How humans affect and are affected by the natural environment, including other living creatures, the chemistry of air and water, and the physical environment. Problems of pollution, changes in land use including destruction of natural habitats, population pressure, and climate change. There are two hours of lecture each week in conjunction with Environmental Studies 123, Life and the Global Environment. The third hour is a seminar and discussion, concentrating on human population issues and using as text Beyond the Numbers , edited by Laurie Ann Mazur and published by Island Press. There will be weekly written assignments and a term paper.
Instruction is by lectures, films, assigned readings, class discussions, and computer exercises.
The Amish in Twentieth Century America. 320 or permission of instructor. The Amish, a cohesive rural subculture, are used as a case study to examine in detail alternative land and resource utilization that has proved viable in contemporary North America. Value systems, social structures, technology and scale as they influence individual, family and community interaction with the natural environment will be examined. Amish life-style offers an implicit critique of consumption patterns and agricultural methods characteristic of the 1990's.