ENVS 3, Sustainability, and the Dartmouth Organic Farm

Environmental Studies 3,  “Environment and Society: Towards Sustainability,” was my first class at Dartmouth. My daily walk to class was the only time which I’d ever happily walk from my dreaded River cluster dorm all the way to the Life Sciences Center.

Although I was interested in the topic, I was initially a little bit wary of the class. I think that I expected the curriculum would consist of putting depressing timestamps on earth’s future: X years until all the polar bears die; Y years until we have no clean water; Z years until fresh fruits and vegetables are a whisper of the past.

I felt like I might walk out feeling defeated and guilty for my existence on this planet as a fuel-burning, resource-consuming, waste-producing and toxic human being.

I was wrong. Instead, each class left me feeling energized. We learned about leverage points — places in a system’s structure where change can be best implemented; we realized how important it is to establish an economy that fits in a finite biosphere; we wrote papers on exciting opportunities for sustainability transitions and presented them to one another.

The class was taught by environmental studies professor Anne Kapuscinski , whose optimism and excitement about sustainability were contagious.

Read the entire article in the D at http://thedartmouth.com/2016/01/29/anne-kapuscinski-a-concerned-scientist/.