Environmental Science: Earth as a Living Planet (9th Edition)

Published by Wiley
ISBN 10: 1118427327
ISBN 13: 978-1-11842-732-3

Chapter 3 - Dollars and Environmental Sense: Economics of Environmental Issues - Study Questions - Page 57: 2

Answer

The main point concerning the exponential growth is the increasing population with the decreasing earth's carrying capacity with limited resources. Hence exponential growth is bad for the current environment. It will result in the degradation of the environment at an accelerated rate.

Work Step by Step

The biggest problem with exponential growth is that the planet could not have enough resources to maintain the "ever-increasing population growth". This is bad since humans depend on certain resources for survival and may not be able to live on Earth without them. Death and birth rates, population increase, and advances in science and technology all encourage exponential growth. Higher death rates and lower birth rates are factors that limit population expansion. The population cannot expand exponentially in the current environment due to a lack of resources, hence this is negative for the population. In environments with few people and plenty of resources, exponential growth may occur, but once the population grows large enough, resources will be depleted, slowing the rate of increase.
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