Course Syllabus

(Print Version)

 

Environmental Philosophies & Ethics

EVR 3020

CRN 10145

Home Page / Honors / Schedule / Cases

An Honors Embedded Class

Honors Summary & Objectives

The Elements of Honors are the values and practices that guide the FGCU community of learners. The Honors College's curricula, experiences, individual courses and events are designed to introduce students to each of the elements and provide the guidance and resources for students to develop within the elements that match their academic, personal and career interests.

The core elements of honors include:

  • Scholarly Advancement: Scholarly Advancement is the journey from a consumer of knowledge to a producer of knowledge. It involves gaining increasingly focused research and/or creative skills related to an academic subject and joining its scholarly discourse. Honors students purposefully and thoughtfully develop into scholars.

  • Cultural Enrichment: Cultural Enrichment is exposure to and exploration of distinct perspectives in different peoples and cultures. Thoughtful, respectful, and reflective intercultural activities broaden your own perspective and make you a more informed global citizen. Honors students demonstrate a record of purposeful and increasingly impactful intercultural activities that influence their outlook and actions in the world.

  • Community Engagement: Community Engagement goes well beyond accumulating Service Learning hours. Honors students purposefully and thoughtfully become positive "agents of change" in a community, either at FGCU, or beyond the campus, or both. Honors students move beyond simple membership in a community to being an active citizen within it for the betterment of others. Honors students listen to and collaborate with community partners as they learn, grow, and develop sustainable solutions together. 

  • Leadership Development: Leadership is the act of creating opportunities for others while moving strategically toward common goals. Leadership requires vision, creativity, patience, and collaboration. Honors students purposefully and thoughtfully develop into effective leaders during their FGCU career.

  • Honors Evolution: The culmination of all of the other elements, the ultimate goal of an Honors education is personal transformation — intellectually, culturally and socially. Honors curricula and related activities are designed to offer students increased success, opportunities and resources so that they grow and develop throughout their entire university experience.

Honors Objectives in Environmental Philosophy and Ethics

  1. Appreciate the degree to which environmental problems are complex and related to other problems and issues.
  2. Come to understand that there are no perfect solutions to environmental issues - only tradeoffs.
  3. Recognize and respect environmental values and perspectives that differ from your own and respect the processes and worldviews that produce those disparate values and philosophies.
  4. Demonstrate an ability to think independently and as objectively as possible when looking at environmental issues.
  5. Recognize the degree to which your own environmental values are grounded in personal intuition and emotion.
  6. Appreciate the degree to which every environmental value and decision must take into account political and economic considerations.

Honors Credit

The honors embedded assignment is kept separate from each/every/all factors that determine the student’s grade for the course and will be assigned a rating of satisfactory or unsatisfactory.

For instance a student may earn a B+ or an A- on the basis of regular class assignments that determine their grade for the course. If, in addition, they satisfactorily complete the HEC assignments then their 3-credit (whether B+ or A- or whatever) will be honors credit. If however their rating is deemed unsatisfactorily, then they will receive no honors credit, even if they receive an A for the course.

Honors Reading

Lakoff, George (2010) "Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment," Environmental Communication. Vol. 4, No. 1 (March), p. 70-81.

George Lakoff writes about a concept called "framing" by which he means unconscious structures -’‘‘schemas’"- which provide context for ideas, issue and action. Accordingly Lakoff writes: "Since political ideologies are, of course, characterized by systems of frames, ideological language will activate that ideological system. Since the synapses in neural circuits are made stronger the more they are activated, the repetition of ideological language will strengthen the circuits for that ideology in a hearer’s brain. And since language that is repeated very often becomes ‘‘normally used’’ language, ideological language repeated often enough can become ‘‘normal language’’ but still activate that ideology unconsciously in the brains of citizens*and journalists. In short, one cannot avoid framing. The only question is, whose frames are being activated*and hence strengthened*in the brains of the public" (Lakoff, 2010, p. 72).

Frames are useful in terms of understanding environmental issue but they can also become delimiting and skew perspectives in one direcrtion or another. Framiing becomes particularly important in environmental philosophy and ethics whenever the "framing" of one stakeholder diverges from the "frame" of another. Such divergence of perspective might be called "frame dissonance" which is in turn exacerbated by the mistaken notion that stakeholders principally form the frames based upon the excercise of reason.

