Deck 3: Organizations As Agents of Sustainability

Question 1

With respect to sustainability, successful organizations are constantly:

A) Investing large sums on money into advertising their products
B) Lobbying the government for favorable legislation
C) Learning and responding to changes in their environment
D) Trying to prevent changes in their environment so they retain power and authority

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Performance management is an overarching group of indicators that relate to the strategies of various organizations. Which of the following is not a performance management indicator?

A) Total number of jobs
B) Environmental flows
C) Human relations
D) Finance

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Pollution prevention and product stewardship strategies include:

A) Development of new markets
B) Incremental and short term improvements to existing products and processes
C) Radical development of new technologies
D) Passage of legislation by the federal government

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Developing product stewardship strategic capabilities reduces triple-bottom line costs

Question 5

Businesses have little influence in solving major challenges that exist in society

Question 6

High environmental performance can result in a positive relationship with financial performance

Question 7

Which of the following help create and implement sustainability strategies?

A) Visionary activities
B) Prescribed activities
C) Autonomous activities
D) Evaluative activities
E) All of the above

Question 8

Sustainability challenges and climate change require multi-level governance solutions

Question 9

How do the core subsystems for analyzing socio-ecological problems create lasting solutions?

A) Work in isolation
B) React based on the policies passed on a local, national or international level
C) Interact with one another on a regular basis
D) None of the above

Question 10

Which of the following is a major challenge facing environmental non-profit organizations?

A) Generating profits that can be distributed to the owners
B) Receiving too much funding from government sources
C) Scaling up sustainability value creation
D) None of the above

Question 11

Which of the following are non-profit organizations?

A) The Nature Conservancy
B) Greenpeace
C) Sierra Club
D) All of the above
E) None of the above

Question 12

Which of the following are challenges to water systems in the Southwestern United States?

A) Economic growth
B) Aging infrastructure
C) Population growth
D) Changing precipitation patterns
E) All of the above

Question 13

Mandates to reduce residential water usage in Southern California had a significant impact

Question 14

Supply diversity is defined as:

A) The ability to use resources anywhere at any time without consequence
B) The capacity to shift between supply sources if a particular source becomes compromised
C) Using resources that come from other countries
D) Ensuring that an equal volume of a resource is extracted from countries with different ethnicities, climates and belief systems
E) None of the above

Question 15

Which of these factors is not important for encouraging sustainable water decisions along river basins?

A) Climatic conditions
B) The number of grocery stores in the area
C) Interaction between different management and governance priorities
D) Land use and land cover
E) A and D

Question 16

Which of the following are important in creating an integrated water sustainability framework?

A) Distrust of local and federal governments
B) Multi level collaborative research
C) Adjustments to water modelling studies
D) A and B
E) B and C

Question 17

What of the following is a major factor that prevents municipal decision makers from implementing sustainable city planning initiatives?

A) Lack of support by the public
B) Little available funding
C) Creating plans that are at odds with 2-4 year political cycles
D) Plans are too complex to implement

Question 18

New York City plans to reduce GHG emissions by ___% by 2050
0)1
B) 0.25
C) 0.4
D) 0.8

Question 19

Vancouver, B.C. has introduced several principles for sustainable living. Which of the following is not one of those principles?

A) Have a deep respect for nature
B) Have many parks and public spaces, walkable streets, and emphasis on sustainable transportation
C) Constant evaluation on the progression of the city's sustainability goals
D) Ignore the ideas and opinions of local residents and businesses

Question 20

Vancouver, B.C. aims to increase the number of LEED certified buildings. The acronym LEED stands for:

A) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
B) Local Elements of Energy Demand
C) Legislative Efforts for Environment and Development
D) None of the above

Question 21

What is the most important reason why cities in Sweden are able to achieve sustainable behavior?

A) Changes in structural design of buildings
B) Education and incentives
C) Local policies
D) None of the above

Question 22

LEED encourages improvements to a variety of building features, including water efficiency, indoor air quality, energy and sustainable sites

Question 23

Gold' is the maximum possible LEED certification

Question 24

In what state were solar gardens first enabled?

A) Oregon
B) New York
C) Minnesota
D) Colorado

Question 25

The main challenge for improving performance against integrated metrics is:

A) Generating large sums of financial capital
B) Hiring enough intelligent employees
C) Collecting the necessary resources to accurately monitor progress over time