环境科学交叉关系学科课后题答案第二章

CHAPTER TWO1. The rate, scale and complexity of interactions between people and environment have seen unprecedented increases. We are beginning to realize our interrelatedness with our environment, as the environmental changes becomes obvious due to technology advance and the public awareness increased in the importance of natural environment. Therefore a new ethic is called for to meet the challenges.2.Ideally, the laws of a particular nation or community should match the ethical commitments of those living there, but it may take a long period of struggle and debate in reality, as the abolition of slavery, women’s equality with men.However, not every ethically right action has a supporting law. In case of environmental issues, sometimes is appropriate is legislate something, like emission of pollutants, while sometimes action should be left up to the personal ethical commitment, which is determined by certain social/economic pressures and works better on the individual level.3. Anthropocentrism (human centered ethic) is the view that all environmental responsibility is derived from human interests alone.Biocentrism (life-centered ethic) is that all forms of life have an inherent right to exist.Ecocentrism maintains the environment deserves direct moral consideration, instead of what is merely derived fromhuman/animal interests. The environment itself has moral worth.4.Thedevelopment approach assumes that human race is and should be master of nature and that the Earth and its resources exist solely for our benefit and pleasure. It thinks highly of human creativity and ingenuity and holds that continual economic growth is a moral ideal for society.The preservationist approach strives to keep large portions of nature intact because nature is regarded to have intrinsic value apart from human uses. Nature is not a resource but a refuge from economic activity.The conservationist approach strikes the balance between unrestrained development andpreservationism. Conservationists tend to consider a wide range of long-term human goods in their about environmental management.5. Environmental justice is a critical component of environmental protection.It is closely related to civil rights, and no group of people, including racial, ethnic or socioeconomic groups, should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from various programs or policies. EJ signifies that the participants of environment movement has shift from middle-class and affluent white people in America to minorities and indigenous people.6.Corporations are designed to operate at a profit, and in order to maximize its profit margin, corporation tends to cut investments in dealing with waste disposal and pollution. In this way, corporate behavior don’t take public and environmental well-being into considerations, often violating the environmental ethics.Some companies may publicly address their concerns for environment to the purpose of social marketing(called greenwashing). But they actually make no attempt to lower the environmental impact of its production.7. Individuals, as shareholders can demand the directors of corporation to run it ethically. As executives,they can wield massive corporate power and guide the corporation to adopt a better environmental approach.Whats more, the ethic of consumption can also affect the corporate behaviors.8. By choosing food that is produced locally, low in food chain and grown with least chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Buying durable consumer and reusing products. Conserving energy etc.9. Global environmental ethics address the widening gap between rich and poor countries, and call for them to set aside political differences to promote global action on environment. It also convince everyone of us that we have an obligation to minimize the harm we cause to ecological systems and the Earth.10. Yes.Triple bottom line is a green business concept, which allows executives to gauge on three fronts. It is more comprehensive as it not only takes economic costs but also environmental costs into consideration and helps companies survive. State laws will be established to grant tax breaks to businesses that comply with green business concept. More complex and stringent environmental and public safety demands will continue toinfluence corporate decisions. Triple bottom line may become the compulsory rule.CHAPTER THREE1.An environmental risk assessment could provide an orderly, clearly stated and consistent way to deal with scientific issues 1)whether a risk exists, 2)the magnitude of the risk and 3)the consequences of the negative outcome when accepting the risk.It can also state the uncertainty associated with alternative approaches to dealing with environmental issues, which helps institutions decide research priorities and plan in the way that protects environment and bureaus to set regulatory priorities and support regulatory action.Some tools are used to calculate the risks which is often hard to attain: estimations based on past experience or establish model for novel risk by laboratory studies (experimenting on other species e.g. rabbits) or computer stimulations.2. economic costs and benefits environmental costs and benefitsFour steps to take: identification of the project to be evaluated; determination of all impacts, favorable and unfavorable, present and future, on all of society; determination of the value of those impacts, by direct market values or indirect price estimates; calculation of the net benefits, which is the total value of positive impacts minus the total value of negative impacts.3. Some doubt if everything can be analyzed from an economic point of view, they fear if the economic value becomes the onlycriteria, many noneconomic values such as beauty and cleanlinesscannot be justified if they are not assigned to economic value.But difficulties exist when assigning specific value to environmental resources, while cultural and socioeconomic differences could cause the less developed country to opt for more jobs than less pollution.Moreover, it is crucial to decide during the process which preferences are most important, but sometimes it is neglected when cost is spread over a large population and when it concerned the benefits and costs for future generations.4.According to its definition, sustainable development reflects the objectives of economic development and environmental stewardship. It is composed of five characteristics: renewability, substitution, interdependence, adaptability and institutional commitment.While debates go over whether economic growth must be sacrificed in order to prevent further deterioration of environment, we should transform the approach to economic policy, and promote the transfer of modern and environmentally sound technology to developing countries.Another obstacle is the disparities of rich and poor people in a nation as well as rich and poor nations. Therefore, developed nations should act as pioneers: invest in related research and apply new techniques which promote sustainable development.5.Firstly, the logging operation may remove so many trees from hillside that runoff destroys streams and cause mudslides, but the cost is