It has been the case since the beginning of humanity that modes and fashions come and go. Many times these fades are responding to trends and forces caused by new technologies, like when dads asking their little girls to show their new wrist-watches going to church sunday mornings. It was the response to a new thing, men then had pocket-watches so it became fashionable to walk with your left arm showing your watch.
About 30 years ago a new science was born: Environmental science. It became fashionable to look at the environment through the eyes of the scientific method even though many scientist before have been using "nature" to understand how things work and how reality is governed by laws that are independent of the observer, until Werner Heisenberg with his "uncertainty principle" in 1927 brought the idea of observer interference in the measurement of a phenomenon.
So now we are in the stage of investigating how we humans are affecting the environment and how nature is responding as well as how nature works in general. Fashionable environmental sciences appear all over and many colleges and universities instituted program to organize and structure courses around this theme. Times have changed and society has evolved. A few years ago the majority of humanity lives within the urban environment so we now have to focus on this new reality.
A few years ago I developed a new course at Warner Pacific College trying to address this issue. The class is labeled Urban Resources and Sustainability. Addressing the fact that urban environments are the main driving engines in the way we humans interact with nature.
At Warner Pacific College we are trying to start a new program, a new major to address the need for professionals capable of dealing with these issues and prepared to implement solutions in a sustainable manner.
