05:55 PM to 07:10 PM TR
Music Theater Building 1002
Section Information for Fall 2019
When Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, the environmental movement was itself relatively silent. Today, however, environmentalism is among the most pressing and prominent issues in public discourse—both local and global.
Issues like global climate change in the wake of Greenland’s lightning melt, air pollution in Delhi going literally off the chart, plastic waste choking international waters, and the unsustainability of the consumption practices of ordinary folks like you and me receive sustained public attention. Businesses scramble to cash in on the new appeal of being green. As others have noted, we’re undergoing a transformation as large and significant as the industrial revolution at the speed of the digital revolution. Governments and policy makers scramble to cope with these changes, and the environment has come to dominate international affairs.
This course will focus on both the moral and global political dimensions. We will read authors foundational to the environmental movement, as well as provocative contemporary moral philosophers. We will also carefully analyze the nature of the global negotiations and environmental policy formation so as to better understand major events like the UNFCCC’s recent Paris Agreement and subsequent COPs.
We will explore questions such as, whose interests are at stake? What is the nature of the problems we face with environmental degradation? What is and should be the impact on both humans and other members of our ecosystems? What responsibilities—on both the individual and collective level—do humans have to one another and to plants, animals, and ecosystems? Who is most wronged by environmental degradation, and how are we to address such issues in the face of limited cooperation and other problems of collective action? Jumping into the midst of a complex and interdisciplinary brawl, you will learn to write clearly and effectively on one of today’s most salient issues.
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Credits: 3
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