Sustainability Freshman Inquiry

Feb. 24, 2011

Jeff FletcherSee also: Daily Log Page

Logistics• Questions on Collapse Project?

– Reading Assignment: Your Papers for your Annotated Bibliographies

• Including criticisms of Collapse• (More on Collapse Criticisms next term)

• Recycling Project Follow-up– How did it go?– Next weekend will reassess rooms and do exit surveys

• 2 weeks left after today– Tues 3/1 Collapse Discussions

• Annotated Bibliography Due

– Thur 3/3 Discussion Continued; Midterm 2– Tues & Thur (3/8, 3/10) Presentations; Preview of Next Term

• Follow-up Room Assessments and Surveys• Final Reflection Due

Collapse Chapter Assignments• Finding Articles?

• Chapter 3: The Last People Alive: Pitcairn and Henderson Islands• Chapter 4: The Ancient Ones: The Anasazi and their Neighbors• Chapter 5: The Maya Collapses

Chapter 6: The Viking Prelude and Fugues• Chapter 7: Norse Greenland’s Flowering• Chapter 8: Norse Greenland’s End• Chapter 9: Opposite Paths to Success • Chapter 10: Malthus in Africa: Rwanda’s Genocide• Chapter 11: One Island, Two Peoples, Two Histories: Dominican

Republic and Haiti• Chapter 12: China, Lurching Giant• Chapter 13: "Mining" Australia

Mercy Corp Fieldtrip

• In Groups– Relate to 4 UNST learning goals– Highlights of what you learned and were

surprised by

Carbon Footprint: Issues

– Average in class lower than US average. Why?

– Possible explanations:• Lifetime development: affluence = more impact• University lifestyle• Not including everything; miscalculations

– Conclusion: “I’m doing better than US average, so I’m done”?

• Kolbert cake analogy?

– Footprint is a ROUGH estimate

Carbon Footprint: Issues cont.

• Carbon Offsets: This is what these websites are selling and why calculators are provided for free– Choosing carbon offsets (not all equal)– Carbon offset vendors that sell Gold Standard offsets

• Planetair, Less, My Climate, Sustainable Travel International, Climate Friendly, Atmosfair, Pure

• How does burning a gallon of gas (weight 6.3 lbs) produce 20 lbs of CO2?– See: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/CO2.shtml

• Breathing ~ 1 kg of CO2/day– http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?

qid=20080923091421AA830QK– http://www.null-hypothesis.co.uk/science/strange-but-true/profs-

probings/carbon_virgin_earth_climate_breathing

Electric Power Inequity

• Electric Power per capita, by country

• Populations without electricity

• One quarter of world without electricity

Review: Is The Temperature Rising?

• Raft analogy (http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/p/philander-temperature.html )– Two questions

• How far to waterfall? • When should we get out of the water?

– First question scientific; second political– Problems:

• Skepticism and reluctance to claim facts is inherent to scientific research

– Similar to Evolution: “it’s just a theory”

• Tragedy of the Commons

Temperature Rising (continued)• Thomas Malthus: “gigantic inevitable

famine”– Lily pond after 100 days; bacteria

• Need to understand that science is not exact, but sometimes we still need to act– The Lessons of Montreal Protocol (1987) in

dealing with the Ozone Hole• Periodic reviews to adapt to new results• Requirements change if evidence changes

Question

• What typical course of events do people usually think of in a collapse?

Possible Answers (p. 6)

• Population growth forced people to adopt intensified means of agricultural production (irrigation, double-cropping, or terracing), and to expand farming onto marginal lands,

• Unsustainable practices led to environmental damage, • Marginal lands had to be abandoned. • Consequences:

– food shortages, – starvation,– wars over resources, – overthrows of governing elites by disillusioned masses. – Population decrease through starvation, war or disease. – Society lost political, economic, and cultural complexity it had

developed at the peak.

Question

• According to Diamond, in addition to the 5 point framework for understanding collapse, what 4 new environmental problems face us today?

Possible Answers

• According to Diamond, in addition to the 5 point framework for understanding collapse, what 4 new environmental problems face us today? (p. 7)

– Human caused climate change– Buildup of toxic chemicals in the environment– Energy shortages– Full utilization of the Earth’s photosynthetic

capacity

Question

• Explain how the following factors not only lower, but increase risk of collapse for modern societies:– Powerful technology– Globalization– Modern medicine

Possible Answers (p. 8)

• Powerful technology– solve problems– have un-intended destructive effects

• Globalization– Disaster relief– Collapse anywhere affects here at home– Disease travels quickly

• Modern medicine– Cures or prevents disease– many people depend on it for their survival

Question

• Explain the term “comparative method” or “natural experiment” and describe its importance to this book.

Possible Answers (p. 17-10)

• Science depends upon replicable controlled experiments– Is it ethical to experiment on large populations by

withholding food or killing them to study the effects?• Comparative studies identify factors, then study

societies where the factors are naturally present or absent

• Use statistical methods when the sample sizes are large enough– Depends upon lots of accurate information about

many details– often hard to know about past societies.

Question

• Are there Modern Day Collapses?

Possible Answers (p. 22)

• Are there Modern Day Collapses?

– Haiti– Somalia– Rwanda– The Soviet Union– What about today’s headlines?

Question

• Based on your reading of the Prologue, do you think that Diamond is an objective researcher? Why or why not?

Collapse Ch. 1: Montana

• You will have ~15 minutes to prepare a 3 minute presentation on a section of Ch. 1

1. Montana's Economic History. pg. 27-mid 35

2. Mining. pg. 35-top 41

3. Forests. pg. 41-top 47

4. Soil. pg. 47-49; Water pg. 49-53

5. Native & Non-native. pg. 53-56

6. Differing Visions. pg. 56-lower 63

7. Attitudes towards regulation. pg. 63-65

8. 4 Stories. pg. 66-72