Lakoff calls this 'fallacy of reasoning' the "trap of the Enlightenment." He asserts that: "Real reason is: mostly unconscious (98%); requires emotion; uses the ‘‘logic’’ of frames, metaphors, and narratives; is physical (in brain circuitry); and varies considerably, as frames vary. And since the brain is set up to run a body, ideas and language can’t directly fit the world but rather must go through the body" (Lakoff, 2010, p. 72).

Lakoff's article looks principally at the debate over how to respond to climate change and how differing "frames" produce different proposed solutions. He argues that communicator must be cognizant of how different stakeholders frame environmental issues and how important it is to couch one's words to fit within the "frame" of the person or person's you are seeking to engage and persuade. Accordingly he notes: " In order to communicate a complex fact or a complex truth, one must choose one’s words carefully to activate the right frames so that the truth can be understood. If the hearer has no such frames, then you have to choose your words carefully to build up those frames" (Lakoff, 2010, p. 73). Based upon this assertion it is obvious that in Lakoff's approach to communicating about environmental issues one must make a concerted effort to understand the array of stakeholders involved in environmental issues and make sure you grasp their "frame of reference." Thereafter, to be successful in communicating with others one must become skilled in using the right words to elicit a response from that stakeholder.

Honors Case Studies

For this embedded honor section of Environmental Philosophy and Ethics students will be looking at controversies involving wind farms by investingating four highly contentious case studies:

Cascade Wind: Phadke, Roopali (2008) "Cascade Wind," (July) Macalester College, St. Paul, MN.

Developer: First Wind Location: Wasco County, Oregon

Highland New Wind: Phadke, Roopali (2008) "Highland New Wind," (July) Macalester College, St. Paul, MN.

Developer: Highland New Wind Development, LLC Location: Highland County, Virginia

Cohocton Wind: Phadke, Roopali (2008) "Cohocton Wind," (July) Macalester College, St. Paul, MN.

Developer: First Wind Location: Steuben County, New York

Forward Wind: Phadke, Roopali (2008) "Forward Wind," (July) Macalester College, St. Paul, MN.

Developer: Forward Wind, LLC Location: Fond Du Lac & Dodge Counties, Wisconsin

Honors Videos

Ferrell, Matt (2020) "The Truth About Wind Turbines - How Bad Are They? Undecided With Matt Ferrell. (August 18), Accessed on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsswrLKlinU. (Transcript)

Yoder, Aaron (2021) "Why Environmentalists Are Fighting Renewable Energy Development," Wall Street Journal. (August 23), Accessed on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0yWihp9RGg

Hadfield, Evan (2020) "How Wind Turbines Make You Sick," Rare Earth. (April 11), Accessed on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9ckNLI9dRc

Wigle, Jeff (2015) "Down Wind," Surge Media. Aed on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55-jBCjtJ88

Honors Assignment

 

Begin your preparation for this assignment by becoming familiar with the concept of "framing" as providdd by George Lakoff. Thereafter, begin familiarizing yourself with issues associated with wind turbine usage by watching the documentary Down Wind followed by the short video's provided by Evan Hadfield, Aaron Yoder, and Matt Ferrell. Now that you have some general background regarding framing and issues associated with wind farms proceed to read the four short case studies pertaining to wind farm controversies.

Now the assignment:

  1. Describe each of the four controversies involving wind farming being specific to each case.
  2. Identify the "stakeholders" (i.e. Stakeholders are those who affect - and are affected - by environmental activities) involved in each case study and be sure to associate the particular stakeholders with the name of the case study.
  3. Now, looking over all four case studies what are the common issues of concern?
  4. Likewise, are there similarities in the stakeholders across the four case studies?
  5. Are there significant differences in the makeup of stakeholders across these four case studies? (Be specific).
  6. What common controversie did you find in these case studies that were adressed in the videos you watched?
  7. Were there controversies in the videos not dealt with in the case studies and vice versa?
  8. What were the "frame perspectives" of those across the case studies that were in favor of wind energy?
  9. What were the "frame perspectives" of the opponents to wind energy in the case studies?
  10. Choose one of the opponents to wind energy in each case study and tell me how you might tailor a "frame of reference" that might communicate to that opponent.
  11. To what degree did economic considerations impact each of the case studies?
  12. Pick one of these case studies and on your own find out what you can about what has transpired since the case study was written.