PREPARING CITIZENS AND GEOSCIENTISTS FOR THE RESOURCE CHALLENGES OF THE 21ST CENTURY - RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

The key issues facing citizens of Earth in the 21st century are likely to revolve around resource access and the impact of resource use on the global environment. Already the popular literature is full of stories about resources: availability, use, misuse, pollution, long-term consumption trends, impacts on lifestyle and effects on cultural values, etc. Much of this is information ‘planted' by corporations and interest groups. Much is written with little knowledge of the science involved. Much of it seeks ‘balance' by giving equal weight to science and pseudo-science. To sort through this information conundrum, citizens must be thoroughly grounded in the science of resource formation, extraction, use and disposal. Yet, such knowledge is only the beginning. Students need to know that because resources are place-bound, decisions regarding their excavation, transportation, and consumption must also consider social context. Moving a resource to a site more culturally amenable to mining/drilling or blessed with a more sophisticated political system that can ensure the rule of law prevails is not an option. Nor can it be relocated to a river basin or coastal plain that will be less likely to be polluted by extraction or processing. The place-bound nature of resources requires that extraction minimize impacts, in the broadest sense. Familiarizing students with these resource characteristics requires a new class of introductory and upper division geoscience courses focusing specifically on resource issues or incorporating them into broader geoscience themes. In addition to the geology of resources, these courses must address their social context as well. Through these courses, geoscientists must learn that although there may be a technically or scientifically optimal solution to a resource issue, it must be responsive to a society's social, legal, cultural and religious norms. Conversely, citizens must discover that solutions to resource issues must be scientifically valid and technologically feasible. To promote citizenship of this type, the new geoscience courses need to present not fabricated contexts, but actual contexts that students may be reading about in newspapers. Only in this manner can they come to understand the economic, political, cultural and social structural terrain of Earth resource issues.