Having attended a fairly academically-rigorous high school, I thought that I was pretty well-prepared for college. I also expected to be prepared for ENVS 160, as I took an AP Environmental Science during my senior year. HOWEVER, I was wrong…. Extremely wrong. So wrong that it’s not even funny.
Thankfully, in just one semester, I have learned an abundance of useful information that I will carry with me far beyond ENVS 160.
Lesson One: Writing with Intention
This lesson applies not only to my environmental posts thus far but also to all other academic writing that I will complete in the future. When I say, “Writing with intention,” I mean writing with a clear purpose, as was discussed in class. In high school, I used to do assignments just to get the completion grade, not really caring about the quality of my work. I felt that if I wrote what I thought my teachers wanted to hear, that would be enough for a passing grade. While I was often times correct in my assumptions, it is now clear to me that writing with that mindset was completely pointless. I learned nothing and, even worse, offered nothing. The environmental team posts have taught me more so than anything else to write with intention. Knowing that other classmates would likely read my posts, I realized that I should be producing quality material, so that others don’t find my posts a complete waste of time. On top of this, I am grateful for the emphasis put on avoiding “big words,” like nature, sustainability, environment, etc. in this class. Often times people use these words without much purpose and do not bother to define them, making them too ambiguous for their reader to truly understand. While writing with intention, I learned that one must have a clear purpose and really take their time to properly get their point across.
Lesson Two: Anthropocentrism/Establishing Place
Before taking ENVS 160, I completed an environmental science class in high school. The class largely focused on ways that humans were, “destroying the environment,” (when I use this big word I mean “the natural world, as a whole or in a particular geographical area, especially as affected by human activity,” as was defined in the Oxford dictionary) and the possible steps humanity could take to slow this destruction for the benefit of future generations. Because of this overarching theme, I held a very pessimistic view, seeing humans as incredibly detrimental and selfish beings who will either eventually drain this planet of every profitable resource or only save it for their own benefit. However, in ENVS 160, my viewpoint changed after I learned that not everyone has such an anthropocentric viewpoint. This idea was especially prevalent while my team worked on our, “Isms,” assignment. We focused on Deep Ecology, which can be defined as, “an ecological and environmental philosophy promoting the inherent worth of living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, plus a radical restructuring of modern human societies in accordance with such ideas,” according to its Wikipedia page.
In addition to this, I think that establishing place was very helpful in giving me hope for the future. In class, we defined place as being composed of nature, social relations, and meaning (nature being the physical aspects that make up a location, social relations representing the various ways in which humans use that location, and meaning being the importance of said location to the individual). During our, “Situating Minerals,” team assignment, my group researched gypsum mining in three places: China, the United States, and Iran. While we discovered many cons of mining, like erosion and loss of biodiversity, we also came across many pros. China is the number one supplier of gypsum in the world, so gypsum mining really boosts its economy and creates thousands of jobs, as we explained in our post. While this mining still seems to only benefit humans, I can see their motives behind their actions, something that my high school class never focused on. I think that establishing place was incredibly important because it reminded me that the “monsters” behind these environmental problems are just humans often times trying to support their families.
Lesson Three: Individual Action isn’t nearly Enough…. But, HEY, it’s a Start!
In my household, my parents would always say,“The small things start to add up.” Hearing this throughout my childhood, I was basically trained to turn off the lights whenever possible, minimize my water consumption, always recycle, compost, avoid buying plastic, bike/walk instead of drive when possible, etc. With this all in mind, I was eager to see if the community of Portland as a whole was really as green as I expected, coming from the Chicago area. Portland is often praised for being a “green-city.” However, what makes Portland green isn’t everyone’s individual actions of going vegan, recycling, and biking to work, but rather the institutional ones! Portland has a lot of green infrastructure, like green streets, ecoroofs, and even strategically-planted trees to help “manage stormwater, protect water quality and improve watershed health” (Green Infrastructure RSS). Portland also has added a large number of bike lanes to advocate for biking instead of driving. It was discussed in class that access bike lanes, not individual bikers, are what really make the difference. But, I’ve come to realize that this is not a one or the other type of thing. As a society, I think that we should aim for both individual and institutional action.
As was explained in Who Rules the Earth by Paul F. Steinberg, a woman by the name of Dr. June Irwin was able to begin with individual efforts and work her way up to influencing at the institutional scale. She began by attempting to end the hazardous pesticide use in Hudson, Canada, by meeting with the town council. Her actions caused these major pesticide companies to face the Canadian Supreme Court, where they lost their battle, making new legislation that stated, “By 2010, three-fourths of all Canadian citizens were covered by some form of protective legislation based on the Hudson model.” (Steinberg 2015, 9). This emphasizes that sometimes it takes an individual to spark an institutional change. Afterall, as Steinberg highlights, all institutions have been put in place by people of the past, so change should be seen as incredibly possible to people of the present.
Works Cited
Steinberg, Paul F. Who Rules the Earth? 1st Edition. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016: Oxford University Press, 2015.
“Green Infrastructure RSS.” The City of Portland, Oregon. Accessed April 05, 2017. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bes/34598.