Environmental issues can serve as a marvelous framework for high-level student analysis of critical scientific and social concerns. We describe a series of activities and discussions that motivate students to explore environmentalism, sustainable development, carbon offsets, and related ideas with an engaged learning format that helps students to reveal the gray areas that exist when deciding upon social policy that is based on the impact of science. We summarize research supporting engaged learning in STEM education, and provide a successful example of this changing educational paradigm. Although we present data to show that students value the paradigm, the paper is intended to highlight the instructional, rather than evaluative, aspects of the model.