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COURSE NUMBER: ENVS 399
COURSE TITLE: Special Topics in Environmental Studies - 2012/13 Fall - Oil Sands Development: Interdisciplinary Explorations
NAME OF INSTRUCTOR: Dr John Hiemstra
CREDIT WEIGHT AND WEEKLY TIME DISTRIBUTION: credits 3(hrs lect 3 - hrs sem 0 - hrs lab 0)
COURSE DESCRIPTION: A course on a topic of figure of special interest to a member of the environmental studies faculty and offered on a non-recurring basis.

Prerequisites: ENVS 300; some topics may have more specific prerequisites

2012/13 Fall

This course is a special topics course that examines the tar sands developments, perhaps the largest set of energy projects in the world, as they unfold in Alberta’s backyard. As a seminar-style course, we explore the oil sands developments in an interdisciplinary way, investigating various themes including historical, environmental, political, social, economic, technological, scientific, & faith dimensions. We examine questions such as: what is truthfully happening in the oil sands developments? Why is this development happening now and in this manner? What problems and paradoxes are arising in these developments? What is ‘development’ anyways? What roles are government, corporations, unions, and NGOs playing in the tar sands? How do these developments fit into globalization and other current trends such as climate change, global resource competition, global investment patterns, third world development, environmental sustainability, alternative energy, etc.

Same as ECON 399 and POLI 399.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
  • Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, Greystone Books: 2008.
  • Various materials (required reading) linked to each topic in the “Topical Outline of the Course,” below. These readings will be identified in advance of the relevant class and noted on our Moodle site.
  • Read a daily major newspaper—e.g. Edmonton Journal, The Globe and Mail, National Post—or other high quality news sources—e.g. CBC website—for regular “oil/tar sands” stories. Why? The story is unfolding before our eyes!! 
MARK DISTRIBUTION IN PERCENT:
Reflective responses 25%
Class participation 20%
Major assignment 30%
Final Examination 25%
100%

COURSE OBJECTIVES:
  1. Students will participate in a ‘community of exploration’ and develop an understanding and appreciation of disciplinary studies, interdisciplinary learning, communal scholarship, and integral analysis.
  2. Students will explore and understand the economic, ecological, social, political and other dimensions of, and problems arising from, the tar/oil sands developments.
  3. Students will understand the roles of various beneficiary, participant, or marginalized groups in the oil/tar sands developments, including institutions such as, corporations, unions, governments, environmental NGOs, churches, and coalitions.
  4. Students will understand how different ‘visions and ways of life,’ including Christian visions of life, influence the ways people think and act on tar/oil sands development.
  5. Students will document and understand the evolution of, and motivation for, tar/oil sands development and be able to debate the theoretical approaches that attempt to explain the patterns of tar/oil sands development.
  6. Students will understand various ways of understanding change, how action/change steps are framed, and what differences they might make.
  7. Students will develop skills in public discussion, cultural analysis & critique, public presentation, and preparing short essays, and larger assignments.
COURSE OUTLINE:
  • I.    Opening Explorations: The Oil/Tar Sands Developments on a day-to-day basis
    • - History of the oil sands development.
    • - Process of ‘extracting’ bitumen.
  • II.    Exploring facets of oil/tar sands developments; discerning signals from observers:
    • What are scientists, participants and others telling us? “Signals sent by watchmen at the borders…”
    • 1.    Economics facets of the Tar/oil Sands and rising economic concerns
      • Snap shot: What’s happening now? 
    • 2.    Geological facets – energy reserves, consumption, and warning signs
      • Peak oil and the end of cheap energy.
      • Natural gas, nuclear energy, and bitumen production.
    • 3.    Environmental, ecological, & biological features and warnings
      • Boreal Forest and the oil/tar sands.
      • Water availability, water use; and pollution.
      • Toxic tailings ponds.
      • Carbon, GHG, and climate change impacts of oil/tar sands.
      • Upgrader Alley and agriculture.
    • 4.    Politics and the oil/tar sands: characteristics and concerns
      • Government and Tar/oil Sands Royalties.
      • Government and Petro-politics?.
    • 5.    Technology, innovation, and the tar/oil sands:
      • We will apply to oil/tar sands learning from the fall interdisciplinary studies conference—on "Identity & Technology,"
    • 6.    Social, psychological and health aspects and problems of tar/oil sands:
      • Social and health impacts of development.
    • 7.    Geographical angles: national energy policy, continentalism, and military might.
      • Local, National, Continental and global faces of tar/oil sands
      • National Energy Supply & Continental energy security.
    • 8.    Aboriginal First Nations, local communities and oil/tar sands:
      • Environmental justice and the Tar/Oil sands
    • 9.    Initial observations and conclusions:
      • How do we pull together what we have learned above into a coherent whole.
  • III.    Depth-level Analysis: excavating and examining the deeper structural architecture underlying the tar/oil sands developments.
    • What do the larger structures of our economy and society tell us about why the oil sands developments occur as they do, have such amazing dynamic, and drive so much else in our culture?
    • 1.    The structure of the economy?
    • 2.    Science, knowledge and the tar/oil sands
    • 3.    Politics, governmental structures and the tar/oil sands
    • 4.    Environmental Assessment and accountability?
  • IV.    Drilling Deeper Still – Why the rush, dynamism, and drive behind our engagement with the tar/oil sands?
  • V.    Making Change: Can we turn the Titanic?
    • types of response.
  • VI.    Class presentations of major assignment projects
    • Scheduled in last 3 or 4 classes of the course.


Required texts, assignments, and grade distributions may vary from one offering of this course to the next. Please consult the course instructor for up to date details.

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