ENVR

This is the required introductory course for the Environmental Policy and Decision Making minor/major, an interdisciplinary program designed to help students integrate their major area of study with an understanding of how individual and collective decisions interact with the environment. The course uses approaches from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities to introduce the ways in which human social, political, economic, and cultural systems interact with systems in the non-human environment.

In this course, students examine the Earth as a system of integrated biogeochemical cycles (such as water, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur). Students come to understand these cycles by integrating relevant aspects of biology, geology, chemistry, and physics. Students learn how human activities can affect these natural biogeochemical cycles and inquire into potential system reactions to such impacts. This course also introduces students to the ways in which science is integrated into the interdisciplinary process of environmental studies.

Global climate change is considered by many to be the most significant environmental challenge of the 21st century. Unchecked, the continued accumulation of greenhouse gases over this century is projected to eventually warm the planet by about 6 to 14 °F, with associated impacts on the environment, economy, and society. This course explores the economic characteristics of the climate change problem, assesses national and international policy design and implementation issues, and provides a survey of the economic tools necessary to evaluate climate change policies.

Environmental justice can only occur with rich and complex understandings of the intersections of culture, ecology, politics, history, and community. This course seeks to understand the persistence of environmental racism in an inclusive and historicized landscape, one that considers multiple forms of knowledge and expertise and embodies the idea that imagining a more equitable, sustainable future is not possible without a grounded notion of the past and its present articulations.

The Environmental Policy and Decision Making (EPDM) Program is an interdisciplinary program designed to integrate a primary major area of study with a secondary major or a minor in EPDM, focusing on how individual and collective decisions interact with the environment.