<span><span>Environmental determinism: the notion that the physical environment has a massive and often controlling (and perhaps never-changing and gene rationally stable) affect on human beings, in essence dictating their abilities in all realms of life and society. </span><span>Possibility or "Cultural determinism", two related notions. Cultural determinism is the stronger of the two, in essence a rejection of the environment as a controlling influence. It claims that cultures are the result of human agency and action, and that the environment is largely a non-issue. Possibility gives more credence to the environmental role, seeing it more from the position of sizable </span><span>influence Probabilistic or "cultural ecology", sometimes seen as a compromise or synthesis of Environmental Determinism and Cultural Determinism, but more rightly seen as a more open-ended treatment of the possibility that sometimes the environment is a key influence, while at other times human actions are more so. Often tied to this discussion is the notion of cost-benefit analysis of any human actions with relationship to the environment.</span></span><span />
Energy security is the association between national security and the availability of natural resources for energy consumption. Access to (relatively) cheap energy has become essential to the functioning of modern economies.
