Define environmental science as an evidence-based field distinct from environmentalism, and apply the steps of scientific inquiry to an environmental case study.
Environmental science is the study of how the natural world works and how human activity interacts with it, drawing on biology, chemistry, geology, geography, and economics all at once. It is important to separate environmental SCIENCE (a field of study that produces evidence) from environmentalism (a set of values or a movement) -- this course teaches the first one. You will encounter genuine, still-open policy debates this year, and the discipline is to keep the data and the values question clearly separated.
A classic case shows the method at work. In the mid-20th century, scientists observed declining bald eagle populations and eggs that cracked before hatching. They hypothesized that the pesticide DDT was thinning eggshells by interfering with calcium metabolism, then tested it with field data and lab studies. The evidence held up: DDT was banned for US agricultural use in 1972, and the bald eagle later recovered enough to be removed from the endangered species list in 2007 -- a clean example of observation, hypothesis, data, and a conclusion strong enough to change policy.
Mastery looks like: They can take a vague environmental claim, rewrite it as a testable hypothesis, and correctly separate scientific evidence from a values-based policy opinion.
Common stumbles: Accepting a single anecdote as proof; treating "environmental science" and "environmentalism" as interchangeable terms.