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Paper Topic

Page history last edited by Wayne Ambler 12 years, 2 months ago

Paper Assignment, HUEN 2210, Engineering, Science, and Society

 

Goals: Let your paper show a mix of description of what the author is arguing and of your analysis of what is good or bad about the reading. Show first that you understand the reading; show next that you can think clearly about it. You will thus need to present and defend some clear thoughts on an important issue.

 

Details: Use good grammar, be fair to the reading, and cite the text in any way that is clear (but do cite the text!). Pay attention to organization and good transitions from one point to another.

Do not use secondary sources.

Double-space your paper and use normal margins.

Submit as a Word document or .PDF by email attachment to wayne.ambler@colorado.edu, before the class whose reading you take up. (Do not submit through CU Learn.)

Include your name, the date, and a descriptive title. Number your pages. Three pages is the minimum length; five is the maximum.

 

Harassment: Add a statement at the bottom like this: “I have proofread my paper and paid special attention to using the apostrophe correctly, to avoiding sentence fragments, and to expressing my main ideas clearly.”

 

Offer of help: If you would like to chat with me about this, or send me a draft version, I would welcome it. But let me know about this at least a couple of days before the assignment is due.

 

Possible Topics and Due Dates: Email me two proposed topics / dates no later than 2/4. First come first served! (I may be wrong, but I think the earlier topics are often less difficult than the ones later in the semester.)

 

¡  2/10: Chris Ford, “Why not Nuclear Disarmament?”

¡  2/13: Adam Keiper, “The Nanotechnology Revolution”

¡  2/15: Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us”

¡  2/23: Sandel, “The Case Against Perfection”

¡  3/12: Mark Twain, The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, chs. 1-10

¡  3/14: Twain, The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, chs. 16-23, 27-29

¡  3/16: Twain, The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, chs. 34-end

¡  3/19: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, through chapter 6, p. 106

¡  3/21: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, through chapter 12, p. 185

¡  3/23: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, through the end of the book

¡  4/16: Steven Pinker, “The Fear of Determinism”

¡  4/20: Tom Wolfe, “I’m Sorry, Your Soul Just Died”

¡  4/23: Aristophanes, Clouds, through line 813

¡  4/25: Aristophanes, Clouds, line 813-conclusion

¡  4/27: Plato, Apology of Socrates, first half

¡  4/30: Plato, Apology of Socrates, second half

 

Sample Essay:

 

I have tried to show here how you might limit the focus of your paper (see lines 36-42).

Feel free to use the first person pronoun (“I” or “me”).

Note the use of words that help you make transitions and show the relationship between one thought and another (like “rather,” “namely,” “however,” “moreover,” “nevertheless”).

Note the simple but frequent references to the text.

 

Stephen Student                                                                                 January 23, 2012

“A Critique of Zubrin’s Defense of Biofuels”

     As his title suggests, Robert Zubrin is eager to defend US government policies that encourage the use of biofuels. He has little to say about biofuels in general; rather, he devotes his attention to one particular kind of biofuel, namely, the growing of corn to be used for the production of ethanol. This ethanol would then be used as an additive to the fuel we use to power our cars and trucks, and the more we produce of it, the less dependent we would be on oil imported from abroad. He notes that the US government already favors ethanol by a subsidy of $.51 cents per gallon (125), but he fears that recent attacks on the ethanol program might lead to a reversal of this policy. He writes in order to rebut these attacks and to advocate an expanded program, one that would require all new cars and trucks to be “flex-fueled.” That is, they should be “able to run on any combination of gasoline, ethanol, or methanol” (270). This would make it easier to use ethanol and would increase demand for it, so long as its price is kept lower than gasoline. It appears likely that American taxpayers would have to continue to subsidize ethanol to make it less expensive than gasoline.

