Question

A power plant recently purchased land and will be building a large factory on wetlands in Florida. Which of these is not an environmental effect of destroying these wetland

Destroying the wetlands will create a loss of habitat for many species.


Destroying the wetlands will create flooding.


Destroying the wetlands will create species to relocate to a new area.


Destroying the wetlands will change the climate in this area.

Answer 1

The correct answer is: " Destroying the wetlands will create species to relocate to a new area.".

The other three options, do mention environmental consequences that would be triggered because of the destruction of the wetland: loss of habitat and climate changes in the area that would lead to more extreme phenomena such as flooding. But the removal of species cannot be considered an environmental effect because it is just derived from the establishment of the factory that occupies the space where species used to live and hence, these are forced to move somewhere else.

All the options provided describe negative externalities generated by an economic activity, which are the costs beared by external third parties when an economic activity is undertaken.