Louisiana: Paradise Lost?

Associate Dean Granger Babcock Ogden Honors College

In HNRS 2000 this year, faculty and students will discuss issues of special concern to residents of Louisiana, particularly questions of environmental justice. After reading Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush, the Shared Read for 2021, we will think about how climate change and sea level rise are affecting the state. The issue of industrial pollution will lead us to discuss the tension between the interests of business and the concerns of environmentalists, especially the vulnerability of Louisiana's "fenceline" communities.

In exploring those topics we’ll be thinking about how we as citizens receive information. What sources are reliable? Whom can we trust? Once we have information and data, what principles guide us in making decisions? What ethical implications should we consider when making choices that affect various communities? To cite the subtitle of one of our texts, Michael Sandel’s Justice, “What’s the Right Thing to Do?”