For our last class, I would like each of you to report briefly on a topic of your own choosing. There are a couple of ways you could go.
One is to explore a topic that you’d like to know more about. Choose a topic and narrow it down. This should be just a few pages, and maybe five minutes or so to report to the class and discuss.
The other approach is a kind of thought experiment. How do you envision our environmental future? What will change in our environment, our technology, our ways of thinking, over the next 50 years? Can you see solutions ahead to some of the problems of today? Can you imagine a world 50 years from now where some of today’s problems are solved? What will it take to make that happen? What will be different in that world from the world of today? Be creative. You should end up with a report of a few pages, and list your sources.
In either case, your process should involve some exploring on the Web, to look for information and ideas and inspiration. Keep track of sites you visit that have useful information and report those sources in your paper.
I’m also open to other ideas for this final short project, but you should run them by me before you forge ahead. My email link is in the right-hand column of this blog. Any questions, let me know!
Click on Read More for some links and ideas, plus a few other things, including an expanded discussion of global warming.
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Last class, I wanted to talk about a couple of topics, that we didn’t really get to in detail.
One is about how we consume a lot of stuff, and then have to get rid of it all somehow. We touched on this a few times, and I mentioned to you “The Story of Stuff.” This a website with a few short videos that do a good job of describing the environmental impact of our consumer culture. Click here to go to The Story of Stuff. The video is 20 minutes long, but well worth it.
The other topic I wanted to talk about was biodiversity. I have a powerpoint on this topic that includes a few short videos. This is another topic we could easily have spent the whole semester on! It is one of the most important issues regarding our environmental impact, yet is often overlooked. Click here for the powerpoint.
Also, recently I came across a trailer for a new documentary about mountaintop removal mining. For those of you not familiar with this, it’s worth a look. It’s a reminder that all the stuff we use, comes at a price not just to our environment, but to communities as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5wmUkpOCKE
One other interesting source I came across recently is this new project by the Rocky Mountain Institute, a research group that focuses on energy issues. They say that we can run a 158%-bigger U.S. economy in 2050 with no oil, no coal, no nuclear energy, one-third less natural gas, and no new inventions. This would cost $5 trillion less than business-as-usual—in addition to the value of avoiding fossil fuels’ huge but uncounted external costs. Check out their data here and see what you think.
Also, I worry that when we talk so briefly about climate change, students might end up more confused than when we started. I have written up a more detailed explanation of my view of this ongoing controversy, I hope it helps you to make sense of it. I welcome any questions! Click here to read it.