transferred to the public.Secondly, industries that no longer exist left thousands of hazardous waste sites, and the responsibility of cleanup fell on the government and the taxpayers.Strip mining is typical for the variety of external environmental costs.6. Pollution-prevention costs, one part of pollution control costs, are those incurred in private sector or by government toentirely or partially prevent the pollution that would otherwise result from production or consumption.7. When everyone shares ownership of a resource, there is a strong tendency to overexploit and misuse that resource. The common property resource has literally no owner, and if you do not use it, someone else would, therefore, even though everyone knows the eventual result, they all choose to make use of it as much as possible.The ecosphere is one big commons stocked with air, water and irreplaceable mineral resources, and each nation attempts to exploit and extract as much from “commons” as possible regardless of other nations.Another example is the shared fishing in Great Lakes region. Commercial fisheries, recreational fishers, Native American tribal fishing and regulatory agencies have tried hard to halt theoverexploitation of fishery resources. Worse still, the fishing zones are often not designed from an ecosystem approach.On an individual level, people are fully aware of air pollution, yet they continue to drive automobiles and don’t mind switching to bigger cars or purchasing more cars.8. Debt-for-nature exchanges are an innovative mechanism for addressing the debt issue while encouraging investment in conservation and sustainable development.It works like this: the conservation organization buys the debt from the creditor at a discount; although the creditor receives only partial payment of the initial loan, some return is better than a total loss; the debtor country has the debt removed and is relieved of the huge burden of paying interest on the debt; in exchange, the conservation organization requires the debtor country to spend money on appropriate conservation and sustainable development projects.9. Subsidies include consumer rebates for purchases of environmentally friendly goods, loans for businesses planning to implement environmental products.Government can pay farmers to encourage them to permanently take highly erodable land from production and reduce the erosion and build up sediment in local streams. The same is with purchasing fishermen’s fishing boats. However, some agricultural subsidies may distort the price of food and lead to overproduction.Market-based instruments include information programs (example: information tags on electric appliances that inform thepublic about the energy efficiency of the product) tradable emission permits, emission fees and taxes (the pollution tax system in China that imposes noncompliance fees on discharge that exceed standards and assesses fines and other charges on violations of regulations)deposit-refund programs and performance bonds.Life cycle analysis is to assess the environmental effects during all stages in product chain: acquisition of raw material, manufacturing processes, transportation, consumer use, disposal. Its extension is extended product responsibility, and the Responsible Care program is one of the best examples.10. People are often willing to accept risk from familiar death causes such as car accidents and flu than those dramatic and sensational causes. They tend to accept voluntary risks like drinking alcohol than involuntary ones like nuclear weapons, familiar technologies like dams than newer ones like genetic engineering.11. Renewable resources include soil, vegetation, animals, air and water. Nonrenewable resources include iron ore, fossil fuels and mountainous landscapes.12.It is because environmental costs may not be recognized immediately, as in the Colorado River dam shows, the ecosystem has a complex system of interrelationships and the damage on environment can take a relative long time to accumulate and become eminent on certain levels or indicators.13. A “take back” means taking the product back for disposal to the place it was manufactured and force the company to think hard and be environmentally responsible for production.14. SBLRBRA is the law that provided incentives for small businesses to develop brownfields, which are perceived to have environmental liabilities. It provided liability protection, funding and tax incentives to encourage small businesses to revitalize the brownfields.15. It is because they weigh the risks with the costs to eliminate those risks, and make decisions based on their distinct financial status. Sometimes they even have basic difference in defining the risk and therefore they tolerate difference levels of risks.16. It is a streamlined decision-making process for implementing corrective action in a consistent manner to protect ecological resources in chemical release sites. It provides a framework for sites that do not or cannot comply with regulatory programs or to form an integrated approach when various regulatory programs apply.17. Perception plays an important role in our understanding of environmental health and safety issues.The asbestos fear shows that the risk estimates are often different between experts and public. The people perceive the risk with different criteria and arrive at their own conclusion, yet they do not trust experts to make decisions alone.Governments need to decide whether to focus on where there is the most impact on human well-being or deal with the problemspeople are most worried about. People, on the other hand, should be supplied with more data to enable them to make more informed judgments. We should be wise and careful when forming our perception of risks as it may influence the research priorities or standards for regulation.18.DfE (Design for Environment) means a product is designed witha consideration of the environmental impacts or aspects that will result from manufacturing it. It means doing cost-benefit analysis prior to production so that the company can make rational decisions as to the environmental liabilities during its manufacturing. By doing so, the product would be more environmentally sound and cost effective, causing the least impact on our environment.19.The conventional way is to develop regulations that prohibit certain behaviors, called “command and control” program, but granting subsidies, giving liability protection and grants for small businesses, and several other market-based instruments (including emission fees and taxes) are also developed and used nowadays. The latter methods use the economic lever and encourage the individuals and companies to make sustainable use of natural resources at a lower cost.20. No, almost all human-induced environmental issues are connected to the human society as well as economics, however, exceptions exist. People may liter a place simply by ritual or norm and the environmental issue has nothing to do with economics.21. The diversified flora that shaped the landscape; TheChongming wetlands that purifies the flowing water.22. Yes. The company opt for an environment-friendly developing strategy and renovate its manufacturing processes.。