As you start your course project, describe your environmental experiences. Within this paper you should:

• Identify the key environmental experiences that influenced your life. Recall childhood memories of special places where you formed some connections with the earth through emotional experiences. This may include places you knew and cherished that have since been polluted, developed or destroyed. 
• Identify key environmental events that forced you to think about your environmental values.  Events like a beautiful sunset, the fantastic complexity of living things, the tremendous power of nature's floods, earthquakes, tornados and hurricanes. 
• List the educational experiences that influenced your understanding and concern about environmental problems.  Have you arrived at your ecological identity through formal education or directly experiencing nature or both?

Your paper should be 2-3 pages in length and all citations must use APA formatting. Please refer to the Course Project overview for a list of all requirements for this paper.

Project Overview

For a major part of your grade, you are going to research the environmental issues discussed in this course. This will help you build the skills necessary to develop an informed opinion and present that opinion in written form. You will complete four components of this project, perform a peer review, and submit a final paper in Module 06.

Using the content of the course each week, critically evaluate and analyze each controversial environmental issue. You must examine the pros, cons, compromises, and tradeoffs of the issue by gathering credible information from various sources and assess the scientific credibility of the information. You will then develop from this information a well thought out paper that will address the major players involved, relevant cited facts, and a clearly identified opinion. While some readings have been provided to get you started, you should continue to research each topic using the online library, scientific journals, government documents, books, science magazines, and personal interviews. Peer reviewed sources should form the basis of your paper. Use a minimum of 4 sources each week. All submissions as well as the final paper should be double-spaced, and 12-point font with citations in APA format.  Anytime you use the writings or ideas of others as though they were your own, you are plagiarizing (even if you paraphrase). All information and ideas that are not a part of general knowledge must be cited. When in doubt, cite

Each paper should address the following key points:

• The Issue: Identify the issue.
• The Major Players: Who is involved? Why are they involved?
• Important Facts: State relevant facts concerning the issue. Try to separate fact from opinion. Try not to show your own bias. Properly use APA citations.
• Side One:  Arguments; state briefly and cite your sources.
• Side Two: Arguments; state briefly and cite your sources.
• Your Opinion and Rationale:  I believe that..., we should..., I feel that...  Use supporting arguments and rationale.  What arguments would you use to present to those who disagree with you?  Cite all of your sources.
• References:  Alphabetize your sources. Make sure there are sources representing both sides of the issue.