This list covers from lecture 1 to 4 and will be on quiz 1.
| LECT | WORD or CONCEPT | DEFINITION |
| 1 | wicked problem | a problem in which the value alignment changes as more information is available, never really solved |
| 1 | world view | a coherent, self-reinforcing set of values, intellectual approaches and working view of the structure of human/nature interactions |
| 1 | cornucopian | world view that is relies on technology |
| 1 | industrial ecology world view | rely on efficient technologies and market actions |
| 1 | committed environmentalist | conserve resources |
| 1 | deep ecology | strong rights for nature, preserve nature |
| 1 | pluralistic | actively a diversity of viewpoints |
| 1 | I=PAT equation | impact = population * affluence * technology, is used more of device to remember the components than a function |
| 1 | exponential population growth | constant growth rate that compounds |
| 1 | logistic growth model | self-limiting model for population growth |
| 1 | demographic transition model | model that explains the decrease in death rate and then birth rate that were related to the level of industrialization in northern European nations |
| 1 | poverty trap | condition in which nations stalls in both high birth and low economic growth |
| 2 | demographic dividend | economic benefit that comes from reduced population growth in the process of industrialization |
| 2 | Millenium development goals | list of goals that are proposed to reduce global poverty |
| 2 | ecosystem services | provisioning, regulating or cultural services provided by natural capital that are useful to humans |
| 2 | determinants of well-being | security, basic material, health and good social relations (from the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment ) |
| 2 | population age structure | distribution of the population by age class, pyramid in developing countries and even or top heavy in industrialized nations |
| 3 | mineral resource | metals and other geological resources |
| 3 | depletion time | estimated amount of time left at expected rates of consumption |
| 3 | reserves | economical and known amount of resource, depends on the degree of uncertainty |
| 3 | fossil fuels | originating from biomass that was buried in the past |
| 3 | list of energy resources | renewable and non-renewable |
| 3 | net energy | amount available for desired work, all the work minus the work it took to procure, transfer and use that energy |
| 3 | advantages and disadvantages for non-renewable energy sources | at least one substantial advantage and disadvantage of each form |
| 3 | business as usual scenario | no changes from current policies, economy or human behavior |
| 4 | energy | the ability to do work (such as a kWatt*hr) |
| 4 | power | work per unit time (such as a kWatt) |
| 4 | energy efficiency | usable work done divided by the total energy used |
| 4 | negawatt | The unit of measurement of savings, in the context of the idea that saving a watt through investing in efficiency is cheaper and preferable than creating a new watt of power generation (such as a new coal plant). |
| 4 | embedded energy | the amount of energy that it took to make all the components of a project (such as the wood in a house) |
| 4 | operating energy | the energy used over a period of time for a facility (such as the cost of heating and cooling a house) |
| 4 | energy intensity | embedded energy per area or weight of a product, for example one of the houses in Hokkaido had an energy intensity of 3.9 GJ m^-2 (3.9 giga-joules of energy per square meter of house). This term is also often used in terms of the energy used per dollar of the gross domestic output. |
| 4 | ecological footprint | for an activity that creates CO2, this is the area of average productive, arable land that it would take to take up that CO2 |
| 4 | life cycle analysis | LCA is the accounting for all the energy and materials that it takes to manufacture an item and the costs to deconstruct and dispose of that item - often called "cradle to cradle" or "dust to dust" |
| 4 | GDP | gross domestic product - an indicator of all the transactions in an economy |
| 4 | GPI | Genuine Progress Indicator - an indicator that focuses on contributions of the economy to the increased well-being of humans, often used in conjunction and for comparison purposes to the more accepted GDP |
| 4 | rebound effect | the observation that often efforts to improve energy efficiency lead to the use of more energy (but more cost effectively) |
Last updated on January 31, 2010 by John Rueter