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Randolph Femmer

Randolph wrote that, “It is our global population speak-out goal to promote consideration of a required, easily-do-able (and entirely free) two-week “Biospheric Literacy 101” science unit as a more-or-less universal graduation/degree-requirement for ALL first-year undergraduates of every major. (1) Most of the necessary materials and information already exist as easily-accessible and freely-downloadable open-courseware ppts and pdfs that are entirely free for scientists, students, and educators anywhere in the world.

(2) All that is needed to make such a vision become reality is for at least one faculty member at each university and college around the world to begin implementing the unit beginning now, this summer, and this fall.

(3) Content? Envision, for example, a concise unit built around the following thought: “What should EVERY student, policymaker, educator, and citizen KNOW about our planet?” (Think population, J-curves, exactly how “large” is each of our billions, demographic literacy, ecological release, overshoot, over-population, ecosystems, ecosystem services, carrying capacity, limiting factors – including limiting factors other than food and other “running-out-of” suppositions – biospheric life-support machinery, examples of real-world climb-and-collapse outcomes, biodiversity, is 10% conservation of any complex functioning system enough, and Earth’s oceans, seas, atmosphere, and biosphere as razor-thin and vulnerable surface films residing precariously upon the surface of our rocky “pale-blue-dot” which is the home of the ONLY planetary life-support machinery so far known to exist anywhere in the universe.)

(4) How done? Envision Six PowerPoints / Six Days followed the next week by six PDF executive-summary briefings. (For academia and policymakers, these same resources can be covered in an easy one-day workshop focusing on the six PowerPoints in a morning session followed by coverage of the six pdfs after lunch. Our vision is that such information is: (a) of emergency-scale importance right now, (b) is entirely and easily “do-able,” (c) is already in existence, and (d) is, in addition, entirely free. We hope that one outcome of this year’s speak-out will result in faculty initiatives, this month, this year, right now, around the world to implement some form of Biospheric Literacy 101 as a universal degree-requirement for all first-year undergraduates of every major.”

For sample resources, visit here – http://www.scribd.com/collections/3655003/Population-for-Academia-and-Policymakers
here – http://golddoubloons.wix.com/biospheric-literacy#!powerpoints/c24vq and here – http://en.calameo.com/accounts/676519

Randolph pledged as follows:

(1) We have already established multiple websites with freely-downloadable open-courseware population-environment ppts and pdf executive briefings here – http://www.scribd.com/collections/3655003/Population-for-Academia-and-Policymakers
here – http://golddoubloons.wix.com/biospheric-literacy#!powerpoints/c24vq and here – http://en.calameo.com/accounts/676519

(2) We will continue to contact faculties, policymakers, and population-environment foundations and NGOs promoting a universal and emergency-scale implementation of core “Biospheric Literacy and Sustainability 101” data sets, principles, and understandings as a required two-week unit in population-environment and sustainability science

(3) We will continue to prepare and make-available freely-downloadable population-environment PowerPoints, graphs, pdfs, and images through our pali-nalu, The Wecskaop Project, and Biospheric Literacy websites and collections

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