1. How do you define sustainability and do you think it is possible to achieve?  

2. Can a desert environment support a large human population sustainably? What are your thoughts about limiting population growth in a city such as Las Vegas to maintain? What are the pros and cons of limiting growth in a city like Las Vegas?

3. Please write a response to Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey. Indicate first if you have ever traveled in the American Southwest-for our purposes, Arizona, New Mexico, west Texas, southwestern Colorado or southern Utah. If you have been there, how do these descriptions of the land affect you? Do they match with your experience, or not? If you have not been there, how do you react to these writers and the difficult country they describe? Do you agree with their assessment of why these places need to be protected, even though they are very tough places for humans to live in? What does Abbey mean by “industrial tourism”? Both Stegner and Abbey are polemical-they are fighting for a part of the country they love and are seeing changed in ways they don’t like. How do you respond to their critiques? Please answer within one page limit.

4. Pick two authors to focus on for this forum. You can use Stegner and Abbey. For each of these two, develop a paragraph in which you describe how the author’s thoughts challenge or contrast.  How do you respond to these writers? Do their concerns ring true to you? Please answer within one page limit.