Office: 205 Pardee

Office Phone: (610) 330-5241

Email: washingb@lafayette.edu

This course may be used as an elective for the Environmental Science minor.

Course Description: Galveston, San Francisco, Johnstown, Chicago, New Orleans-these are places that have battled floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes from their inception. In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, deadly as they were, there is an urgent question: why, considering all the risks to human life, were these communities developed in the first place? New Orleans, for example, a kind of modern-day Atlantis, could be considered a feat of engineering, not unlike Amsterdam and Venice. But what is the social cost of such an endeavor? What, in short, are the ethical implications of building in areas where natural disasters predictably occur? These are among the questions that the course will consider.