Geography 2412 Final Study Guide

Geography 2412

Final Study Guide and Sample Questions

The best study guides are your own notes; the syllabus, and the lecture notes on the class web page. But here are a few tips and sample questions.

The final will be similar to the midterm and not cumulative except for themes and concepts that clearly thread through the entire course (e.g., the optimistic vs pessimistic views of environmental problems).

Study especially these areas:

Solid and toxic waste problems, starting on p. 108; see post-midterm lecture notes for Oct. 28.

Population, Environment and Food, Chap. 5: Know the demographic transition and how it appears to be working in LDC’s, and be familiar with the three main arguments about pop growth and resources : neo-Malthusian; economistic; and inequity arguments. Study the carrying capacity discussion (p. 199-201) and the options for feeding 9 billion people (pp. 201-207), but only skim past 207.

Global Climate Change (Chap 4): Skip ozone depletion, but know the greenhouse problem starting on p. 132. This issue combines several elements of natural resource use: energy, transportation, pollution, and the role of climate in other natural and human systems. Know the basic physical problem: greenhouse gases like CO2 are less transparent to out-going terrestrial (long-wave) radiation than they are to incoming solar (short-wave) radiation, and know the uncertainties about the actual effect on earth’s climate. Know the basic provisions of the Kyoto agreement (from text, recitation guide, and lecture), and arguments about its impacts and effectiveness.

Energy (Chap. 6): Know the key qualities and problems of the main fossil and renewable energy sources: coal, oil, natural gas; nuclear; wind, solar, hydropower (pp. 242-253). Review the energy source/sink problems, then the macro-level and micro-level studies of energy use in society (pp. 234-242) paying particular attention to the micro-level economic and behavioral/attitude insights into how and why people alter their energy use, some of which you applied in the driving behavior recitation.

Environmentalism (Chap 9): read the entire chapter carefully and be familiar with the evolution of American environmentalism and the various “discourses” (themes or branches) of environmentalism (list on p. 349). See Specifics in my lecture notes.

Alternative Futures (Chap 7): refer to the lecture notes for exact pages; be familiar with the two alternative futures (cornucopian vs./ limits), I=PAT, and the dimensions of a sustainable society (pp. 291-294).

Sample Questions (correct answers marked):

What is the most effective way to reduce energy use: (a) educate users about source and sink problems (b) regulate how energy-using systems are engineered (d) raise the price (e) develop a renewable source.

(f) In the last decade, the rate of human population growth began to slow, and the total human population of the earth began to decline.

(f) Fortunately, along with the slight decline in population growth rates, inequity between the richest and poorest segments of the world population has also begun to decline.

Match these ways of thinking about the population/resources problem to the main prescription that comes from that line of argument:

(1) neo-Malthusian (c) (2) Economistic (b) (3) Inequity theory (a)

(a) redistribute wealth;

(b) improve trade and technology;

In the transitional growth phase of the demographic transition:

(a) birth rates remain higher than mortality rates (b) mortality roughly equals birth rates (c) birth rats remain lower than mortality rates.

Match these names with their role in environmentalism:

1. Garret Hardin (b)

2. Rachel Carson (c)

3. John Muir (a)

4. Gifford Pinchot (d)

5. Lois Gibbs (e)

a. Preservationism

b. Over-population

c. widespread chemical pollution

d. Utilitarian conservation

e. Anti-toxics activism

Match these energy sources with the qualities that best characterize them:

Oil (c)

Coal (b)

Natural gas (a)

Nuclear (d)

(a) Clean-burning and efficient, but can be difficult to transport long distances (e.g., across oceans)

(b) Most dirty-burning but quite abundant

(d) An uneconomical investment

What would a sustainable society NOT do:

(a) stabilize the size of its population

(b) rapidly transform its biological base into consumable resources

(d) practice dematerialization

(d) b and d

(t) The Climate Change Convention to limit greenhouse gas emissions allows countries having trouble reducing their emissions to buy emission credits from other countries that exceed their reduction targets. In this case, the U.S. (if it agreed to the treaty) could find itself buying these so-called “hot air” permits from Russia or other countries who have lowered their emissions.