ECON 150 Economics of Sustainability
Explores the ecological underpinnings of human economies: how natural constraints influence the kinds of societies a place can support, and the way that new technologies and human choices change our relationship to the environment. We use Hartwick College's Pine Lake campus, local farms and forests, and the City and Town of Oneonta as a series of living classrooms. The course looks at the roles of markets, governments, and other social structures, and applies the concepts of opportunity cost, supply-and-demand, and economic efficiency to understand patterns of growth and economic change and to consider what "sustainability" is and how to move toward it. Spring 2017: Most mornings we will meet in a classroom on the Oneonta campus at 8:40. However, some mornings we will meet at the Oneonta campus at 8:00 before traveling to Pine Lake for class or on other field trips. We will be back at the Oneonta campus by the regular class ending time of 10:00am.