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agricultural revolution
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the shift around 10,000 years ago from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a way of life in which people began to grow their own crops and raise domestic animals
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environment
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the sum total of our surroundings, including all of the living things and nonliving things with which we interact
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Pinchot, Gifford
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the first professionally trained American forester who helped establish the U.S. Forest Service; today, he is the person most closely associated with the conservation ethic
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natural science
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the academic discipline that studies the living and nonliving world and the ways in which they interact and change
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ethical standards
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the criteria that help differentiate right from wrong
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environmental science
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the study of how the natural world works and how humans and the environment interact
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relativist
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an ethicist who maintains that ethics do and should vary with social context
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preservation ethic
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a set of values stating that we should protect the natural environment in a pristine, unaltered state
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ecocentrism
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a philosophy that views the well-being of an individual organism - human or otherwise - as less important than the long-term well-being of a larger integrated ecological system
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renewable natural resource
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a supply that is virtually unlimited or that is replenished by the environment over relatively short periods of hours to weeks to years
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environmental justice
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a movement based on a moral sense of fairness and equality that seeks to expand society's domain of ethical concern from rich to poor, and from majority ethnic groups to minority ones
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paradigm
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a dominant philosophical and theoretical framework within a scientific discipline
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controlled experiment
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a study in which the effects of all variables are held constant, except the one whose effect is being tested by comparison of treatment and control conditions
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ecofeminism
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a philosophy holding that the patriarchal (male-dominated) structure of society is a root cause of both social and environmental problems
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hypothesis
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a statement that aims to explain a phenomenon or answers a scientific question
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independent variable
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the factor that a scientist manipulates in an experiment
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sustainable development
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progress that satisfies our current needs without compromising the future availability of natural resources or our future quality of life
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conservation ethic
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a set of values stating that humans should put natural resources to use but also have a responsibility to manage them wisely
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Leopold, Aldo
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American scientist, scholar, philosopher, and author; his book The Land Ethic argued that humans should view themselves and the land itself as members of the same community and that humans are obligated to treat the land ethically
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universalist
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an ethicist who maintains that there exist objective notions of right and wrong that hold across cultures and situations
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ethics
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the study of good and bad, right and wrong; can also refer to a person's or group's set of moral principles or values
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Malthus, Thomas
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British economist who maintained that increasing human population would eventually deplete the available food supply until starvation, war, or disease arose and reduced the population
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peer review
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the process by which a manuscript submitted for publication in an academic journal is examined by other specialists in the field, who provide comments and criticism and judge whether the work merits publication in the journal
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data
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information collected from an experiment
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industrial revolution
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the shift in the mid-1700s from rural life, animal-powered agriculture, and manufacturing by craftsman to an urban society powered by fossil fuels
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prediction
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a specific statement, generally arising from a hypothesis, that can be tested directly and unequivocally
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biocentrism
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a philosophy that evaluates an action in terms of its overall impact on living things, including - but not exclusively focusing on - human beings
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control
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the portion of an experiment in which a variable has been left unmanipulated, to serve as a point of comparison with the treatment
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Muir, John
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Scottish immigrant who settled in the Yosemite Valley of California who is most strongly associated with the preservation ethic; he argued that nature deserved protection for its own inherent values but also claimed that nature played a large role in human happiness and fulfilment
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interdisciplinary field
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an area of study that borrows techniques from several more traditional areas of study and brings together research results from these fields into a broad synthesis
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anthropocentrism
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a human-centered view of our relationship with the environment
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ecological footprint
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the cumulative amount of land and water required to provide the raw materials a person or population consumes and to dispose of or recycle the waste that is produced
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scientific method
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a formalized approach for testing ideas with observations that involves several assumptions and a more or less consistent series of interrelated steps
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environmental ethics
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the application of ethical standards to environmental questions
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theory
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a widely accepted, well-tested explanation of one or more cause-and-effect relationships that has been extensively validated by a great amount of research
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social science
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an academic discipline that studies human interactions and institutions
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environmental studies
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an academic program that heavily incorporates the social sciences as well as the natural sciences
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fossil fuel
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a nonrenewable natural resource, such as crude oil, natural gas, or coal, produced by the decomposition and compression of organic matter from ancient life
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Millenium Ecosystem Assessment
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the most comprehensive scientific review of the present condition of the world's ecological systems and their ability to continue supporting our civilization
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dependent variable
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the factor that is measured in an experiment
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sustainability
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a guiding principle of environmental science that requires us to live in such a way as to maintain Earth's systems and its natural resources for the forseeable future
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experiment
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an activity designed to test the validity of a hypothesis by manipulating variables
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environmentalism
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a social movement dedicated to protecting the natural world
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