Class 10 / IDS 3920 / Spring 2004

 

Sustainability IV:  Environmental Health

Historically, toxic dumping and the location of locally unwanted land uses have followed the ‘path of least resistance’ meaning minority and poor communities have been disproportionately burdened with these types of externalities.

Robert D. Bullard
Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality

 

Reading and Thinking

Handout from Environmental Science: Working with the Earth, seventh edition, by G. Tyler Miller, Jr., Chapter 8, "Risk, Toxicology and Human Health," pages 223-243, and pages 392-393.

Additional handouts "A Fistful of Risks" and "The ABCs of Risk Assessment." Complete the personal health worksheet. Please give serious thought to these questions as a basis for our class discussion.

State of the World 2003, chapter 8 "Engaging Religion in the Quest for a Sustainable World"

Introduction to Religion and Ecology http://environment.harvard.edu/religion/

Writing

Floridiana:  People and the Environment

Short Paper Four is due. It should be four to five pages in length, double-spaced, typed.  Your paper shall be evaluated according to the criteria presented by the assessment rubric and by your section instructor.

The reading for this paper is a book of your choice about Florida – fiction or nonfiction. Please include a complete citation of the book, title, author, city of publication, publisher, and copyright year.  Your instructor may ask you to turn the book in with the paper.

The assignment is designed to allow you the opportunity to make  progress, in your own way, toward the course goal of enhancing your “sense of place.”  In this paper, you are to articulate a thesis regarding the relationship between people and the environment in the book.  The articulation of the thesis is the most important dimension of the essay.  Be sure you have a clear thesis that you can defend.  Report on the main ideas in the book by developing this thesis.