Foundations
How a particular situation is viewed and understood by an individual. It is based on a mix of personal and collective assumptions, values, and beliefs.
What is a perspective?
A type of system in which both matter and energy can flow into and out.
What is an open system?
Caused by small changes in a system that produce large changes and result in a shift in equilibrium.
What is a tipping point?
A measure of the extent to which practices allow for the long-term viability of a system.
What is sustainability?
One type of event that has influenced the modern environmental movement. (multiple correct answers)
What are environmental disasters/accidents, movies, books, environmental conferences, etc?
Qualities or principles that people feel have worth and importance in life.
What are values?
A type of matter flow that moves matter from place to place without changing its form.
What is a transfer?
The ability of a system to recover from disturbances and maintain stability.
What is resiliency?
The three pillars of sustainability.
What are environmental, economic, and social sustainability?
Book written by Rachel Carson that brought attention to the problems caused by persistent chemicals like DDT.
What is A Silent Spring?
Lenses shared by groups of people through which they perceive, make sense of and act within their environment. They shape people’s values and perspectives through culture, philosophy, ideology, religion and politics.
What are worldviews?
An example of this type of matter flow is evaporation.
What is a transformation?
A type of feedback loop that occurs when a disturbance leads to an amplification of that disturbance, destabilizing the system and driving it away from its equilibrium.
What is a positive feedback loop?
The right of all people to live in a pollution-free environment, and to have equitable access to natural resources, regardless of issues such as race, gender, socio- economic status, and nationality.
What is environmental justice?
This power plant in Ukraine had a partial nuclear meltdown.
What is Chernobyl?
The three environmental value systems.
What is ecocentric, anthropocentric, and technocentric?
Storages of matter in system diagrams are represented as this.
What is a box or rectangle?
Type of feedback loop that occurs when temperatures rise, melt permafrost, release greenhouse gases, and cause further temperature increases.
What is a positive feedback loop?
The area of land and water required to sustainably provide all resources at the rate of consumption and absorb all generated waste at the rate of production for a specific population.
What is an ecological footprint?
Buried toxic wastes in this neighborhood in Niagra, New York resulted in the created of the Superfund law.
What is Love Canal?
This EVS views humankind as being the central, most important element of existence.
What is anthropocentrism?
A simplified representation of reality that can be used to understand how a system works and to predict how it will respond to change.
What is a model?
Properties that are not present in the individual parts of a system, but only appear when the parts interact as a whole. For example, the cyclic population patterns are produced due to predator/prey interactions.
What are emergent properties?
A measure of the monetary value of final goods and services produced and sold in a given period by a country minus the environmental costs.
What is Green GDP?
This nuclear disaster led to a pause in future nuclear power development in Japan.
What is the Fukushima Daiichi disaster?