GES 200: Intro to GES

GES offers an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of environmental studies and is a requirement for the brand new Global Environmental Studies minor at BYU. Environmental Studies, as a field, recognizes the inherent interdisciplinary nature of environmental problems and their potential solutions, and at BYU the minor is designed to inspire and prepare future leaders who have the scientific, cultural, political, and moral understandings necessary to meet the environmental challenges ahead.

This course will be taught each fall by the coordinator of the GES minor, George Handley, but will also feature lectures from faculty across campus. The course will provide an overview of climate change, the decline of life on earth, and pollution and how and why these problems are interrelated and relate to a variety of disciplines. We will also explore sources of theological and cultural values that inform or should inform our relationship to nature and identify effective strategies of communication in the public sphere regarding these problems.