Honors 353-003, Spring 2006

Technology in the Contemporary United States

 

Resolving the Crisis in the Global Environment:

And the Process of Implementing Technological Solutions

Dr. Nadeau

 

Office: RobA 4563

Office # (703) 993-1195

Home # (703) 250-4630

E-mail: rnadeau@gmu.edu

Office hours: TTh 11:00-12:00 AM and by appointment

 

Description:

 

 Numerous studies in environmental science have conclusively demonstrated that the crisis in the global environment is menacingly real and must be resolved with all deliberate speed. One objective of this course is to provide students with the background required to become environmentally responsible and ecologically literate citizens. The other is to demonstrate that each student could make substantive contributions to the resolution of the environmental crisis by making effective use of individual talents and interests.

       

If this crisis is to be resolved, we must stop referring to our best scientific understanding of the complex interactions between human systems and environmental systems as the “environmentalist view” and “to start calling it the “real-world view.” Scientists have attempted to make this view real by disclosing the dynamics involved in these interactions based on the best scientific theory and evidence. However, this real world view is rarely communicated in ways that can be readily understood by those outside the scientific community. In this course, this view will be translated into a form that students without extensive background or training in the sciences can readily understand and appreciate. 

         

It is widely assumed in the United States and in other highly industrialized western countries that the process of developing “green” technologies, or technologies with fairly benign environmental impacts, will effectively resolve the environmental crisis. But for reasons that will soon become obvious, the fundamental challenge is not to develop viable technological solutions to these problems. It is to implement these solutions in ways that could allow large scale human activities to be coordinated in environmentally responsible ways in a planetary scale.

 

The first law of environmental science is that everything in the global environment is connected to everything else. And the environmental crisis cannot be resolved unless political decision makers and economic planners fully understand appreciate what this law means and begin to coordinate the interactions between human and environmental systems in environmentally responsible ways. But this is much more easily said than done and we will examine some of the reasons why this is the case.

       

In The Dream of Earth, Thomas Berry made the following comment about the crisis in the global environment: “It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective.” In this course, the frame tale for the new story that could serve as the basis for the resolving the environmental crisis is science. On the most obvious level, scientific knowledge has gifted us with the means and methods of articulating and implementing viable solutions to this crisis. What is not so obvious is that this knowledge has also revealed that we have entered a new phase of human history in which the old stories about the sources of human identity and the relationships between groups in both political and economic terms are badly in need of revision.

          

The scientific truth that will be most pervasive in this discussion is that the crisis in the global environment exists because fully modern humans evolved the capacity to acquire and use complex language systems and to organize their experience in a linguistically-based symbolic universe. In this universe, the prospects of survival could be greatly enhanced by externalizing ideas as artifacts and inventing new narratives that could coordinate collective human activities in increasingly larger and more complex social systems. For reasons that will be examined in some detail in this course, this not only explains why our numbers increased much beyond the roughly five million individuals that would have been possible during the normal course of evolution. It also explains why recent generations of fully modern humans could use their collective knowledge and expertise to create global systems of production and exchange which are rapidly undermining the capacity of the system of life to sustain the existence of our species.

       

When the environmental crisis is viewed is these terms, it becomes quite clear that the origins of this crisis and the manner in which it can be resolved are the same. This crisis exists because fully modern humans had the ability to coordinate collective activities in increasingly larger and more complex social systems and to externalize ideas as artifacts. And the crisis can be resolved by using this extraordinary and utterly unique ability to accomplish three formidable objectives. The first is to develop and implement in both economic and political reality institutional frameworks and processes capable of coordinating large-scale human activities in a sustainable global environment. The second related objective is to displace environmentally destructive technologies with technologies that have relatively benign environmental impacts on a global or planetary scale. And the third is to enlarge the bases for mutual recognition and cooperation between peoples and governments in ways that could allow for the totally unprecedented levels of cooperation in the international community required to accomplish the first two objectives.     

        

 

Reading Assignments:

 

The reading assignments in this course will deal with diverse aspects of the crisis in the global environment from the perspective of many subject fields. Students will be expected to read this material prior to class and to answer study questions on a list I will provide. Students will also be required to spend some time between each class reading articles in print and electronic media about environmental issues and concerns. Each class will begin with a “newsroom” session in which these issues and concerns are discussed and the expectation is that all students will be active participants in this discussion.

 

This course is also designed to provide students with an opportunity to develop some expertise on technological solutions to environmental problems. Each student will be asked to select a specific technology from a list I will provide, to do research on this technology, and to write a term paper based on this research. Students will also be required to function as the in-class expert on their technology and to make a short presentation to the entire class at the end of the term on how the widespread implementation of this technology could contribute to the resolution of the environmental crisis. These assignments will be discussed at some length in class, and I will work with each of you individually to resolve any problems.

 

Exams:

 

This course will include a mid-term in class exam and a take home final. Students who expect to do well on the these exams must carefully read all of the assigned material, faithfully attend class, and be prepared to answer in detail the questions that accompany the reading assignments. Students may use their reading assignments and in-class notes in completing the take-home final, and this exam will provide students with an opportunity to better assimilate and integrate the broad range of materials studied in this course.

