Major Paper 2

Assignment

Write a 10-12 page paper that analyzes a particular environmental issue in light of the relevant science, ethical theories, and, if you choose, worldview, for the purpose of furthering our moral understanding of the issue or proposing a morally acceptable practical solution to the issue.

Common requirements: All papers must include the following elements:

1. Your paper must defend through argumentation a specific thesis related to your environmental topic.
2. In making your argument, your paper must integrate ethical reasoning into your treatment of your environmental topic.
3. Your paper must explicitly utilize some of the ethical frameworks, worldviews, and terminology explained in the required readings for the course.
4. Your paper must use and cite a minimum of 10 sources outside of the required readings in your argument and demonstrate some familiarity and literacy with the secondary literature on the issue. Of these 10, not more than two may be from newspapers, newsmagazines, or encyclopedias. The rest must be from some sort of peer-reviewed book or journal article. Of course, feel free to use newspapers, websites, etc. for your own background reading, but these will not count towards this minimum.

Specific direction: Within these broad parameters, the specific direction your paper and thesis takes should be one of the following forms. In each of these options, the italicized word gives the driving focus of the paper, though the other elements are also required.

1. Advocate for a particular environmental policy that would (likely) lead to a solution to your chosen environmental problem by explaining the basic science of the problem and demonstrating the policy's ethical integrity. In the course of your argument, you need to argue also why another competing policy is not advisable given the same standards of ethical integrity.
2. Defend how and why adopting a particular ethical approach to the environmental problem is preferable to a different ethical approach, by demonstrating its likely efficaciousness toward solving the environmental problem. Your argument must, then explain enough of the science of the issue to make a convincing argument for the ethics efficaciousness.
3. Evaluate a particular environmental activity — e.g., recycling, urban gardening for food production — according to its moral significance and likely chance of success according to basic science. In your paper be sure to analyze the critiques of such a practice as well.
4. Defend how and why adopting a particular ethical approach to the environmental problem is preferable to a different ethical approach, by demonstrating its fit within a religious worldview (e.g. Christian, Buddhist, etc.) Your argument must explain enough of the science of the issue to understand how each of the ethical approaches would frame the issue differently.

As always, your paper must have a coherent, structured, and logical argument, clear and strong prose, exhibiting proper grammar, paragraphs with topic sentences, and an overall paper structure using the traditional "sandwich method".

In a paper such as this, it is important that you achieve a good balance between the different components. For example, a paper that spent 8 pages on the science and 2 pages on the ethics would not be well-balanced. A paper that left only 1 page for counterarguments against your position would not be well balanced.

Please type your paper using 12 point Times New Roman, double-spaced, with 1 inch margins on all sides.

Deliverables

See the Schedule for due dates.

• On the day your "planning outline" of your paper (MA 11) is due: Turn in two copies of this assignment. One goes to your Writing Advisor and the other to your instructor.
• On the day your first draft is due: Turn in one copy of your first draft, which will be given to your Writing Advisor. Also bring two additional copies of your first draft for the peer review session in-class. (Thus, bring a total of three copies of your draft to class that day.)
• On the due date for the final draft, turn in:
  1. The copy of your "planning outline" (MA 11) that you went over with your Writing Advisor (there should be comments from the WA written on that description).
  2. The copy of your first draft that you went over with your Writing Advisor (there should be comments from the WA written on that draft).
  3. The final draft of your paper.

Grading

• 5%: Writing Advisor feedback session about your topic and the research process (graded on effort).
• 10%: Writing Advisor feedback session, with feedback incorporated, as appropriate (graded on effort).
• 85%: Final draft (graded on structure, argument, prose, etc., as described above).