     Many environmentalists have defended programs that encourage the use of ethanol and other biofuels because they are sustainable and their CO2 emissions are lower than those of fossil fuels. Zubrin also notes these reasons for favoring ethanol (258-62), but his main concerns are quite different. As is evident in the first main subsection of his article, “Paying the Oil Tax,” his main concern is with the economic and political consequences of our heavy reliance on imported oil. In his view, because so much of this oil is controlled by just a dozen countries, and because these countries are very well organized through OPEC, they are able to limit the supply of oil and thereby drive the price up. The effect of this high cost of oil is a “huge highly-regressive tax on the world economy” (30). Since transportation costs affect the price of almost all products, the high cost of oil drives up the price of virtually all goods, thus serving as a huge brake on trade and discouraging economic development. Zubrin finds it doubly annoying that this “tax” is collected mostly by foreign governments, and he boldly accuses them of using their profits to promote international terrorism. He never pauses to defend these bold accusations.

     The bulk of his essay is devoted to rebutting those who have attacked programs that support the growing of ethanol. These attackers fall into these three groups: those concerned with the effect of ethanol production on the cost of food (53-110), those who oppose all or most government interventions into the economy (112-45), and those environmentalists who claim that increasing the production of ethanol would actually increase the production of greenhouse gasses (148-252). His discussion of these environmentalists turns into a very broad attack on something he dubs “envirostasis” (227-52).

     Zubrin’s short essay raises very large issues, and I cannot take them all up here. Although I agree that the high cost of fuel does function like a regressive tax, there are many other points in his essay where I think further investigation and discussion are necessary before reaching a firm conclusion. Sadly, Zubrin prefers to issue sweeping denunciations rather than patiently present all the evidence necessary to support his many claims. He seems more eager to rally or energize those who already believe with him rather than to persuade people with a different outlook. My paper will focus on this criticism.

     As an example of Zubrin’s excessive eagerness to resolve a question before it is fully aired, let me take up one of the more complicated parts of his essay, his attack on what he calls “envirostasis.” He defines this term as “the belief that the ultimate measure of the merit of any human activity or innovation is its effect on the natural environment – with any change axiomatically assumed to be deleterious” (223). By this measure, many things that make our lives longer, safer, more comfortable, and more pleasant become bad, for these very things increase our lifespans and our consumption of energy, thus putting a burden on the planet. I agree with Zubrin that it would be wrong to judge everything only on the basis of its effect on “Mother Earth,” and it would be good to consider just what it is that makes human life “rich” in the full sense.

     But Zubrin’s response to this point of view is not to analyze it patiently; rather, he goes on a tirade. He charges that accepting this view would mean abolishing vitamins, antibiotics, vaccines, public sanitation, clean drinking water, and medical research (230-33). As if this were not sufficient, he goes on to attack an especially radical representative of the “envirostasis” approach as a racist and general wacko (234-44). But even if everything Zubrin says here is completely true, he dodges the question of whether there might not be some underlying merit in the view he ridicules. Every point of view can be taken to an extreme, but mocking the most extreme tendency of a point of view often still leaves the core intact. As Zubrin himself noted, even though he was “the patron saint of capitalism,” Adam Smith did not advocate a completely free market (134). Is “envirostasis” completely wrong if one example of this point of view goes to ridiculous and shameful extremes? By choosing to attack the most radical extreme of a certain point of view, Zubrin allows himself to avoid refuting a more moderate and sensible version of the environmentalist point of view. He has won a victory here, but it is over a straw man.

     It seems to me to be quite possible that “the proudest accomplishments of modern and historical liberalism” also lead to new challenges (248). This does not mean that these accomplishments are not accomplishments, but it does mean that some accomplishments bring troublesome consequences with them. As it seems to me, successes in extending our lifespans and in creating enormous amounts of wealth threaten the environment and its long term health. It may be unpleasant to think that some of our “proudest accomplishments” might have bad environmental consequences, but nothing Zubrin says persuades me that this is not the case. 

     I am not at all sure Zubrin is wrong about the economic consequences of expensive oil or about the desirability of producing more ethanol; nevertheless, his essay ranges over many related topics, and his diatribe against “envirostasis” closes important questions rather than addressing them adequately.

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