12. Environmental Policy and Climate Solutions Free Online FlashCards

What is an environmental externality?

Externalities are costs imposed on people or ecosystems not directly involved in a transaction, such as pollution-related health costs borne by nearby communities.

What does command-and-control regulation do?

Command-and-control regulation establishes legally enforceable limits or requirements, such as emissions standards, discharge permits, technology requirements, and bans.

What is NEPA’s primary function?

NEPA is primarily procedural: it requires agencies to study environmental consequences and alternatives before certain major federal actions, while allowing public review and comment.

What does environmental justice require?

Environmental justice requires fair treatment and meaningful involvement so that no population bears a disproportionate share of environmental harms and affected people can influence decisions.

Why assess cumulative exposure?

Cumulative exposure considers combined risks from multiple facilities, pollutants, or hazards rather than evaluating each source in isolation.

Which risk-assessment step identifies potential harmful effects?

Hazard identification determines whether a chemical, pollutant, pathogen, physical agent, or environmental change can cause harmful effects.

How do risk assessment and risk management differ?

Risk assessment is primarily scientific; risk management uses that assessment with legal, economic, ethical, feasibility, and public-value considerations to choose an action.

Why are wildlife corridors important?

Wildlife corridors connect habitat patches, helping organisms move, maintain gene flow, respond to seasonal conditions, and adapt to climate change.

How do preservation, conservation, and restoration differ?

Preservation protects ecosystems from use or major alteration; conservation permits resource use while maintaining long-term ecological function; restoration repairs degraded ecosystems.

What is climate-change mitigation?

Mitigation reduces the causes of climate change by lowering greenhouse-gas emissions or increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide removal.

What are nature-based solutions?

Nature-based solutions use natural or restored ecosystems to reduce hazards while providing ecological and social benefits, such as wetlands storing floodwater.

What criteria should evaluate an environmental solution?

A strong environmental solution should be judged by effectiveness, scale, cost, feasibility, equity, environmental impact, resilience, measurability, reversibility, and flexibility.