OSHR 1620 - Environmental Concerns/Civic Action: It Only Take a Few (Short Course)

This course is offered through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Colorado State University. You must be a member of Osher to enroll in this course.

Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for awakening the international community to the prospect of global warming and its probable consequences. Many people agree with the IPCC findings, yet find the projected crises to be too complicated and overwhelming to take action.

This course will examine how just a few citizens can make a significant difference by exploring their own individual environmental histories. Many persons wonder who they should talk to about the environmental decision-making process and how they might make a difference.

The course will examine entry points into the various entities entrusted with making these decisions. We will share successful examples of how individuals have made a difference in seemingly small ways that, when taken together, have great impact. The goal of this course is to engage citizens, not to take a pre-determined position.

Course sessions will include watching excerpts from three films which portray environmental issues and challenges from very different view points. While brief segments will be shown in class, the instructor recommends full viewing of each of them.

• The Milagro Beanfield War
• A Civil Action
• An Inconvenient Truth

Noncredit courses do not produce academic credit nor appear on a Colorado State University academic transcript.

Instructors

Lee Scharf

Lee Scharf, MESA, LLC, has been an environmental mediator for 16 years, working first as a mediator for the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C. and now as a private practitioner living in Fort Collins, Colorado. She introduced collaborative decision making processes into EPA?s Brownfield?s program, has mediated such conflicts as toxic/hazardous waste remediation at former mining sites, pesticide drift onto Tribal lands, Federal Advisory Committee efforts to address regulatory issues under the Toxic Substances Control Act. While at EPA, Ms. Scharf came to value the contributions that local communities and Tribal sovereign nations make while addressing environmental conflicts through collaborative processes. Ms. Scharf is regarded as a third party "neutral"; during this course, she will serve as a facilitator rather than as an advocate for a particular position.

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