Name______Date______Period______

Chapter 25 Review Questions Section 25-1 and 25-2 KEY

Review Questions

Section 25-1

  1. What is the key concept for this section?
  • Key concept: Major environmental worldviews differ on which is more important—human needs and wants, or the overall health of ecosystems and the biosphere.
  1. What is an environmental worldview?

Environmental worldviews are how people think the world works and what they believe their role in the world should be.

  1. What are environmental ethics?

Environmental ethics is what one believes about what is right and what is wrong in our behavior toward the environment.

  1. What is the planetary management worldview?

Planetary management worldview sees humans as the planet’s most important and dominant species, and we can and should manage the earth mostly for our own benefit.

  1. List three variations of this worldview.

The three variations are the no-problem school, the free-market school, and the spaceship-earth school.

  1. What is the stewardship worldview?

Stewardship worldview assumes that we have an ethical responsibility to be caring and responsible managers, or stewards, of the earth.

  1. What are four major types of public lands in the United States?

Four major types of public lands are national forests, BLM land, wildlife refuges, and national parks.

  1. Summarize the controversy over how we should manage these lands.

Environmentalists and developers disagree over how public lands should be used. Some believe we should develop the resources on public lands, and others believe they should be left alone for future generations to enjoy.

  1. Summarize the debate over whether we can effectively manage the earth.
  • Human-centered worldviews may wrongly assume that we now have, or could possibly attain enough knowledge to effectively manage the earth. This is a highly debatable stance, as we currently have much to learn about the workings of the natural systems around us.
  1. Summarize the various beliefs about how far we should extend our concern for various forms of life (Figure 25-6).
  • People differ in the extent to which their ethical concerns extend along the scale from self to species to biosphere.
  • First, each species is a unique storehouse of genetic information that should be respected and protected simply because it exists. Second, each species has potential economic benefit for human use.
  1. What is the environmental wisdom worldview?
  • Environmental wisdom worldview sees us as part of, not apart from, the community of life and the ecological processes that sustain all life.
  1. Explain the thinking within this worldview related to saving the earth?

The earth does not need us to manage it in order for it to survive, whereas we need the earth for our survival.

Section 25-2.

  1. What is the key concept for this section?
  • Key concept: The first step to living more sustainably is to become environmentally literate.
  1. List three ideas that form the foundation of environmental literacy.
  2. Three ideas that make up environmental literacy are that natural capital matters, our ecological footprints are immense and are expanding rapidly, and ecological and climate-change tipping points are irreversible and should never becrossed.
  1. What are five questions that an environmental literate person should be able to answer?
  2. The six questions at the heart of environmental literacy are:
  3. How does life on earth sustain itself?
  4. How am I connected to the earth and other living things?
  5. Where do the things I consume come from and where do they go after I use them?
  6. What is environmental wisdom?
  7. What is my environmental worldview?
  8. What is my environmental responsibility as a human being?
  1. How do some scientists and other thinkers urge us to apply biomimicry?

We can use biomimicry to help develop new technologies based on nature. We can mimic nature’s use of solar energy by using solar panels to generate energy.

  1. Give two examples of how this has been done.
  1. Explain how we can learn from direct experiences with nature.

Direct experiences with nature can reveal parts of the complex web of life that cannot be bought, recreated, or reproduced. Directly experiencing nature can help to foster within us the ethical commitment that we need in order to live more sustainably on this earth.

  1. What is a sense of place and why is it important?

A sense of place is any piece of the earth with which we feel as one in a place we know, experience emotionally, and love. Once we have a sense of place we will be driven to defend and protect it.

  1. Explain why Aldo Leopold is highly regarded and give some examples of the beliefs that make up his land ethic.

Aldo Leopold believed that we should see communities as networks of interdependent things and value every member or species for the role it plays; we should respect the landscape and see ourselves as members of the ecological communities around us.

Name______Date______Period______

Chapter 25 Review Questions Section 25-3

Section 25-3

1. What is the key concept for this section?

  • Key concept: We can live more sustainably by becoming environmentally literate, learning from nature, living more simply and lightly on the earth, and becoming active environmental citizens.

