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.