Outside seminar: Remember that your outside seminars are due Thursday Oct 16 or Tuesday Oct 21 (whichever day your quiz section meets). Don't put this off to the last minute! (If you do, though, the CIG seminar on peak oil on T Oct 14 3:30-5:00pm should be really interesting :)

Town Halls: The global town hall is Thursday Oct 16 or Tuesday Oct 21 (whichever day your quiz section meets), the local town hall is the following week. Tons of information and links on the assignment page!

Upcoming readings are in the section on Readings and Lectures, along with links to PDFs and PPTs and screencasts of previous lectures.

• Thurs Oct 9 or Tue Oct 14: Your poster proposal (part of the memo/poster assignment---here's the grading rubric for the memo and for the poster) is due.
• Thurs Oct 16 or Tue Oct 21: Global Town Hall: Oral presentations and op-eds due if you're in the global group. (Here's the Town Hall assignment and the grading rubric.) For everyone, your outside seminar is due.
• Thurs Oct 23 or Tue Oct 28: Local Town Hall: Oral presentations and op-eds due if you're in the local group. (Here's the Town Hall assignment and the grading rubric.)
• Tue Nov 4 or Thurs Nov 6: Your Wikipedia contributions are due.
• Friday Nov 7: A paragraph on your memo and poster is due in lecture. (Here's the memo/poster assignment).
• Thurs Nov 13 or Tue No 18:  Your memo is due. (Here's the memo/poster assignment, and here's the grading rubric for the memo.)
• Thursday Nov 20 or Tue Nov 25: Your draft poster is due. (Here's the memo/poster assignment and here's the grading rubric for the poster.)
• Wed Dec 3 or Fri Dec 5: Your poster (part of the memo/poster assignment) is due as part of the poster symposium. Here's the grading rubric for the poster.

Click here for all past and (tentative) future readings and announcements for fall 2008.

* Mon Oct 13 (Environmental ethics: introduction and Simon/Ehrlich: PDF, PPT): The required readings are Economist 1997 ("Plenty of gloom", Dec. 18), Economist 2006 ("The heat is on", Sept. 7), and Solow 1991 ("Sustainability: An economist's perspective", reprinted in Economics of the Environment: Selected Readings, 5th ed., edited by Robert Stavins, 2005).

1. For the 1997 Economist article: (1) What does the (anonymous) author think about environmental issues? [Note that almost all Economist articles are written anonymously.] (2) Do you think the author is just a cranky jerk, or do you think that one or more of the authors' critiques are valid? If so, which ones and why? (3) How well has the article held up now that 10+ years have passed since its publication?
2. For the 2006 Economist article: (1) How does this article compare with the 1997 article on the subject of climate change? (2) Does the author argue that scientific uncertainty argues for taking action or not? Why? (3) What does the second-to-last letter to the editor suggest about the author's biases? (This will come in again next week when we do environmental ethics, and note that it's not just the author's biases---the last letter to the editor indicates that one of your instructors read this article many times, and he has to confess that he didn't pick up on this problem either :)
3. For the Solow article: Think about how you would answer his challenge to "invent for yourself how you are going to explain to the Chinese that... even living at their standard of living they shouldn't burn [their] coal, because the CO2 might conceivably damage somebody in 50 or 100 years."

* Wed Oct 15 (Environmental ethics: PDF, PPT): Guest lecture from Andrea Woody (UW philosophy) on environmental ethics. The required reading is Singer 1991 ("Environmental Values")

1. For the Singer article: The article opens with a discussion of whether or not to build a dam in a wilderness area, but goes on to discuss many other "moral situations". Give three examples and give one argument for each side.

* For Fri Oct 17: (Cost-benefit analysis): The required readings are Carson 1962 (excerpt from Silent Spring), Rosenberg 2004 ("What the world needs now is DDT", New York Times), and Rosenberg 2006 ("The revival of a notorious solution to a notorious scourge", New York Times). Think about the two authors' perspectives on DDT, think about how this issues relates to environmental justice, and think about your own attitude toward when (if ever) DDT is appropriate and how you would "objectively" go about answering this type of question. An option reading (especially recommended if you like to be infuriated :) is the Larry Summers Memo. (Note that the memo is from the "Whirled Bank" website that parodies the World Bank, but the memo itself is real, although arguably taken out of context.)

Click here for all past and (tentative) future readings and announcements for fall 2008.

Syllabus: Click here. Lecture is MTW 9:30-10:20 in KNE 120.

Quiz sections: Check MyUW or the fall 2008 time schedule for section times and locations.

Screencasts: Screencasts of class lectures are available to instructors, teaching assistants, and students enrolled in the class. You will be prompted to logon with your UWNetID when you attempt to view the Screencasting Web pages.

Grade looker-upper, old exams, and exam info. Click here. If you feel that your exam or other work was unfairly graded, please write a statement with the details and submit it to your TA or to the course instructor. We'll take a look, and as a caveat please note that we also have the option of re-examining the entire exam. This does not mean that you cannot informally ask us about the exam during office hours or elsewhere, but this policy is the best way for us to formally evaluate and respond to concerns. The penalty for late assignments is 10% per day.

Office hours are below. We're also happy to meet by appointment or by email, and note that all office hours are open to everyone!

• Yoram Bauman: After every lecture; also Wednesdays 10:30-11:20 in MGH 286.
• Tom Hinckley: Wednesdays 10:30-12:00 in the Suzzallo Library Coffeeshop.
• Jill Harris (sections AA and AF): Fridays 10:30-12:30 in MGH 274 (ask for directions to the copy room).
• Jason Scullion (sections AC and AI): Thursdays 12:00-2:00 in MGH 274 (ask for directions to the copy room).
• Jennifer Webster (sections AE and AG): Tuesdays and Thursdays 2:30-3:20 in MGH 274 (ask for directions to the copy room).
• Gus Jesperson (sections AB and AD): Thursdays 11:30-1:30 in MGH 274 (ask for directions to the copy room).

Writing help: The Odegaard Writing & Research Center is a free interdisciplinary writing center that provides writing and research assistance from trained writing tutors and librarians during all stages of the writing process. Open Sunday-Thursday from 12:00-9:00 p.m. Appointments and walk-ins welcome. 

Help us make the class better by giving us feedback. If you don't want to be identified, use UMail to send us anonymous feedback, but please note that since we won't know who you are we won't be able to send out an individual response.

Here's the course schedule &etc from summer 2008, winter 2008 and fall 2007. (This is mostly intended for use by the teaching team, but you're welcome to take a look!)

This password-protected website has information for the teaching team: notes about the class, behind-the-scenes info about clicker registration and the grade-looker-upper, and other boring administrative information.