CAS 101IN - Sustainable Futures

1. Apply the scientific method, research, and writing skills in the context of past, present and future sustainability issues.  
2. Assess sustainability challenges, opportunities, and potential solutions in natural and human systems using critical and systems thinking principles.
3. Evaluate the connection of course content to the individual’s personal experience and potential for action.

1. Analyze the foundations of sustainability, demonstrating a clear understanding of the science of sustainability, supporting data/evidence, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and socio-economic drivers in past, present, and future timelines.
2. Develop data literacy, research, and writing skills, integrating foundational sciences, key contributors, and stakeholder perspectives relevant to global environmental change.
3. Apply sustainability and systems thinking principles to current issues in ecosystems, biogeochemical cycles, socio-economic systems, resource consumption, and product life cycles.
4. Assess the state of the world’s renewable and nonrenewable resources, and ecosystems services outlining their current status and trajectory for the future
5. Examine the complexity of addressing future sustainability within topics such as threatened land, ocean, and atmospheric resources, energy and resource reserves, biodiversity conservation, population growth, social equity, urbanization, poverty, globalization, and human initiatives for sustainability.
6. Connect course content to personal lives, past, present, and future, articulating how the topics discussed in the course impact the students’ own experiences and bioregions, evaluating personal impact on the local environment, and potential options for action within the community
7. Evaluate the societal and environmental impact of human values, aesthetics, preferences, consumption patterns, poverty, inequality, security, globalization, and development in the context of sustainability.

1. Introduction to Sustainability
   1. Nature of Science and the Scientific Method
   2. Three pillars
   3. UN Sustainable Development Goals
      1. Local Analysis & Implications
2. Systems Thinking and Analysis
   1. Biogeochemical Cycles
      1. Local analysis & application
      2. Personal consumption, implications, future solutions
   2. Ecosystems
      1. Ecosystem services
         1. Local analysis & application
      2. Ecosystem Resilience
   3. Resource Consumption & Waste Production
      1. Renewable & nonrenewable resources analysis
         1. Personal consumption, implications, future solutions
      2. Waste production & Management
         1. Personal contribution, implications, future solutions
   4. Life cycle analysis
      1. Local analysis & product application
   5. Socio-political Systems
      1. Human values, aesthetics, preferences
      2. Governments
      3. Economic Systems
      4. Social justice issues
      5. Security
3. Sustainable Futures
   1. Past, Present, and Future Analysis
      1. Threatened land, ocean, and atmospheric resources
         1. Pollution detection & remediation
         2. Relation to climate change
      2. Energy and Resource Reserves
      3. Climate Change
      4. Biodiversity
         1. Global patterns
         2. Modern threats
      5. Population growth
         1. Developed vs developing countries
      6. Social justice, environmental justice, inequality
         1. Groups impacted most
         2. Zoning and redlining
         3. Climate refugees
      7. Urbanization, Globalization
      8. Local, state, national, international initiatives for sustainability
         1. Sustainability-related NGOs & IGOs
         2. Security issues, Conflicts, Conflict Resolution, and Treaties
         3. US initiatives
         4. Comparing state responses
         5. Local organizations & initiatives
      9. Citizen Action, Community Organizing and Key contributors