Sullivan University Environmental Science Discussion – Description
You will download this word document, it has instructions on page one and the following pages are the questions you need to answer. For this assignment you will need to find a news story that relates to the topics we’ve learned during this course to assess. The article cannot be older than 6 months and should consist of at least 4 paragraphs of content. As you are considering the question of bias, you might want to visit this website (AllSides) where they classify various news outlets as being either left, center or right.
I am going to post each discussion we’ve had from each week. You can chose a topic from any of those
WEEK ONE-Chapter 3 in our textbook introduces several environmentalists throughout history. I would like for you to think of an environmentalist as anyone who cares about the environment (hopefully that includes you!).
For this discussion post do some research and find someone that would likely be recognized by most people in the class (famous athlete, actor, politician etc…) and make a case for how they are an environmentalist. I want this person to be alive today, so no historical figures. Also Greta Thunberg is off the table, she’s well known for being an environmentalist, she’s not well known for another reason who also happens to care about the environment.
WEEK TWO-We learn in chapter 15 about conservation efforts to protect endangered species. There are some groups that are trying to approach this issue from a different angle, they are working to bring species back from extinction (this is called de-extinction). One well known example of this is the research group working to bring the Woolly Mammoth back. There are several TedTalks that explain what is happening and how they’re doing it. My favorite is from 2013 and I’ve linked it here.
Colossal is the name of a company that is actively working to achieve de-extinction. For the discussion board this week I’d like you to visit their website and explore the “de-extinction” page. I hoping we can get a lively discussion going this week about this concept. Questions to think about as you write your post:
Is de-extinction a good idea? or a bad idea?
If we bring an animal back from the dead what are some of the potential positive outcomes?
If we bring an animal back from the dead what are some of the potential negative outcomes?
How do you think bringing back something like the Woolly Mammoth would impact people, planet, a
WEEK THREE-The content this week has a big focus on water resources. For the discussion this week, you can either focus on freshwater resources or marine (ocean) resources.
Freshwater – I would argue that this is one of our most valuable resources. We have very little freshwater and we don’t always use it responsibly. Do some research into a couple of practices that we can try to incorporate into our lives to use our freshwater resources more sustainably.
Marine – Ocean resources are unique in that they are not “owned” by anyone. The water bordering a country is under the protection of that country, but the open ocean does not belong to any one group of people. This makes regulating what happens in the ocean, and taking responsibility for cleaning it up a complicated matter. If you choose to focus on marine resources this week I’d love to hear your ideas on what we can do to better care for our oceans. Do some research to support whatever ideas you share.
WEEK FOUR-
This week we are learning about what happens to our solid waste. We are very much a consumer driven society and we make a LOT of waste in our daily lives! For the discussion this week I want everyone to do a 24 hour waste audit. You can download this sheet to keep track of what you consume for a 24 hours period and what will happen to the waste that you generate doing what you do during that time. You don’t need to use the sheet, but it’s a good guide to help you think through what you are using, writing some notes about your waste on scrap paper or tracking it in a note on your phone is fine too. The sheet was originally created for an event in 2018, but it will work fine for us to use as we examine our own practices today.
For your initial post, lets look at recycling.
Is recycling good for the environment? How is it good for the environment?
Is recycling bad for the environment? How is it bad for the environment?
Are we making recycling easy enough that people want to participate? What more can we do?
After you’ve completed your waste audit you can post the results either as a part of your initial post (if you see the instructions in time for that) or you can comment on your own post with some conclusions based on your audit. Things to think about after your audit:
What waste can I eliminate?
Are there things I can recycle, that I currently trash? How will I make the change to recycling?
Anything else that you were surprised to learn by looking at your trash for a full 24 hours?
If you want to include your actual waste audit form it would be interesting to compare them, but I am not requiring that
WEEK FIVE-This week we learned about air pollution and the accumulation of greenhouse gasses. We know that burning fossil fuels (like gasoline in automobiles) is a major contributor of greenhouse gasses. In April the EPA proposed changes to the regulation of emmissions that seem poised to push the production of Electric Vehicles (EVs) way up (see this news story from CNN).
For the discussion this week I’d love to hear your thoughts, supported by research, on whether or not we should be giving up on alternative fuels (like biofuel) and going all in on EVs. A few questions to consider:
Are EVs really going to be much better for the environment than gas engines if we are still generating most of our electricity with fossil fuels?
Would investing in biofuels be a better long term solution, or will all energy be generated by renewables soon enough that we should just convert fully to EVs?
WEEK SIX-We learned this week that fossil fuels are finite and most predictions have them running out within the next 100 years or so. We also learned that the cost of most renewable sources of energy has come down to a point where they are comparable to the cost of fossil fuels. This begs a few questions:
Why aren’t we seeing a bigger shift to renewables?
What do you think is a reasonable timeline to stop mining/using fossil fuels? 10 years? 50 years? Why switch until we need to when things run out in 100 years?
What obstacles stand in the way of our shifting fully to renewable sources of energy? What will it take to overcome those obstacles?
62
The post Sullivan University Environmental Science Discussion first appeared on .
