Environmental History of the Past Ten Years - new course added

ES 380, Environmental History of the Past Ten Years, CRN 23799, January - April, 2018.

This lecture-seminar will historicize and contextualize ongoing environmental problems. The idea is to increase literacy and awareness about "current events" by understanding their historical development. The scale of the course is global, but key examples will be drawn from recent provincial history.

The course is structured around five issues of current significance: 1) The building of the Site C dam; 2) The proposed Kinder Morgan natural gas pipeline; 3) The Paris Climate Accord and international climate policy; 4) Soil depletion, soil erosion, and the challenge of sustainable agriculture; 5) Conflicts over water in South America and India. Methodologically, the idea is to learn how to use cultural and historical analysis to make sense of environmental problems.