Why this course?

What do i hope to get out of the module

What, apart from the cold hard 2.5 credits towards the 30 credits of PPD I need?

I've been interested in these issues for what seems my whole life. Not realising that the things I was interested in, how you can build a home from tyres and straw and dirt, how you can generate your own power from an old cycle and avoid power companies, how to grow your own food and avoid supermarkets , knittting, refashioning second hand clothes, brewing your own booze, bartering skills, even picking blackberries, the small scale, the domestic, the tiny subversive (with a small s) acts of 'socking it to the man' and avoiding participating in economic activity were what is now called a sustainable lifestyle. And not, as mother was convinced, just being feckless and workshy. Who knew?

Well on the face of it you'd think my time was now. Sustainability is the buzz word. The words I hear are echoing the call for us to stop being cowboys, ever onwards on to the open horizon in a world of no limits, and to become spacemen, aware that we are living in a limited world of closed horizons. (if you aren't familiar with K.E. Bouldings seminal essay 'The economics of the coming spaceship earth' now would be a good time. And I will point out that it was written in 1966).

But...

is it really true? Can it really be true? I hear the words, I see the corporate brochures and marketing statements, and I read the policies and I try to get excited.

But....

I get an uneasey feeling that this is all just a bright shiny superficial veneer, as easily lost in the scramble for maintaining the economic status quo like varnish under acid. Or is it really beginning to become so deeply embedded that to do other wise and reverse the trend is not an option?

Are the lotus eaters really ready to go cold turkey?

So, what I want to get from this course, apart from those darned credits, is to examine whether things are, can and will change.

There, and I only used the S word twice and avoided the C word completely.