ASSIGNMENT
1. Make a numbered list of five ways in which you unnecessarily waste energy during a typical day and explain how these actions violate any of the scientific principles of sustainability.
2. Use the law of conservation of matter (mass) and the two laws of thermodynamics (energy) to explain why even recycling and reuse cannot lead to sustainability, especially on a planet with an exponentially growing population using ever-increasing amounts of energy and materials and producing ever-increasing amounts of waste.
3. Why do we need to make a new energy transition over the next few decades?
4. You are in charge of the world. Make a numbered list of the three most important components of your strategy for dealing with each of the following:
(a) solid waste, and
(b) hazardous waste.
5. Man-made chemicals are considered innocent until proven guilty – consider PCB’s, for example. What might be a better policy regarding the introduction of new chemicals into the environment, considering what we’ve learned the hard way since the beginning of the industrial revolution?
6. What are three consumption patterns or other aspects of your lifestyle that directly add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere?
7. Why are most of the largest urban areas located near water?
8. What effect might climate change due to human caused global warming have on these cities?
9. What are (a) the major causes, (b) consequences and (c) the solutions for ocean acidification? (d) How will ocean acidification affect your children’s and grandchildren’s lives?
10. Describe the role and effectiveness of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
11. Compare Curitiba, Brazil and Portland, Oregon (Core Case Study, Chapter 22) as ecocities. Use the Three Scientific Principles of Sustainability in your comparisons.
12. Explain how the US local property tax structure leads to poor land use planning
and urban sprawl.
13. Apply the Three Scientific Principles of Sustainability to John Todd’s “Living Machine” (SCIENCE FOCUS 20.3) approach to waste water treatment and explain how the system works.
14. What is “environmental justice?
15. Do you believe that we have an ethical responsibility to leave the earth’s natural systems in as good a condition as they are now or better? Explain.
16. Explain how growing corn in the Midwest of the U.S. to produce ethanol and protein-rich meat can decrease the production of protein-rich seafood in the Gulf of Mexico (Core Case Study, Chapter.).
17. Consider Donella Meadows’ contrast between neoclassical economics and economics (pp. 648-650; Using Lessons from Nature to Make the Transition).
18. What viewpoints are summarized in Chapter 25?
19. Do you agree or disagree with Theologian Thomas Berry views that the industrial–consumer society built on the human-centered, planetary management environmental worldview the “supreme pathology of all history.” He says, “We can break the mountains apart; we can drain the rivers and flood the valleys.
