Core: Science and Our Place on the Planet I

CRN

13441

Course Number

206A

Course Description

Read the list of ingredients on a cereal box. Ponder the sleek form and intricate circuitry of a smartphone. Turn on a light switch, or step on board a new hybrid city bus. Where do the raw materials and natural resources that make modern life possible come from? Where, how and by whom are they turned into what anthropologists call our material culture--the stuff we take for granted every day? And what happens to our stuff once we discard it? This course examines the global ecological and social impacts of modern consumer demands in the U.S.A. and worldwide. We will trace the origins of the things we use everyday, and identify the end destinations of our stuff once we no longer have use for it. Our goals will be three-fold: 1) to study natural resource extraction patterns and global supply chains for raw materials used in modern consumer goods; 2) to identify and quantify the ecological and social impacts of these global supply chains; and 3) critically analyze current programs, initiatives, and policies that seek to make consumer goods more sustainable. Along the way we will gain fluency in foundational concepts that are crucial for understanding sustainability, such as ecosystem functions, the impacts of population versus consumption, lifecycle analysis, the relationship between sustainability and resiliency, and strategies for coping with global ecological change. Texts and Materials: Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, by Fred Pearce. Additional reading assignments will be drawn from a broad range of academic and applied literature and distributed in PDF format via Canvas. All reading assignments are due for the class they are listed in the syllabus.

Credit/Evaluation

5

Term

Winter 2021

Course Instructor(s)

John Tuxill