Develop in students an appreciation of the need for transparent, accountable and sustainable decision-making by any and all individuals, communities, public and private agencies, governments and corporations. By applying the two analytical ‘tools’ described in the first half of the course — Franklin’s concept of redemptive technology and the ecological calculations associated with the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) — students are expected to critically assess a technology or practice of their choice that has been or is being developed and/or adopted as a response to one of Canada’s many environmental challenges. The expectation is that your research effort into the nature of a specific technology or practice will be as thorough as possible an application of these two methodologies, given the available information, and will allow for an informed opinion as to the merits of both the technology itself and the utility of the tools you have applied to support your conclusions.
These two ‘tools’ students will be applying are very information-dependent and, arguably, are absolutely necessary for making informed and responsible decisions about the development, utility and adoption of any new technologies. The decisions we have to make as a country about how to respond to climate disruption, the over-harvesting of our natural resources, choosing between economic and ecological growth, and the push for greener and more sustainable technologies, are all many and varied, often promoted for political and ideological reasons, with less emphasis on the actual efficacy of or necessity for effective technological innovation.
So your jobs are to do just that. Examine a technology or practice in order to demonstrate (1) the quality and quantity of available information (indicating the relative level of transparency); (2) whether it should be developed or adopted as a result (by incorporating the ecological decision-making tools); and assessing whether there is the commitment and opportunity to monitor the technology or practise over time in order to ensure its positive contribution to sustainable development, allowing for some form of adaptive or flexible decision-making into the future.
Students will be responsible for applying the TWO tools listed above and described on the course outline. All reports must include an introduction to both the technology or practice understudy and a brief description of how the two analytical tools will be applied for the analysis of the technology or practice. The reports will be judged according to how well the tools are understood and applied in the report; the research and writing efforts; and the number of students contributing to the report. There must also be a conclusion which (1) summarizes the positive and negative characteristics of the technology or practice relative to the environmental issue it is intended to address; (2) makes an informed recommendation about whether the technology or practice should be adopted, developed or discarded; and (3) critically assesses the utility of applying the combination of tool used to make these decisions in the first place.
Choose any one of the following broad topic areas:
* Any natural resource extractive or processing activity (oil, coal, minerals, esp. gold, copper and uranium)
* Carbon neutralizing technologies (including carbon sequestering, carbon trading)
* Renewable energy systems
* The Petrochemical industry
* Communications technology (cell phones, computers, internet cabling, etc.)
* Industrial agriculture (hog, cattle, chickens, field crops)
* Ecological farming
* Hard rock (open pit) mining
* Waste management technologies
* Urban sustainability technologies or practices
* Building construction
* Bio-engineering and genetic modification
