardless of their potential or actual use to humans.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Government subsidies can actually encourage companies to conduct business in ways that result in environmental degradation.
a. True
b. False
Q:
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.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Natural resources are considered natural capital, whereas natural services are not.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Polluting substances enter the environment through human activities alone.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Sustainability is the capacity of the earths natural system and human cultural systems to survive, flourish, and adapt to changing environmental conditions in the very long-term future.
a. True
b. False
Q:
An important goal of environmental science is to learn how life on the earth has thrived and survived.
a. True
b. False
Q:
In the 1980s, there was a backlash against environmental laws and regulations, led by some who argued that environmental laws were hindering economic growth.
a. True
b. False
Q:
In industries characterized by network externalities, the value of a technological innovation to users will be a function only of its stand-alone benefits and cost.
Q:
Technologically superior products do not always win in the market.
Q:
The influence of a dominant design can extend beyond its own technology cycle.
Q:
A legally induced adherence to a dominant design is not possible.
Q:
Products that have a large installed base are likely to attract more developers of complementary goods.
Q:
Network externalities cannot arise in markets that do not have physical networks.
Q:
In a market characterized by network externalities, the benefit from using a good decreases with an increase in the number of other users of the same good.
Q:
As firms develop complementary technologies to improve the productivity or ease of utilization of the core technology, the technology becomes less attractive to other firms.
Q:
The ability of an organization to recognize, assimilate, and utilize new knowledge is referred to as learning trajectory.
Q:
Though learning curves are found in a wide range of organizational processes, there are substantial differences in the rates at which organizations learn.
Q:
The learning curve indicates that the more units a company produces of an item, the more each unit will cost.
Q:
Increasing returns to adoption means that the more a technology is adopted, the more valuable it becomes.
Q:
Briefly define Everett M. Roger's five adopter categories and explain how a marketer might use this knowledge.
Q:
Explain what Schumpeter meant by the term creative destruction.
Q:
What are the factors that determine whether switching to a new technology will benefit a firm?
Q:
How can the s-curves be used as a prescriptive tool? What would be the limitations of this approach?
Q:
Briefly explain the different types of innovation.
Q:
Alpha Information Inc. is a firm that manufactures desktop computers and wireless network hardware components. The company is spending heavily on R&D to experiment with new designs for wireless networks instead of trying to refine how well they make their current wireless network hardware components. The firm is going through a period of ambiguity and anxiety. Alpha Information Inc. is in the:
A. dominant design phase.
B. era of incremental change.
C. era of ferment.
D. specific phase.
Q:
According to Anderson and Tushman, in the era of incremental change, firms:
A. attempt to achieve lower market segmentation by offering different models and price points.
B. undergo a period of turbulence and uncertainty.
C. focus on efficiency and market penetration.
D. focus on altering the architecture rather than improving components.
Q:
Once a new product design becomes a dominant design:
A. the product is no longer profitable.
B. it becomes difficult for competitors to imitate.
C. the architecture on which the industry can focus its efforts is destabilized.
D. the product design is adopted by the majority of producers.
Q:
Donald is always ready to buy recently launched gadgets and gizmos. Since he has sufficient financial resources to invest in these products, he is unconcerned about the risks and uncertainties involved in buying new products. Based on this description, Donald most likely belongs to the group of:
A. early majority.
B. early adopters.
C. innovators.
D. laggards.
Q:
Iris is quite skeptical about new innovations and is most likely to adopt something new only after experiencing peer pressure to adopt the new innovation. However, she is not so risk averse that she will wait until all uncertainty of a new technology has been resolved; she is willing to accept a little uncertainty if her peers already use the product. Which of the following adopter categories does Iris belong to?
A. Early adopters
B. Innovators
C. Late majority
D. Laggards
Q:
Explain the following statement (quotation at the beginning of Chapter 15) made by the German scientist Paracelsus: The dose makes the poison.
Q:
Explain why infants and children are more susceptible to the effects of toxic substances than adults.
Q:
Discuss why estimating risks from technologies is difficult.
Q:
Discuss the specific hazards we face from infectious diseases and exposure from chemicals and make a general statement about how we can reduce these major risks.
Q:
Since the AIDS virus has reduced life expectancy in some sub-Saharan African countries by as much as 20 years, the result is that some countries, such as Botswana and Zimbabwe, will each lose half of their adult population within a decade. Briefly discuss the implications of this tragedy.
Q:
What purpose does the accompanying graph serve in our challenge of evaluating hazardous chemicals?
Q:
On the accompanying graph, explain what the designation LD50 means.
Q:
Discuss at least one of the factors that explains why most people do a poor job at evaluating risk.
Q:
Describe at least one principle that can help us to evaluate and reduce risk.
Q:
On the accompanying graph, what dose in hypothetical units did it take to kill 25% of the population?
Q:
In the accompanying figure, in what age range are females more likely to die from AIDS than males?
Q:
The dirt wall left after contour mining is called an overburden.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Mining has polluted mountain streams in about 40% of the western U.S. watersheds and accounts for 50% of all the countrys emissions of toxic chemicals.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Nonrenewable mineral resources renew over millions to billions of years.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Water covers approximately ____% of Earth's surface.
a. 51
b. 61
c. 71
d. 81
e. 91
Q:
This system of dams and reservoirs on the ____ provides water and electricity from hydroelectric plants at the major dams for approximately one of every eight people in the U.S. and is used to produce about 15% of the nations crops and livestock.
a. Ohio River
b. Mississippi River
c. Colorado River
d. Columbia River
e. Great Lakes
Q:
Tap water in Palm Springs, California, most likely comes from a river that originated in northwestern Colorado.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Preventing contamination is the least expensive and most effective way to protect groundwater resources.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Land erosion can cause a major source water pollution through sediments that disrupt biotic activity.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Most freshwater in the eastern U.S. is used for manufacturing and cooling power plants.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Cruise ships are a significant source of pollution that dump toxic chemicals, garbage, sewage, and waste oil into the oceans.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Agricultural activities are the leading cause of water pollution with organic chemicals and oxygen demanding wastes as the major pollutants.
a. True
b. False
Q:
Freshwater that is used indirectly is called ____, which is the freshwater that is not directly consumed but is used to produce food and other products.
a. industrial water
b. irrigation water
c. virtual water
d. gray water
e. ground water
Q:
What phenomenon can alter the hydrologic cycle on a global scale?
a. gravity
b. climate change
c. electricity
d. geothermal energy
e. wind
Q:
What is the portion of surface runoff that we can generally count on as a stable source of freshwater?
a. surface water
b. drainage basin
c. reliable runoff
d. watershed
e. precipitation
Q:
What is a water resource that can be considered nonrenewable?
a. water vapor in the atmosphere
b. precipitation
c. surface water in lakes and streams
d. deep aquifers
e. snowpack
Q:
Explain how growing corn in the Midwest creates a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
Q:
Explain the benefits of using perennial plants rather than annual plants for food crops.
Q:
Discuss the relative costs of organically grown food and conventionally produced food. In your answer, explain the reason for these costs. Also give a possible example.
Q:
Clearly explain the relationship between irrigation and salinization of soils.
Q:
Briefly discuss how governments can save children from the harmful health effects of poverty.