Question 1: What do you see as the most important and urgent environmental issues for 21st century Americans?
Question 2: Has spending the semester studying US environmental history helped you better understand any of these?
Question 3: Are there new ideas that you were introduced to in this course over the last few months that you feel will stick with you? Has your understanding of an issue, event, person, etc. changed? [How and why?] Is there a source that we used in class (either among the assigned readings or something that was explored in discussion) that you thought was particularly meaningful?
Question 4: What are the most important environmental issues right now in your own home community? I would challenge you to come up with one or more--it might be tempting to assume "there aren't any," but I'd suspect that there probably are some if you think about it a little. What is the "environmental history" of your community and how does it affect the issue or issues you identified? For me, one issue I could point to is Duluth's problem with sewage overflows. Foundation drains for private residences were plumbed into the sanitary sewer system--then, too, stormwater can leak into damaged privately-owned sewer lines. Together these problems meant that when there was a lot of rain or snowmelt big surges of water could overwhelm the sanitary sewers, forcing the sewer district to release large quantities of untreated sewage into Lake Superior. While the US EPA forced the city to take major action to correct this problem, it can still happen. Another semi-related issue involves characteristics of the older housing stock that prevails in the city. With many houses built before World War II, present-day concerns over insulation/energy efficiency did not factor into construction (we had an elderly oil-fired furnace when we moved into our 1922 house, very little insulation, and the windows are still mostly original--and pretty drafty!). Then, too, most buildings built before the 1970s were painted with toxic lead paint--and many basements (including mine, ugh) feature asbestos floor tiles. These problematic features are compounded by the general consequences of aging structures--looming maintenance concerns, some of which could potentially present health threats--while all of these issues can be mitigated or resolved, it takes money to do so, and not everyone has it. And that brings us back to history: the fact that people of color in Duluth were historically segregated in a few neighborhoods with lower quality housing stock means that all these potential health concerns and economic liabilities hit these communities harder than generally better-off "whiter" neighborhoods. Finally, just the geography of the city makes it a pretty energy-intensive place to live: it's pretty far north and winters are cold, so heating is an issue (especially because of the issues I noted above!); then, too, the way the city is laid out--very long and relatively narrow along the St. Louis River and Lake Superior--has in practice made it more car-centric than one might expect for a city of only 86000 people. With limited public transportation options and challenges for bicycling (limited off-street routes, steep hills, rugged winter weather part of the year), that increases the "energy footprint" of the average resident. There are some city programs to try to aid homeowners in dealing with these concerns, but it's a pretty big set of issues for many people, with significant environmental connections. What are some issues around you? What is or could be done to try to respond to them?