2018 Conference

Full Presentation Panel

The three papers on this panel create a narrative arc that spans a major challenge of sustainable development to the pedagogical difficulties of conveying the enormity of planetary challenges in the Anthropocene.  The first paper grounds the panel in the realities of an often-overlooked sustainable development issue: the huge amount of waste per capita in the United States.  This paper poses the question, are we living more by waste than ingenuity? Building on this foundation, the second paper investigates the common failure to ground the study of environmental politics and policy in the reality of deteriorating planetary systems. By framing the study of environmental policy primarily as a contest of competing values and political ideologies, and contrasting perceptions of acceptable economic costs and risks, the major environmental policy textbooks contribute to manufactured policy debates that erode the legitimacy of environmental science in policy-making.  The third paper describes a pedagogical approach based in the planetary realities of the Anthropocene that interrogates status quo narratives and honestly appraises the West’s and global North’s rationalized wounding of the world.  The course explores the need for regenerative economics, politics, science, and art in order to achieve safe and just sustainable development. Combining empirical research, pedagogical experiments and personal experience, the panel addresses the conference theme of legitimacy by illustrating the centrality of planetary-scale environmental science in diverse disciplines, effective policy-making, and sustainable development.