This course will prepare students for informed, active engagement with personal and community challenges involving the natural world and human impacts on the environment.
The fundamental premise of this course is that human health and well being are fully equivalent to environmental health. "Environmental leadership," in every respect, aligns directly with the primary Buddhist values of relieving suffering and sustaining the health of all beings.
We will explore historical understandings of the environment in diverse traditions, the modern scientific understanding of the environment – including earth systems, the biosphere and ecology, the evolving human relationship to the environment and to all life, environmental justice, anthropocentrism and alienation from nature, just solutions to environmental problems (involving adaptation and mitigation) -- leading to equilibrium and sustainable, steady-state human relationships to the environment. Students will be asked to evaluate selected environmental issues at global, national, regional, state, and local levels and to identify sustainable solutions. Course will include introduction to basic tools and skills necessary for informed analysis of environmental issues (these will include: analytical logic, statistics, field biology, mapping and GIS, evaluation of data as evidence). In-class discussions and individual or group presentations will be an import aspect of ths course.
- Professor: Tom Moritz