Activity for Week 2

Energy Use and Development Assignment

The assignment is as follows: click on http://ecofoot.org and answer the questions necessary to determine your own ecological footprint. Once you have completed the quiz, note the right-hand sidebar and the tabs “About the Footprint Quiz” and “Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).” Briefly look through these sections, as they will give you a broader sense of what a “footprint” entails.

Next, return to the ecofoot.org homepage, and choose a third world country. Take the quiz again imagining that you are a pre-1790 inhabitant of the Northwest region. Respond in such a way that your answers come, as near as you can manage, to how you think your imagined subject might have answered. Recognize that these answers will vary depending on the area of the Northwest under consideration. Why would there be this variability?

Clearly there are no right answers here, only better guesses, and the format of the quiz will somewhat limit the range of your responses; however, an exercise of this kind could easily be simulated in your classrooms in order to begin the discussion of pre-contact energy use.