2. List six guidelines for achieving more sustainable and compassionate societies.

  • Some guidelines for achieving more environmentally sustainable and compassionate societies.
  • Learn about, respect, and mimic how nature sustains itself.
  • Do not degrade or deplete the earth's natural capital.
  • Take no more from nature than what nature can replenish.
  • Do not waste matter and energy resources.
  • Protect biodiversity.
  • Avoid climate-changing activities.
  • Help maintain the earth's capacity for self-repair.
  • Repair ecological damage that we have caused.
  • Leave the world in as good a condition as we found it, or better.
  • Cultivate a passion for sustaining all life and let this passion energize our actions.

3. Describe the lifestyle of voluntary simplicity now being adopted by some affluent people.

  • A lifestyle of voluntary simplicity, in which people seek to learn how to live with much less than they are accustomed to having – i.e., living with fewer material possessions and using products and services that have a smaller environmental impact.

4. What is Gandhi’s principle of enoughness?

  • Enoughness refers to the fact that the earth can supply everything to fulfill our needs, but not our greed, and in being greedy, we are taking away from others, borrowing from the future, or destroying the environment.

5. List five steps that some psychologists have advised people to take to help them withdraw from an addiction to buying.

  • Five ways to withdraw from buying addiction:
  • Avoid buying something just because a friend has bought it
  • Go on an advertisement diet
  • Avoid shopping for recreation or buying on impulse
  • Stop using credit
  • Borrow and share things like books and tools

6. List eight important steps that individuals can take in learning to live more lightly on the earth.

  • Eight ways to live more sustainably include:
  • Reduce meat consumption
  • Buy or grow organic foodand buy locally grown food
  • Reduce car use by walking,biking, carpooling, car-sharing,and using mass transit
  • Drive an energy-efficient vehicle
  • Insulate your house, plug airleaks, and install energy efficientwindows
  • Use energy-efficient heating andcooling systems, lights, andappliances
  • Reduce, reuse, recycle,compost, and share
  • Use renewable energy resourceswhenever possible

7. List two mental traps that can lead to denial, indifference, and inaction concerning environmental problems.

  • The two mental traps are gloom-and-doom pessimism and blind technological optimism or the idea that science and technology will save us.

8. Describe how the town of Greensburg, Kansas, went from being nearly ruined to getting on a path toward sustainability.

  • Greensburg was nearly destroyed by a tornado. The town came together to design and build a new, environmentally sustainable community.

9. List the major shifts that scientists say will be necessary to bring about a sustainability revolution.

  • The major shifts focus on how we approach:
  • Energy and climate
  • Matter
  • Life

10. Describe Lester R. Brown’s contributions to helping us make the transition to a more economically and environmentally sustainable world.

  • Lester R. Brown is president of the Earth Policy Institute. He has four main goals: stabilize population growth, stabilize climate change, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth’s natural support systems.

11. Explain how exponential growth could apply to our shifting onto a path toward more sustainable societies.

  • Hopefully we can achieve the exponential growth of sustainability.

12. What are this chapter’s three big ideas?

  • The three big ideas:
  • Our environmental worldview plays a key role in how we treat the earth that sustains us and how we treat ourselves.
  • We need to become more environmentally literate about how the earth works, how we are affecting its life-support systems that keep us and other species alive, and what we can do to live more sustainably.
  • Living more sustainably means learning from nature, living more lightly on the earth, and becoming active environmental citizens who leave small environmental footprints on the earth.

13. Explain the connections between Biosphere 2, the transition to more environmentally sustainable societies, and the scientific and social science principles of sustainability.

  • In Biosphere 2, scientists tried to create a microcosm of the earth that would help us understand how to live more sustainably. As we explore different paths to sustainability we must understand that our lives and societies depend on natural capital and that one of the biggest threats to our ways of life is our active role in natural capital degradation. With that understanding, we begin the search for solutions to difficult environmental problems. Competing interests working together to find the solutions must make trade- offs, because this is the essence of the political process. In an environmentally sustainable society, natural habitats and biodiversity will be preserved, there will be less reliance on fossil fuels, less waste of resources and the size and growth rate of the human population will be in balance with the earth’s available resources.