Exam 22: Technology and the Global Environment

What does the textbook mean when it says that environmental issues are contested phenomena?

Clearly, as the textbook demonstrates, market forces have assisted in dealing with environmental problems.However, markets alone cannot do it all.Why is this so?

What causes acid rain?

Who is responsible for the creation of most technological innovations? Is this a beneficial arrangement for most of humanity?

Monsanto, the American-based multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation, has scoured the earth in a quest to patent plants that have been used for centuries by Indigenous people as medication and turn them into commercially viable medicines.What does Monsanto call this practice?

Shannon believes that all modern technological advances are harming the entire planet and she is starting a new Facebook group to organize resistance to them.What does Shannon feel that humans today live in?

Heather is angered because people only see the cost of fuel at the pump but not the overall cost to the environment of extracting the fuel, transporting the fuel, and storing the fuel.What is she angry about?

The price of gasoline in Canada is about $1.32 per litre at the time of this writing.But the social cost, which includes the cost of repairing environmental damage done by burning gas, is perhaps three times higher.This is an example of the slow pace of change, which is why we should not solely rely on market and technological forces to solve environmental problems.

How much more does the richest quintile of the world's population earn than the poorest quintile?

What is technological determinism?

Genetic pollution refers to the health and ecological dangers that can result from artificially splicing genes together.

According to the textbook, why do reporters flock to mobile home parks when small tornadoes strike a geographic region?

Sheldon Ungar tells us that most people are prepared to sacrifice on behalf of global warming only when exposed to a "social scare."

Uranium ore was manually carried out of Port Radium in the Northwest Territories by Dene men who were paid minimally and were not warned the dangers of handling the materials.What does this example illustrate?

The textbook contends that market and technological solutions are insufficient by themselves to overcome the dangers of environmental degradation caused by technology.

What is biodiversity and why is it important?

Discuss the suggestion that technological innovation and market forces will enable us to overcome environmental problems.

What term does the textbook use to refer to precipitation that causes the destruction of various ecosystems?

What do we call the tendency of powerful people to put marginalized people in harm's way?

Which social scientist first discovered that creative outputs and inventions seem to occur in patterned ways?