Environment and Society
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this course on the environmental and social impacts of industrial activity. Lectures and readings cover four policy areas: regulating industrial pollution, addressing sweatshops and globalization, protecting ecosystems, and managing urban development. Case studies examine chemical safety and toxins, e-commerce's environmental footprint, biotechnology, sweatshop labor, and food production. The course traces how industrialization, urbanization, and globalization affect human health, sustainability, and equity, and it evaluates how governments, corporations, NGOs, and citizens respond to these pressures. Materials include the syllabus, readings, and assignments as published on MIT OpenCourseWare, free to access with no certificate offered. The course aims to build skills in analyzing policy responses and institutional barriers, and in weighing the roles different actors play in environmental controversies, closing with a look at personal responsibility within these larger systems.