EA Quiz 1

Jonathan Swift’s critique of colonialism and resource scarcity in Ireland

•Poor because all goods are leaving Ireland for Britain and causing famine. •170,000 parents who cannot sustain their children
•Needs its own economy not British
•heavy tax on farmers
•Rents paid to absentee landlords, farmers don't own their land
•undermining of wool manufacturing in Ireland

Thomas Malthus- positive and preventative checks, arithmetic & geometric growth, what should be done to stop population growth?

•Positive (death rate) ex: famine plague war
•Preventative (birth rate) ex marrying later, spacing out children, birth control
•graph of arithmetic (food growth) geometric growth (population) when •Malthusian catastrophe occurs when population growth outpaces agricultural production, causing famine or war, resulting in poverty and depopulation.
•Abolish the poor laws to stop population growth

Mary Robinson-who are those most affected by climate change in her Climate Justice work? How are they affected?

•Women—whose lives frequently revolve around gathering water and food—tend to feel the impacts of climate change and shrinking natural resources the most.
•People who live off the land, specifically in the reading Ugandan Women.
•Fossil fuel workers who will lose their jobs

What does Garrett Hardin mean by “lifeboat ethics”? What does he think is wrong with the spaceship earth metaphor?

•A space ship has a captain and we don't all have access to the same resources-- we are not all even
•Rich people (americans) are in lifeboats, poor people are in the water. No more space on lifeboats so rich people might as well just stay on the life boats.
Problems with this:
too black and white, there is a middle class
not all rich people are americans
racial prejudice towards population of rich nations
How did the rich get rich in the first place?

Paul Ehrlich – what does he mean by the population bomb?

warned of the perils of overpopulation: mass starvation, societal upheaval, environmental deterioration.However non of it came true and was racist because it was a fear of global south countries rapid population growth taking all resources.

Why does Julian Simon not worry about over-population?

•challenged notions about resources, believes that humans have ingenuity
•says that virtually all measures of human well being have improves since 18th century
•The prices of good have actually fallen in the long run
•There are always new resources to be discovered

Betsy Hartmann-what does she think is wrong with the so-called population paradigm? What does think are the true causes of environmental degradation?

It is racist and sexist because it puts the blame on women for overpopulation.
•people that exploit nature for short term and short sighted profits
•unplanned rapid urbanization
•Big Ag replacing small farmers and displacing native people
•Disproportionate resource consumption in the affluent Global North
•Technologies designed to destroy nature instead of restoring nature

Jade Sasser-climate change with population growth slowing- where are the greatest greenhouse gas emissions coming from, and how are those emissions related to population growth in those countries?

•In the US and China, the two top greenhouse gas emitters, the
fertility rate is 1.6, well below he replacement rate of 2.1.
•richest 1% of people on Earth were responsible for more than double the number of greenhouse gas emissions of the poorest 50%.