Sustainability Science

Catalog description

This course will explore how five elements changed earth’s past and will shape our future. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus are five of life’s essential elements. Over the course of our planet’s history, microbes, plants, and people have used these fundamental building blocks of life to alter climate, and with it, the trajectory of life on earth in the past, present, and future. Although these elements underpin the success of human civilization, their mismanagement threatens catastrophic unintended consequences. The course will illuminate a potential path to sustainability, informed by the constraints imposed by life’s essential elements. Satisfies Environmental Studies major and minor requirement.