Environmental and Public Health Law
To fill the social sphere for the Sustainability Certificate I took Environmental and Public Health Law. This class focused on providing me with a background of legal procedures and what they have to do when it comes to environmental regulation. We discussed many important and relevant topics such as Water Law and Quality, The Clean Water Act and Recycling Animal Waste, Preventing Damages from Wastes, Addressing Air Quality, Pesticides and Endangered Species, Natural Resources, Climate Change and Food Production, and Energy. This is important because sustainability and other environmental issues cannot not fully be solved without new policy. People who know and learn the law can help implement policy for the topics we covered.
We were able to go through court cases for each of our topics and see how the concepts were applied in past cases. Learning this is important for future lawyers, but also policy makers and the general public. If we want to change environmental policy, then we need to know the process behind it. Environmental law is important because it ensures that practices will not harm the environment, humans, or animals. This applies to my major, because it helps ensure responsibility is given to the companies. In my career, I would like to improve environmental practices, and environmental law is the backing I need to be able to do this. If I start a career as an environmental policy maker, I will apply what I learned about past court cases with each topic we discussed in order to have the best outcome. This course is unlike any other course I have taken so it was interesting to have the perspective from the law-making process. Overall, I do not plan on being an environmental lawyer, but I do plan to work on policy, and this material gives me the background I need.