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The global human population exceeds six billion and is projected to double in the next four decades.
Environmental services are strained on local, regional, and even global scales.
Resources are finite.
To many, current systems appear unsustainable on a time scale as short as decades.
Technology has facilitated human development over the past several centuries.
Technological advances are necessary, although not sufficient components of an overall societal movement towards sustainability.
The goal of this seminar is to investigate important technologies that serve major societal needs.
The seminar will be framed from the perspective of how technologies do or don’t contribute to a move towards sustainability.
Elements in the following systems may be considered: buildings, water, food, energy, and transportation.
Format
The seminar will meet once per week for 80 minutes.
Each meeting will feature presentations from one or two participants on selected topics, plus associated discussion.
Prerequisites
Graduate standing or consent of instructor.
Process and Groundrules
(1) The faculty will lead the first five meetings and the final meeting. (The faculty may lead other meetings, depending on the outcome of joint planning.) The first meeting will be organizational and introductory. The second meeting will be a planning meeting to jointly organize the presentations and assignments for the semester. The final meeting will focus on integration and synthesis of the themes discussed during the semester.
(2) Each student is responsible to contribute to the leadership of one meeting, sometime during weeks 3-14. Depending on enrollment, students will likely work in a group of 2-3.
(3) All faculty are available to provide guidance to students in preparing to lead their sesions. For each student -led meeting, a "primary faculty consultant" is designated to provide a fisrt point of contact.
(4) The leaders for each meeting are responsible for the following:
A. Selecting a title for their presentation (deadline: week 3)
B. Identifying and distributing a key reading related to that topic. (Distribution by web-pointer or by e-mail preferred but not possible for all, e.g. book chapters.) As a guide to length, the item should take no more than 1 hour to read. (deadline: paper copy to Nazaroff 10 days ahead of presentation; or web-pointer/e-mail distribution to Nazaroff to distribute to group 1 week ahead of presentation).
C. Provide a list of 3 discussion questions related to the topic. These should be provided to Nazaroff at least 48 h ahead of the seminar for electronic distribution to rest of group.
D. Prepare and present a ~ 40 min seminar on the topic.
E. Provide a PDF or powerpoint file containing the visual support materials from theis presentation. (deadline:E-mailed, or provided on CD-ROM to Harvath within one week after the seminar presentation. Size limit = 5MB)
F. Write am extended abstract summarizing the presentation and highlights of the subsequent discussion. As a guideline, the abstract should be 2-3 single spaced pages. the abstract should be in MS Word or PDF Format. A sample format will be distributed ito seminar participants (Deadline: E-Mailed to Horvath within one week after the seminar presentation.)
(5) All students and faculty are expected to read the “key reading” each week, before the seminar meeting.
(6) All students and faculty are expected to miss no more than two meetings during the semester. Additional ansences resulting from extraordinary circumstances should be discussed with one of the faculty.
(7) The seminar presentation will be followed by open discussion addressing the discussion questions or any other issues of interest to the group that are related to the seminar topic. All students and faculty are expected to contribute to the discussion.
Possible Topics
(1) Need for sustainability: population growth, resource limits, strained environmental services
(2) The case for technologies as necessary components of sustainable societies
(3) Evaluating technologies through a sustainability lens
(4) Building services: lighting, ventilation, thermal comfort
(5) Water: water and wastewater treatment, water reuse and conservation technologies
(6) Food: sustainable farming practices, cookstoves
(7) Energy: hydrogen economy, fuel cells, carbon sequestration
(8) Transportation: hybrid electric vehicles, mass-transit systems
Conveners
Bill Nazaroff, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering (nazaroff@ce.berkeley.edu)
Arpad Horvath, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering (horvath@ce.berkeley.edu)
Ashok Gadgil, Senior Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (ajgadgil@lbl.gov)
Some Sources
M Wackernagel and W Rees, Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth, New Society Publishers, 1996.
HE Daly, Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development, Beacon Press, 1996.
P Hawken, A Lovins, LH Lovins, Natural Capitalism, Little, Brown and Company, 1999.
HE Daly and JB Cobb, Jr., For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future, 2nd Edition, Beacon Press, 1994.
Sustainability websites: http://architecture.mit.edu/house_n/web/resources/links/sustainabilitylinks.html
National Renewable Energy Laboratory: http://www.nrel.gov/
MIT course on Sustainable Energy: http://web.mit.edu/energylab/www/se/
CU Boulder course: http://ese.colorado.edu/4838-5838.htm
UC Berkeley seminar (Fall 2002, Fall 2001): http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/sustainability/archive/
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