 

Due Dates:

 

    Mid-term: March 9

   Term Paper: April 20

   Take-home Final: distributed on the last day of class and due on scheduled exam date

 

Grading Percentages:

 

Mid-term exam: 20%

Term paper: 35%

In-class presentation: 10%

Take-home final: 35%  

 

Web Sites

 

There are now hundreds of Web sites which deal with environmental issues and concerns. When you use Google or other search engines, you will be directed to a large numbers of sites sponsored by corporations and political organizations that often utterly distort or misrepresent scientific evidence in the service of vested interests. The sites sponsored by corporations may be good sources of information about production and distribution systems. But be very skeptical about any allegedly scientific claims about environmental issues or problems that appear on these sites and do not use this material in your papers and presentations.

 

Reading Assignments:

 

Based on my experience in teaching similar courses, the in-class discussion should proceed at its own pace and this explains why specific reading dates are not assigned for these assignments. I will, however, indicate at the end of each class what material must be read before the next class and this material will be read in the order that it appears on the syllabus. If all students read this material prior to class and are prepared to answer the study questions, there will be no pop quizzes. But if this is not the case, I will reserve the right to give such quizzes.

 

 

I. The Miracle Planet and the Symbol Making Species

 

  1. Introduction: The GMU Global Environmental Network Center
  2. Nadeau, “The Amazing Gift of Language”
  3. Ehrlich, “From Grooming to Gossip”
  4. Olson, “Individuals and Groups”
  5. Diamond, “History’s Haves and Have Nots”

 

 

II The Systems View

 

  1. Nadeau, “The Making of the Godgame”
  2. Nadeau “Godgames at the Pentagon”
  3. Capra, “From the Parts to the Whole”
  4. Nadeau, “A New View of Nature”
  5. Capra, “Models of Self-Organization”

 

II. Meta-narratives and Frame Tales

 

  1. Nadeau, “A New View of Human History”
  2. Constructions of Nature

Shakespeare, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” Wordsworth, “I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud,” Hopkins. “Pied Beauty”

  1. Capra, “The Newtonian World-Machine”

 

III. The Wealth of Nature

 

  1. Diamond, “Farmer Power”

Diamond, “To Farm or Not to Farm”

  1. McNeill, “Peculiarities of a Prodigal Century”
  2. McNeill, “Fuels, Tools and Economics”
  3. Nadeau, “The Gods of the Soulless Machine”  
  4. Nadeau, “The God With the Invisible Hand”  

       

V. The Politics of This Experience

        

      18.  Stiglitz, “The Promise of Globalization”

      19. Castells, “The Greening of Self: The Environmental Movement”

      20. Suziki, “Restoring the Balance”

 

VI Green Technologies and Problems of Implementation

 

       21. Paul Harken, “Natural Capitalism: Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm?”

       22. Paul Harken and Amory and Hunter Lovins, “The Next Industrial Revolution”

       23. Lester T. Brown, “Cutting Carbon Emissions in Half”

       24. Jerry Gardner, Erik Assadourian, and Radhika Sarin, “The State of Consumption

             Today”  

 

Optional Select Readings:

 

Assadourian et al, eds, State of the World 2004 (New York: Norton, 2004)

Kenny Ausubel, ed., Nature’s Operating Instructions (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books,

    2004)

Lester Brown, Plan B (New York: Norton, 2003)

Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point (New York: Bantam Books, 2000)

Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life (New York: Anchor Books, 1996)

Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997)

Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Orford: Blackwell, 2000)

John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander, eds., Alternatives to Economic Globalization (San

    Francisco:Berritt-Koehler. 2004)

Robert Clark, Global Life Systems (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000)

Ken Conca and Geoffrey Dabelko, Green Planet Blues (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998)

David Cooper and Joy Palmer, eds., Spirit of the Environment (London: Routledge, 1998)

Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield, Frontiers of Complexity (New York: Fawcett, 1995)

William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996)

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997)

Paul R. Ehrlich, Human Natures (New York: Penguin, 2002)

Mark Hertsgaard, Earth Odyssey (New York: Broadway Books, 2000)

Stuart Kaufman, At Home in the Universe (New York: Oxford, 1995)

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh (New York: Basic Books,

    1999)

Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows, Limits to Growth (Vermont:

       Chelsia Green, 2004)

J. R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the

    Twentieth Century World (New York: Norton, 2000)

Humberto Maturana and Franciso Varela, The Tree of Knowledge (Boston: Shambala,

    1998)

Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe (New York: Oxford U.

    Press, 1999)

Robert Nadeau, The Wealth of Nature (New York: Columbia U. Press, 2003)

J.R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun (New York: Norton, 2000)

Steve Olson, Mapping Human History (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002)

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate (New York: Viking, 2002)

Hagen Schulte, States, Nations and Nationalism (London: Blackwell, 1998)

Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization (New Haven: Yale U, Press, 2002)

James Gustave Speth, Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis in the Global

    Environment (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 2004)

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Gobalization and Its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002)

David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntrye, 1997)

Brian Swim and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story (San Francisco, Harper Collins. 1992)

Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life (New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 2002)