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Populations and the Natural Environment
Click on each question to check your answer.
1. What are the implications of the proposal to sell Canadian water to other countries?
Answer: Selling Canadian water will put low-income groups in trouble by not being able to access resources fundamental to survival. This will also widen the gap between the rich and the poor.
2. What is the Malthusian position on population growth and what are some of its criticisms?
Answer: The Malthusian position on population growth is that the population will grow exponentially at a constant rate that adds more people every year than the year before. While population growth is exponential, food supply increases are additive. Due to limits on available land, soil quality, and technology, food supply will be constrained in a way that human population growth will not be. Therefore, Malthus was concerned that population growth would exceed food supply capabilities. In terms of criticism, food supply does not necessarily follow an arithmetic pattern. In some technologically advanced societies, food production has surpassed population growth.
3. What are four cultural ideologies that support ecologically harmful processes?
Answer: The cornucopia view of nature argues that there is a storehouse of resources that exist only for human use. Under this view, humans have access to as many natural resources as they would like because nature is seen as being just for us. The growth ethic celebrates the notion that technology can solve all of the world’s problems. Thus, by innovating, we will improve our lives, even if that is at the expense of the ecosystem. Individualism posits that individual well-being is more important than the well-being of the whole society. Finally, the tragedy of the commons is the idea of a market system based on the capitalist concept that economies work best when left alone. This means that companies and organizations have free rein to corrupt the environment.
4. What are some recent trends in population growth in the developed world?
Answer: Many developed countries including Canada experienced zero or negative population growth. These countries accounted for only 3 per cent of the growth. The population of Europe is projected to decline from 740 million to 732 million by 2050.
5. What are the pros and cons of gentrification?
Answer: Through gentrification, once run-down stagnant neighborhoods are rehabilitated economically, socially, and aesthetically. Private investment will increase, and the local tax base will be strengthened. However, the negative side of gentrification includes pushing out working-class artists, labourers, and ethnic minorities from their longstanding communities. The poor will be forced to relocate to less desirable new neighborhoods.