Ch 10 part 1.doc

Ch 10 part 1 Gross national product=the total value of an output income of expenditure produced by a nation?s citizens, including those working abroad Economy=a system in which goods and services are produced and distributed among people to satisfy needs and wants Economies have 2 functions: production and consumption of goods and services Businesses called firms use labor and capital to produce goods and services Factors of production=inputs to the production of a good or service such as labor, capital, technology, energy or materials Utility=in economic, a measure of happiness or satisfaction gained from a good or service Consumption=purchase of goods and services by consumers Circular flow model of economy=depicts the economy as the exchange of money among firms, household and governments Personal consumption expenditures=money spent by households on the purchase of goods and services Gross domestic product=total value of output income or expenditures produced with in a country?s physical borders Gross nation income= total income earned by the citizens of a country What fundamental error does te circular flow model of economy contain? It is inconsistent with the basic laws of the natural world Notion of entropy implies that economic production is a: work process that uses energy to upgrade natural resources into useful goods and services The economy is a subsystem of the environment because our economic well being depends on the natural world 4 steps of the economic process: Creating natural resources Providing a habitable environment The production of goods, services and wastes Waste assimilation Ecological model of the economy=the economy is connected to the environment by flows of energy, materials and environmental services Crustal abundance=average concentration of an element in the Earth?s crust. Ores=rocks that contain high concentrations of metals and mineral metals Environmental energy cost=the energy required to create a natural resource of a given concentration Ecosystem function=the habitat, biological or system properties or processes of ecosystems Ecosystem services= values that people derive, directly and indirectly from ecosystem functions What happens to materials and energy we use? Some is converted to goods and services that we consume every day but most are bulk inputs like energy and construction materials Wastes=forms of energy and materials that are no longer useful to humans because they have degraded in quality or because they are difficult to use again Material wastes=degraded matter released to the environment Post consumer waste=waste collected after the consumer has used and disposed of it i.e. Food wrappers Dissipative wastes=not technologically feasible to collect and recycle i.e. Pigments or pesticides Waste heat=heat released to the environment from the combustion of energy