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| 1 | |
Select the statements that do not express a good reason for preserving biological diversity among both plant and animal species: |
| | A) | Lost diversity among crops makes food production more prone to disease and weather-related failures. |
| | B) | Plant diversity holds great promise for research into medicine production. |
| | C) | Plant diversity holds great promise for research into food production. |
| | D) | Biodiversity contributes to healthier ecosystems. |
| | E) | All of the above. |
| | F) | None of the above. |
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| 2 | |
Select the statement challenging the view that from a strictly free market perspective, resources are "infinite": |
| | A) | Human ingenuity and incentive has always found substitutes for any shortages. |
| | B) | As the supply of any resource decreases, the price increases and provides a strong incentive to supply more or provide a less costly substitute. |
| | C) | All resources are fungible, i.e., can be replaced by substitutes. |
| | D) | Trading certain environmental goods like rhinoceros horns, tiger claws, elephant tusks, and mahogany on the black market seriously threatens their viability. |
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| 3 | |
Identify the perspective that, if true, would challenge Mark Sagoff's argument against the use of economic analysis as the dominant tool of environmental policymakers: |
| | A) | Economics can only deal with wants and preferences because these are what get expressed in an economic market. |
| | B) | Even though wants and beliefs are in different categories, markets can measure the intensity of our wants by our willingness to pay, and that fact, by extension, provides a measurement as well for our beliefs or values. |
| | C) | When economics is involved in environmental policy, it treats beliefs as if they are mere wants and thereby seriously distorts the issues. |
| | D) | Wants are personal and subjective, while beliefs are subject to rational evaluation. When environmentalists argue for preservation of a forest, or species, or ecology, they are stating convictions about a public good that can be accepted or rejected by others on the basis of reasons, not on who is most willing to pay for it. |
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| 4 | |
Market analysis as applied to issues of the environment is ineffective because: |
| | A) | It treats us always as consumers, not as citizens, threatening our political process. It leaves no room for debate, discussion, or dialogue in which to defend our beliefs with reasons. |
| | B) | The market ignores the fact that we are "thinkers," not just "want-ers," and reduces our beliefs and values to mere matters of personal taste and opinion. |
| | C) | As Mark Sagoff points out, environmental goals are views and beliefs that cannot be priced by markets or economic analysis. |
| | D) | Our political system leaves room for both personal and public interests. |
| | E) | All of the above. |
| | F) | None of the above. |
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| 5 | |
Select the statement that does not challenge the Mark Sagoff-Norman Bowie approach which holds that absent consumer demand or a law that establishes environmental policy, business has no particular environmental responsibility: |
| | A) | This approach underestimates the influence that business can have in establishing the law. |
| | B) | The side constraints of law are a highly effective tool for controlling managerial decisions that might affect the environment. |
| | C) | Norman Bowie's proposed obligations on the part of business to refrain from using its influence to shape environmental regulation is a praiseworthy proposal but it's unlikely to have any political effect. |
| | D) | This approach underestimates the ability of business to influence consumer choice. |
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| 6 | |
Choose the statement that defenders of the circular flow model which explains the nature of economic transactions in terms of a flow of resources from businesses to households would agree with: |
| | A) | The services that resources yield can be provided in many ways by substituting different factors of production and are, therefore, infinite. |
| | B) | The possibility that the economy can grow indefinitely to keep up with significant population growth is ignored by this model. |
| | C) | If resources are moved through the classical model of a productive system at a rate that outpaces the productive capacity of the earth or the earth's capacity to absorb wastes and by-products of the system, the entire classical model will prove unstable. |
| | D) | Many resources like clean air, drinkable water, fertile soil, and food cannot, under the circular flow model, be replaced by the remaining factors of production. |
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| 7 | |
Identify the statement that does not meet Natural Capitalism's principles for the redesign of business to meet its environmental responsibilities: |
| | A) | To serve the needs of the poorest 75 percent of the world's population, ecoefficient business practices focus on ways of increasing efficiency and, therefore, decreasing resource use by a factor of 5-10. |
| | B) | To serve the needs of the poorest 75 percent of the world's population, the standard growth model would increase economic growth by a factor of 5-10. |
| | C) | The principle of biomimicry attempts to eliminate by-products once lost as waste and pollution and reintegrate them into the production process or return them as a benign or beneficial product to the biosphere. |
| | D) | Models of business as a producer of goods should be replaced with a model of business as a provider of services. |
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