Environmental Science Power Point

Assignment Instructions
Assignment: You are to present a local environmental issue or problem, solutions to the problem, the costs/benefits associated with the solutions to the problem, and a determination of the best solution, based on your analysis of the costs and benefits. Be sure to not make your topic too broad. It should cover a specific town or area, not the entire world or a country, but does not have to be the particular town or area you live – it can be anywhere in the world. Please stay away from global warming issues. This is an extremely difficult area to narrow down locally and present reasonable solutions. It is simply much too broad for this type of presentation.

As an example, runoff from a coalmine may be contaminating the groundwater of a nearby town. A solution to abating the contaminated groundwater could be to shut down the coalmine, but at the cost of everyone losing their jobs. A benefit to this solution could be clean drinking water for the community.

There are a host of other costs and benefits associated with the solution to the above example. There are also many alternatives for solutions, none of which would make everyone happy. It is your job to find these costs and benefits for whatever solutions you choose. Then, analyze each solution’s costs and benefits to determine which is the best solution. Remember when considering costs and benefits, they go far beyond dollar values (e.g. loss or gain of jobs, land use, recreation, convenience, public health, habitat loss or gain, pollution, etc.).

Include a slide with the title of your presentation, then an introduction slide describing the environmental problem. The main body of the presentation should describe the solutions and the costs/benefits to the proposed solution and give recommendations based on your cost/benefit analysis. Be sure to use APA style citations and include a reference slide.

A PowerPoint presentation is really just an outline (with topics, subtopics, and bulleted statements), so it only contains the main points (just like you make an outline when writing a research paper). If you have never used PowerPoint, there are many tutorials on the internet, such as http://www.actden.com/pp/, that explain how to create a presentation. It is better to have a short well-organized and well-written presentation, than a lengthy one that rambles off topic. If you want me to review a draft of your presentation, attach it in a message to me before the start of Week 7 and I’ll comment on it.