Ken Hiltner
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    • Beginning
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    • Table of Contents
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    • Economy
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    • Winter Animals
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    • Spring
    • Conclusion
    • On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
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ENGLISH 23

(A.K.A. CLIMATE CRISIS 101)

Week #6

Drawing down the climate crisis

Weekly Assignments

Reading

This week’s readings are the first 25 approaches from the “Summary of Solutions” from Project Drawdown. After opening this page, click “Scenario #1” until “Reduced Food Waste” is at the top. “Abandoned Farmland Restoration” will be #25, with “Conservation Agriculture” right above it at #24. Please go to each of the 25 pages and read the summaries (which are just two or three paragraphs each), as well as the “Impact” statements on the sidebar. Note that if you find this material of particular interest, you might enjoy the book that came out of this project: Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming.

After reading it, please comment on it in the weekly Canvas reading discussion.

Films

Please watch either the documentary Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret or Wasted! The Story of Food Waste! according to these guidelines:

1) If you if you have NOT taken Eng 22 (Intro to L & E) in 2019 or 2020, please watch Cowspiracy. It is available for viewing on GauchoSpace (GauchoCast). If you are not enrolled in the class, it currently streams from Netflix. A DVD can also be purchased from cowspiracy.com.

Trigger warning: Cowspiracy is not, generally speaking, a very graphic film, even though it takes up beef and other meat industries. In fact, other documentaries that deal with the subject (such as the 2011 film Vegucated) actually take viewers inside of slaughterhouses. In this sense, Cowspiracy seems to be attempting something of a genre shift. That said, there is one particularly disturbing scene in the film where a duck is slaughtered by a backyard farmer. It occurs from 1:10:16 – 1:12:23. If you think that you might find this scene unsettling, please scrub past it.

2) If you have taken taken Eng 22 in 2019 or 2020, please instead watch Wasted!. It is up on GauchoCast. If you are not enrolled in the class, it currently can be rented for a relatively modest fee from YouTube, Amazon, Google, etc.

3) Since we will be considering each in class, feel free to watch both videos. They are each interesting, though in different ways.

After watching one of the above films, please go to Canvas to make a comment on it.

Lecture videos

The following two lectures will be delivered live in Campbell Hall during the Tuesday and Thursday class periods. If you miss class or would like to review them (for exam prep, for example), here they are. For your convenience, they can be accessed below as either PDFs, audio podcasts, or YouTube videos.

Reading 6, Project Drawdown (2024)

download as a PDF / watch as a video / listen to as a podcast

Note that, while listening to this section being narrated, you could also read along. Some people find that such “Immersion Reading” helps them concentrate and learn better. Feel free to give it a try.

Film 6, Cowspiracy and Wasted! (2024)

download as a PDF / watch as a video / listen to as a podcast

Note that, while listening to this section being narrated, you could also read along. Some people find that such “Immersion Reading” helps them concentrate and learn better. Feel free to give it a try.

In addition, please watch, read, or listen to the following short lectures:

Do we need a climate vanguard?

Food, today and tomorrow (2024)

download as a PDF / watch as a video / listen to as a podcast

Note that, while listening to this section being narrated, you could also read along. Some people find that such “Immersion Reading” helps them concentrate and learn better. Feel free to give it a try.

Personal action, climate activism, or becoming politically active.

Which matters more? (2024)

download as a PDF / watch as a video / listen to as a podcast

Note that, while listening to this section being narrated, you could also read along. Some people find that such “Immersion Reading” helps them concentrate and learn better. Feel free to give it a try.

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