1. The idea of a strict separation between humans and nature:

a. Is an idea that serves the ruling class;

b. Is a reflection of the antagonism between cities and countryside;

c. Was challenged by Marx and Engels;

d. All of the above.

2. Marx devoted quite a substantial section of Capital Vol. III to what was seen as the most pressing environmental problem of the mid-nineteenth century, which was:

a. Industrial pollutants that caused widespread lung disease;

b. Increasingly severe swings between floods and droughts;

c. Depletion of nutrients in the soil and lower agricultural productivity;

d. Clouds of coal smoke hovering over vast rural areas.

3. Marx viewed the earth as:

a. Under the stewardship of humanity;

b. God’s gift to humanity;

c. Potentially subject to complete domination by humans;

d. Created to serve the ruling class.

4. The concept of the “metabolic rift” refers to:

a. The estrangement of humans from the natural conditions of their existence;

b. The antagonism between town and country made worse by capitalist production;

c. The way that imperial powers rob colonized nations of their natural resources;

d. All of the above.

5. When Marx wrote, “Fertility is not so natural a quality as might be thought; it is closely bound up with the social relations of the time” he was referring to:

a. Differential birth rates in rural and urban areas;

b. The impact of the mode of production on soil productivity;

c. Declining abundance of European livestock;

d. Overall decline in the birth rate in Europe.

6. For Marx, the only lasting solution to the metabolic rift is:

a. Allowing industry to apply the latest science to agriculture;

b. Ending the practice of heating homes with fire;

c. Abolishing private property and treating land as communal property;

d. Teaching rural residents the importance of crop rotation.

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