DHC Lower-Division Seminars 1999

Daniel Cox
MW 10:00 - 11:50am 235 Wellman
Imagine the delight that a corporate CEO would feel if told that she could maintain a productive business by selling her company's waste heat and waste materials to other eager users, and in addition consume low cost, locally produced feedstock for her industry from other companies in a surrounding industrial park. This kind of thinking would not shock any of us if we replace the word `business' by `organism', and the word `industrial park' by `ecosystem.' We know that natural ecosystems are marvels of efficiency, in which nearly every waste product is carefully fed from one organism to another to assure continued ecosystem productivity. The practice of `Industrial Ecology' aims to redesign industry from the ground up with natural ecosystems as model examples of efficient and complete processing of waste. In this seminar, we'll look at whether industrial ecology can be applied to businesses in Northern California, especially in Silicon Valley, the `engine' of the US economy. Is it economically feasible? Is it environmentally feasible? Would new policy have to be made? The goal will be to produce a report that the students could consider delivering to executives in Silicon Valley.

CANCELLED
HNR 094-002
Lead Pollution: Occurrence, Impacts, and Prevention
Jeannie Darby
TR 9:00 - 10:50am 176 Kerr
Lead is one of the first metals used by humans and is currently one of the most useful and most available of metals. But lead can also have serious effects on brain function and other aspects of human health. Although gasoline and paint have been reformulated to "get the lead out," there are still many industrial processes that put lead into the environment. In fact, unlike asbestos and radon, where there are national efforts to reduce health risks, lead is only controlled in situations where the risk has become clear and immediate. As a result, subclinical lead toxicity is estimated by some to affect 1 in every 20 children in the US. Do current laws provide more protection to people who put lead into the environment than to those who ingest or absorb lead from the environment? Why is it that many children are not even diagnosed with lead poisoning until irreparable brain damage has occurred? In this seminar, we will explore sources of lead in the environment, their impacts on human health, and the political and economic forces that are involved in the battle over lead.

HNR 94-003
Developing the 21st Century’s Petroleum Reserves: A Controversy Over Oil, Water, and Caviar
Isabel Montañez
TR 1:10 - 3:00pm 176 Kerr
The Caspian Sea region holds vast untapped energy resources that by most estimates are second only to those of the Persian Gulf. However, the exploitation of the hydrocarbon reserves in this region is proceeding slowly under strained geopolitical and economic conditions which are further complicated by environmental concerns. Among the issues are: who owns the reserves, how should the wealth be divided, and what are the most politically and economically feasible routes for transportation of hydrocarbons to European, U.S. and Chinese markets. These controversies are fueled by on-going territorial and inter-ethnic tensions in the Caucasian and adjacent regions, and by concerns about the environmental impact of the high sulfur content of the hydrocarbons and the dependence on the Caspian Sea for 90% of the world’s caviar supply. In this seminar, we will explore the historical, geopolitical, cultural, economic and environmental issues relevant to development, exploration and marketing of the Caspian Sea energy reserves. The seminar group, acting on behalf of the Swiss representative to the United Nations, will prepare a position paper on how to resolve these controversies and bring to fruition the potential of this region for future international economic markets.

HNR 094-004
Who’s Rappin’ the World?
Ahmet Palazoglu
TR 4:10 - 6:00pm 1344 Storer
After originating in the Bronx, New York City, as a black youth subculture,
hiphop now enjoys an indisputable global appeal and commercial viability. N.W.A. in Los Angeles, NTM in Paris, Fun'da'mental in London, Fugees in Jersey City, and Cartel in Berlin share the common language of rap, though they may be speaking in different tongues. Today, the music, the graffiti, and the dances of hiphop emerge as the unifying characteristics of urban youth in cities around the world. However, each metropolitan location has its own unique characteristics as the hiphop youth send their messages from their cities to the rest of the world. Our focus in this seminar will be the international hiphop scene and we will explore the differences and the similarities as they are defined by countries, languages, and local color. We will ask questions about imitation vs. innovation. We will discuss the immigrant/ghetto tones of hiphop and its universality. We will compare styles and attitudes and try to explain them from a variety of perspectives, including social, economic, political and musical. The class will be charged with the task of preparing a feasibility study to organize an international hiphop festival, and writing a grant proposal to secure funding from the National Endowment for Arts .

HNR 094-005
Organically Grown
Dan Potter
MW 4:10-6:00pm 235 Wellman
We will examine the history and status of organic agriculture in Northern
California. Teams of students will investigate a range of questions
relating to this issue. Examples include: What are the requirements, under
California law, for certification as an organic farm? What are the factors
that motivate farmers to adopt organic agriculture? How do they decide which species and varieties to grow, and where and how to market them? How is organic produce marketed? What are the economic consequences of organic farming? What are the public images of organic farming and organic produce? What are some of the common misconceptions about organic agriculture? What has been the impact of recent research on the practice of organic farming? What are the prospects for organic agriculture in this region in the next century?

HNR 094-006
Passive Remediation of Polluted Groundwater: The End of Nature or Just Getting Real?
Kate M. Scow
MW 3:10 - 5:00pm 176 Kerr
Over the past several years, active remediation technologies, such as pump-and-treat or stream-stripping, are being used less and less frequently to clean up polluted groundwater. Instead, passive remediation or natural attenuation, defined as allowing natural environmental processes to contain or slowly degrade pollutants in situ, are the "treatment" strategies of choice for most petroleum and some chlorinated solvent contaminated sites. Why? Have we given up? Has economic reality sunk in? This striking change in what we do with contaminated sites has profound human health, environmental, economic and philosophical implications. Focusing on leaking underground storage tanks (e.g., your neighborhood gas station), we will contrast passive and active remediation approaches and examine the economic and engineering factors that have led to widespread adoption of passive remediation in the US. We will consider the pros and cons of using passive remediation, focusing on issues such as human health risks, property values, environmental quality, groundwater zoning, and the environmental clean-up industry. We will summarize our conclusions and provide recommendations in a position paper to be submitted to an environmental science journal.