It’s Not Easy Being Green
12:30 Seminar
This course will explore the challenges and rewards associated with building a sustainable society. It takes 24 acres of productive land to support the lifestyle of an average American. However, there are only 4.5 productive acres available for each person worldwide. If everyone lived like the average American, we would need more than 5 Earths to support the current world population! How can the world’s population continue to grow and improve its standard of living without destroying the planet that sustains us? This course will address the real-life challenges of environmental sustainability through examination of the scientific, socio-economic, and political factors that govern sustainability in complex systems. Students who take this course will be challenged to improve their personal capacities to influence change in pursuit of environmental sustainability at individual, community, and global scales. Thus, this course will focus on the themes of citizenship and human relations to the natural world from Pacific Seminar I.