Earth’s ecosystems provide goods and services we use every day. However, a continuously increasing global average temperature over the last four decades has challenged Earth’s capacity to continue providing these benefits. Earth has reached a tipping point caused by human activities that continue unchecked. Lectures in this class will include topics on why Earth’s nutrients like carbon dioxide must recycle, how we have reached an unsustainable point as amply displayed by Covid-19, how humans managed to increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere so much in so short a time, and what remedies are already being practiced, underway, proposed or conjured to remove these gases. There is no magic in the air. Humans just have to fix the problem, as Covid-19 has shown.
Sivajini Gilchrist is an adjunct professor at Kean University, New Jersey, where she teaches Environmental and Earth Science. She received her Ph.D. in environmental science from Rutgers University. Her published dissertation focused on acid mine drainage from past mining activities in the Northeastern US. She worked for three years at the US Environmental Protection Agency, as a high school Earth Science teacher, and a science coordinator/educator at the Newark Museum.
