The Environment: Science, Policy, and Ethics

Protecting and preserving the natural environment is the most urgent challenge facing scientists, humanists, policy makers and ordinary citizens today. Sustaining our environment is critical to human flourishing, as well as the flourishing of non-human kin, in both the short and long term. This leadership seminar will explore a wide array of interesting and thorny problems related to the environment, including climate change and species preservation, air and water quality, sustainable agriculture, and prudential resource extraction. We will think about these problems in a broader social context, interrogating questions of global justice and the differing responsibilities and needs of developed and developing countries. We will also delve into matters some might regard as “science fiction,” including protecting the natural environments of other worlds, establishing permanent, human settlements on the Moon and Mars, mining minerals on asteroids, and landing probes on distant worlds, like Jupiter’s moon, Europa.