Chapter 14 Student Activities

People and Nature in the Hudson River School

The Hudson River school of painters often represented American nature visually as majestic and overwhelming and humans as separate or marginal, which are both key notions of a wilderness ideology that views nature as autonomous. Many university museums or city museums near universities exhibit works of these painters, and you may wish to integrate these museum works into a discussion of how nature and wilderness are represented visually in art. If that is not feasible, project a painting or two and ask students to identify the people and their relationship to nature. What is the idea of human–nature relations the painter is drawing on here?

Conservation Critique

Chapter 14 emphasizes that despite the noble goals of many conservation projects, they sometimes negatively impact local communities. The best projects are cooperative efforts that involve affected people.

• Students will visit the Conservation International website (www.conservation.org) and select one of their international projects. (Any organization that provides detailed descriptions of its efforts can be substituted.) A project in a region or culture that personally interests the individual student would be a good choice.
• Using the critiques of similar projects discussed in this chapter, consider how effective you think this project would be. In a short class presentation, including a visual display of some sort (PowerPoint, etc.), address the following:
• To what degree did project organizers communicate and cooperate with affected communities?
• Did they incorporate indigenous perspectives into the design and implementation of the project? If so, how?
• In your opinion, was the project a success? (If ongoing, is it succeeding?) Did they meet their goals?
• What did the project “get right”? If you were the director of this project, is there anything you would do differently?

Your Ecological Footprint Activity

This activity can be done in class if there are enough computers. If not, it can be modified in a number of ways. Students will calculate their ecological footprint using an online calculator, compare data with other students, compare themselves to a national average, discuss the meaning of an “ecological footprint,” and what, if anything, can be done to reduce it.

• Students will find an online ecological footprint calculator. There are many—most important, every student should use the same one for consistency. For example, footprint.wwf.org.uk/.
• Answer questions as honestly and accurately as possible and calculate your ecological footprint—usually expressed as the number of acres (or hectares) required to support your lifestyle.
• Either as a class or in small groups, compare your score with other students (objectively and without shaming). What factors contributed to relatively high scores and relatively low scores (e.g., I commute a long way to work, and this raised my score significantly)?
• How many students were above the national average (the textbook cites 21 acres for an average American)? How many were below? How do students compare to an average Indian? Can you find data for other nations online?
• Do you think the ecological footprint is a useful tool? What do you see as the global consequences of the US footprint? What broad suggestions would you make to reduce it?