ENVS 02
Human Nature, Technology, and the Environment

This is an awsome website about cool and interesting things.

"This is the homepage of a course at Swarthmore College that investigates the effect of technology on the environment from ancient times to the present. It asks if we can base future human decisions on an analysis of past human activities." -Prof. E. Carr Everbach (ENVS02 Course Homepage)

Building on Professor Everbach's statement, there are many important questions about what approaches humans should take when developing technology in regards to how it will affect our living environment. There is currently a debate over how harmful our species has been to the earth's ecosystem and what actions, if any, are needed to deal with problems we've created. I think the above picture is an accurate summation of how human's impact on the environment has changed over time. On the left it depicts goat herders walking serenely across a plain, living much like humans in the past had with nature. On the right shows modern man and his technology clearly causing damage to the environment. I think the contrast really shows how much has changed over a relatively short period of time and how much of an impact is being made. Hopefully, through class discussion and these papers we can gain insight and knowledge as to what direction humans should try to take in their interaction with nature.