PREREQUISITE:
Geography 310.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This is a course about ideas and their effects. It is based upon the belief that if we are to solve environmental problems we must understand their roots - that is, we must understand the attitudes, behaviours and ways of thinking which have given rise to these problems. To do this we must re-examine the ideas we have come to accept as conventional wisdom.

Over the past two decades, a great variety of organizations and individuals have examined the nature and magnitude of current environmental problems. The conclusions of these studies have differed on many particulars. But there has been broad agreement, even among representatives of usually conflicting positions, that environmental problems are now global as well as local, that they are serious and getting worse, and that they cannot be solved without major changes in attitudes, behaviours and ways of thinking.

Some analysts have concluded that the necessary changes can be made through reforms without radically altering the fundamentals of modern ideology - the now predominant assumptions about the external world and how it works, and about human nature and social relationships. Others disagree. They hold that there is something basically wrong with how we have been treating our environment and each other, and that we must challenge the current conventional wisdom about the world and our place in it. Within this group there are differences of opinion about what is basically wrong and what challenges should be mounted, but such analysts share the view that the problems are fundamental.

GEOG 423 is devoted to examining this problem. It focuses on the rise of the ideas that underlie modern environmental attitudes and behaviour, what they replaced, and what effects they had.

EVALUATION:
Tutorial Presentation 15%
Summary Essay 40%
Participation 15%
Final Exam 30%
 

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