Special Topics: Ecological Footprints

Catalog description

The Ecological Footprint is a measure of the demand that human activity puts on the biosphere. More precisely, it measures the amount of biologically productive land and water area required to produce all the resources an individual, population, or activity consumes, and to absorb the waste they generate, given prevailing technology and resource management practices (Global Footprint Network 2010). This course will engage students in the metrics and impacts of our collective consumption and waste of: -Energy -Materials (Cradle to Cradle) -Food -Water -Transportation -The Integration of Systems towards Quality of Life Starting at the global context, this course will address challenges/opportunities to advance regenerative practices, improving our relationship to nature. Learning from international best practices, we will continue to explore ecological footprints at the global, national, regional, city, neighborhood, building and individual scale. The course will be based on lectures and readings, with assignments and student presentations to fully explore each of the footprint characteristics. Experts on water, energy, materials, food and other resources have been invited to lecture. By mid semester, an application project will be selected for ecological footprint analysis and the development of design, engineering, and operational guidelines towards reducing that footprint. The potential application projects include: the CMU campus footprint and Donner House retrofit; the Energy Innovation Center and education of the trades in reducing our regions footprint; or a new Net Zero building for Carnegie Mellon University. This will be a collaborative effort. Prerequisite: 48-305