Reading Response Answers
Geo 300
Instructor Peggy Lee,
Reading Response 1
Question 1: Chapter 1 1) Identify and explain four basic causes of the environmental problems we face. a. “Population growth, wasteful and unsustainable resource use, poverty and failure to include in their market prices the harmful environmental costs of goods and services.” (p.15)
2) What is exponential growth? b. “Occurs when a quantity such as the human population increases at a fixed percentage per unit of time, such as two percent per year. Exponential growth starts off slowly. But after only a few doublings, it grows to enormous numbers because each doubling is twice the total of all earlier growth.” (p.16)
3) Describe the past, current, and projected exponential growth trends of the world's human population. c. “The human population has been growing exponentially. Collectively, the world’s people consume vast amounts of food, water, raw materials, and energy, and they produce huge amounts of pollution and wastes in the process. There are about 7 billion people on the earth with about 83 million more people added each year. There may be 9.6 billion of us by 2050.” (p.16)
4) What is poverty and what are three of its harmful environmental and health effects? d. “Poverty is a condition in which people are unable to fulfill their basic needs for adequate food, water, shelter, healthcare, and education.” (p.17) e. Three of its harmful environmental and health effects are “pollution and environmental degradation, limited access to adequate sanitation facilities and clean drinking water, severe respiratory disease.” (p.18)
5) Describe the connection between poverty and population growth. f. “To many poor people, having more children is a matter of survival. Their children help them gather fuel, haul drinking water, and tend crops and live stock. The children also help to care for their parents in their old age because they don’t have
Instructor Peggy Lee,
Reading Response 1
Question 1: Chapter 1 1) Identify and explain four basic causes of the environmental problems we face. a. “Population growth, wasteful and unsustainable resource use, poverty and failure to include in their market prices the harmful environmental costs of goods and services.” (p.15)
2) What is exponential growth? b. “Occurs when a quantity such as the human population increases at a fixed percentage per unit of time, such as two percent per year. Exponential growth starts off slowly. But after only a few doublings, it grows to enormous numbers because each doubling is twice the total of all earlier growth.” (p.16)
3) Describe the past, current, and projected exponential growth trends of the world's human population. c. “The human population has been growing exponentially. Collectively, the world’s people consume vast amounts of food, water, raw materials, and energy, and they produce huge amounts of pollution and wastes in the process. There are about 7 billion people on the earth with about 83 million more people added each year. There may be 9.6 billion of us by 2050.” (p.16)
4) What is poverty and what are three of its harmful environmental and health effects? d. “Poverty is a condition in which people are unable to fulfill their basic needs for adequate food, water, shelter, healthcare, and education.” (p.17) e. Three of its harmful environmental and health effects are “pollution and environmental degradation, limited access to adequate sanitation facilities and clean drinking water, severe respiratory disease.” (p.18)
5) Describe the connection between poverty and population growth. f. “To many poor people, having more children is a matter of survival. Their children help them gather fuel, haul drinking water, and tend crops and live stock. The children also help to care for their parents in their old age because they don’t have