Teaching Unit: Materials and the Environment

In seeking to address the complex environmental problems faced by society today there is a tendency to seek simple solutions. Leaders focus on specific problems, often neglecting to view potential solutions in a systematic way or from a global perspective. Too often, the result is to simply shift environmental problems from one region or one nation to another, while sometimes actually magnifying the overall environmental impacts.

Specifically, trends in human population growth and growth of consumption, though eschewed, are almost never realistically factored into proposed solutions to environmental problems, perhaps with the belief that if these issues are effectively ignored they will somehow go away. Yet, a failure to use realistic and rational assumptions in planning is quite unlikely to benefit anyone, or the environment upon which everyone depends.

This topical area examines environmental concerns regarding forests in the context of trends in population and economic growth nationally and worldwide. Examination of forest issues in a larger context than is often considered leads students to a broader understanding of the issues involved, and leads to consideration of a wider, and different, set of possible approaches to problem solving. A number of background and presentation materials are provided in this site to support investigation of the Materials and Environment topic:

• The Illusion of Preservation - a Global Argument for the Local Production of Natural Resources (PDF)
• Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic: Is It Only Half a Loaf? (Website)
• State of Denial (Website)
• Wood and Other Raw Materials for the 21st Century - Where Will They Come From? (PDF)
• Materials and the Environment (PowerPoint Presentation) - This presentation contains 96 slides containing colorful graphics and statistics about world, national, and Minnesota population growth, world and national economic growth, global and national raw material consumption patterns, and information about environmental life cycle analysis.

Also available is "Materials and the Environment: Wood as a Global Resource," a teaching unit including a 15-minute video and leader's guide.