If you feel misinformed about the state of the Earth’s environment and all the politics and science surrounding it, you’re not alone. Most people receive the bulk of their environmental education through the media stories on topical environmental affairs, the majority of which are mired in political strife. Few high schools and colleges require environmental sciences to be taught to children, and while biology and ecology courses touch on the subject, they rarely engage in environmental issues as adequately as would a full-blown course in environmental sciences.
Environmental Politics and Law
Open Yale Courses offers this video lecture series on environmental politics, complete with class notes and readings, totally for free. The Chair of the Yale College Environmental Studies Professor John P. Wargo offers an insightful look into how the American legal system has partly shaped the country’s environmental policies. In this complex course, Professor Wargo explains the reasoning behind some of the worst environmental perpetrators in the country. He charts the origins and proliferation of pesticides on the farms, tobacco law, and even the amount of mercury in conventional seafood. Though the subject matter seems dense and intimidating, Professor Wargo always manages to make the material interesting and relatable.
Introduction to Environmental History
For something less heavy, MIT open courseware offers this approachable introductory course in environmental history. Professor Harriet Ritvo uses the course to teach students about how the changing American landscape and the people who occupied it influence each other to bring about the environment we have today. Professor Ritvo teaches this history course with an environmental edge to give her students insight into how the repercussions from the initial European forays onto the American continent yielded consequences and environmental influences that can be felt to this very day. Her lectures cover a wide range of topics, from the geographic landscapes of the American continent to the devastating results of disease and human interaction from early European settlers. On the whole the class is a truly riveting history lesson in environmental studies.
Environmental Struggles
Another course from MIT open courseware focuses on the environmental obstacles facing contemporary American society. Taught by Professor Christine Walley, the course tackles the fundamental problem plaguing all environmental policy: how to effectively target and reverse the negative impact of human influence in the environment. Professor Walley begins her course by teaching her class about the various standards of nature and environmentalism across the globe, teaching her students about environmental policy in countries other than the U.S. From there she tackles the issues problematic to specific environs, such as oceans and forests, while emphasizing humanity’s role in the bleak events transpiring therein. This course seems to exemplify all the salient issues surrounding the world’s environmental problems. Even though the course is several years old, the lessons to be drawn from it still ring true.
