Monday, November 29, 2010

meetings for final portfolio

Your Final Portfolio (Due Friday, Dec. 10) Should Include:

1. A Table of Contents
2. An Introduction (250 to 500 words) in which you explain which writer you encountered in this course (e.g. Nye, Brand, or ______) offers the best model for expository writing, and why.
3. A Revised Version of Paper Three (or Paper Two, if you like) in which you highlight the connection of your subject matter to New England.

Please bring your portfolio materials to me for our conference before the last day of class. Those materials should include a rough draft of your introductory essay.


Friday December 3

Gabrielle Chin
Collin McNamara
Jonah Lou
Alex Kithes
Greer Gavin
James Leong
Alyssa Azizi-Yarand


Monday December 6

Amy Ekart
Phil Sussingham
Alexandra Erb
John Yang
Arlind Hoxha
Alvin Chin
Ben Bernays


Wednesday December 8

Dennis Nakkeeran
Ryan Mulhern
Pamela Lim
Michael Ruan

Monday, November 15, 2010

Presentations

Please consider which of the following dates you would like to give your
presentation:

W 11-17 Student Presentations & Discussion

Alex Kithes

Monica Akhtar

Collin McNamara

Amy Ekart


Fr 11-19 Student Presentations & Discussion

Dennis Nakkeeran

Michael Ruan

Arlind Hoxha

Greer Gavin

Gabrielle Chin

M 11/22

Ben Bernays


M 11-29 Student Presentations & Discussion; Final version of Paper 3 due

Jonah Lou
John Yang



W 12-01 Student Presentations & Discussion

Phil Sussingham
Alexandra Erb
James Leong
Alyssa Azizi-Yarand




Fr 12-03 Student Presentations & Discussion; Draft of Final Portfolio due

Ryan Mulhern
Pamela Lim
Alvin Chen

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Interesting article relating to the cons of geoengineering

Here is an article that uses many of the arguments that we came up with in class to try to dissuade people from using geo-engineering as a solution to climate change.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Opposing Views

Here is a video of Indian activist Vandana Shiva expressing her criticism of Monstanto and Genetically Modified (GM) foods.

Here is a piece from the Guardian (UK) in which British environmentalist George Monbiot challenges a fact claim from Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline.

Here is an excerpt from the Mike Davis book, Planet of Slums>

And here is a quick profile of Fixing the Sky, James Rodger Fleming's critical history of climate control and geo-engineering.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Pro & Con Arguments

Genetically Engineered Crops

PRO

GE crops fight soil erosion.

Drought resistant crops will save lives.

GE crops require less labor and time to grow, and are thus less expensive.

GE crops can add vitamins to dietary staples such as rice (e.g. "Golden Rice" with vitamin A).

CON

Could throw a lot of people out of work---especially farmers & farm workers.

Could raise global population by increasing food supply.

Drought resistant crops over-tax land resources.

Has already created "superweeds" resistant to herbicides.

Could be a slippery slope that leads to overuse of GE crops across the board.

GE crops could disrupt fragile ecosystems.

Widespread use of GE crops could give far to much power to a few corporations.

GE crops do not address the economic imbalance that leads to global hunger in the first place.


Nuclear Power


PRO

Nukes provide a constant source of baseline electricity.

We can, and do, turn nuclear weapons into nuclear fuel.

Nukes are carbon neutral.

Nuke plants take up less space than solar and wind plants.

Reactors and storage facilities are safer now.

CON

It would be too difficult to overcome public fears of nuclear power.

It's impossible to eliminate the possibility of a serious accident.

It's impossible to eliminate the possibility of terrorist groups or rogue nations misusing nuclear materials.

Nukes are highly subsidized by government money.

Shutting down plants after a few decades in costly and dangerous.



Mega-Cities

PRO

These cities are "population sinks"; people living in cities have fewer children.

People leave the land to move to cities, and rural areas recover ecologically.

Urban economies offer greater stability.

Urban populations tend to be more educated, and women have more opportunities for advancement (and then they have fewer children).



CON

Slums are less sanitary than rural villages, due to overcrowding.

Too few people living on farms could threaten stability of food supply.

Mega-cities are a logistical nightmare.

Can be breeding grounds for horrific crime.

City dwellers are not economically or politically autonomous.

Economic inequality becomes greater in urban societies.


Geo-engineering

PRO

We are already engaged in geo-engineering, so we might as well learn to do it correctly.

Geo-engineering could protect biodiversity.

Geo-engineering is likely to be more feasible than changing human behavior.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

It's better to establish agreed upon norms for geo-engineering while we still have the opportunity.

CON

There are unforeseen consequences in almost everything we do in nature; in the case of geo-engineering, those consequences would be very large.

Since these policies would affect everyone, everyone should have a voice in the decision-making process; at this point, there is no mechanism for achieving that.

Geo-engineering does not address root causes of our environmental crises; it only addresses the symptoms.

Geo-engineering could be used as a weapon.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

PAPER THREE: ENVIRONMENTAL HERESIES

1500 WORDS
FIRST DRAFT DUE 11/15
FINAL DRAFT DUE 11/29

In his new book Whole Earth Discipline, Stewart Brand argues that global urbanization, nuclear power, genetically engineered crops, and geo-engineering should all be supported by environmentalists who are concerned about the dangers of anthropogenic climate change. Aware that he is taking positions on these issues that are counter to the consensus of most environmentalists, Stewart Brand calls his arguments in Whole Earth Discipline his "four environmental heresies".

Your job in Paper Three is to choose just one of the four main arguments in Whole Earth Discipline and assess its validity in light of an opposing viewpoint. Writing this paper will involve these three steps: 1) mapping Brand's rationale for taking the position that he does, 2) finding a published work by another environmentalist that takes the opposite position, and 3) mapping the rationale of the opposing argument, in order to assess whose argument is more persuasive.

Friday, October 15, 2010

The Julian Simon / Paul Ehrlich bet

In 1980, economist Julian Simon made a public bet with environmentalist Paul Ehrlich about the future of resource scarcity. Here is an account of the bet, and here is a profile of Julian Simon from Wired magazine.