In this Discussion Board, we will be placing special focus on the following questions that address our Course Learning Outcomes. The Recommended Readings for this unit address issues raised by these questions. After thinking through the issues and reviewing the Recommended Readings for this unit, write a concise but substantive response to one of these questions for your DB post. Also, for this DB assignment, we are going to incorporate an additional element that brings in additional peer interaction. You are asked to draw on one of your peers’ Field Trip Reports to find a specific example of an environmental issue or situation that illustrates the points you make in your discussion of the particular views or environmental approaches you discuss.

To facilitate this, if you have not already done so, please upload your Field Trip Report in “doc sharing” (in the top frame tool menu) under the category, “Field Trip Reports: Peer Exchange.” Note: Once you click on this category, click on “Upload Document”: you will be offered the choice of sharing the file with the “Instructor Only” or the “Entire Class.” PLEASE BE SURE TO SELECT ENTIRE CLASS. [You should have already uploaded your report to doc sharing and well as submitting it to the dropbox by the due date deadline for the Field Trip Report.] Choose one of your peers’ Environmental Field Trip Reports to use as a basis for situating your discussion of political ecology in the real world. You will not be evaluating the report as such; it will simply provide the “case” for examination from the perspectives of the authors of the articles you choose for assessment and analysis.

Everyone should choose a different Field Trip Report written by another student in the class; this should work out if everyone participating in this DB also submitted a Field Trip Report. In addition to indicating which question you are answering, also provide the name of the author (your peer) of the Field Trip Report you selected. For this week’s DB, you should choose your question and the peer report you want to use early in the week and post that information right away; you can come back later in the week to post your full response. This will be a way of “claiming dibs” on a particular report; if it should happen that more than one person selects the same report for analysis, that’s OK. Let’s just try to get a good sampling. One goal of this assignment is for the class to share their field trip experiences. Please remember to include the question you are addressing at the beginning of your post as well as the name of the person (your classmate) whose report you are using. Feel free to reformulate any of the questions as long as you maintain the same content and focus. Your post should include references to at least TWO of the Recommended Readings from Unit 4.

1) Which among the political, economic, and ecological positions of free market environmentalism, traditionalist conservative environmentalism, natural capitalism, liberal environmentalism, deliberative ecological democracy, socialist ecology, social ecology, ecofeminism, bioregionalism, and radical ecology is the best one for a country like the United States to embrace in today’s world?

2) What is meant by the term ecofascist? How might it be connected to the concerns and goals of deep ecology?

3) Is it possible for free-market capitalist economies like the U.S. to fully promote widespread environmentalist policies? Why or why not?

4) What is the significance of the relationship between nature and society as seen by social ecologists such as Murray Bookchin?

5) How do the ecological stances of socialist philosophies compare to the views political “Green Parties”?

6) What does David Watson both fear and predict as inevitable in his image of the “Megamachine”?