This semester has been…unexpected. If there is a more accurate description of my time in Environmental Studies 160, I have yet to find it. I walked into lecture on the first day imagining that my high school AP Environmental Science class would coast me through, but I was proven wrong within the first week. ENVS is not as cozy with the sciences as I had once believed. It seems to have roots in dozens of disciplines, including economics, sociology, geology, ecology, biology, and on. As a biology major, I was hoping to take away a few ideas that would help me better understand the anthropogenic effects on the biosphere I would soon be studying. However, I am now equipped to critically think about environmental politics, history, debate, and maybe even some solutions. I have widened the breadth of my scientific knowledge by re-envisioning science through a humanities lens.
First, I am now aware that “place” means so much more than “a particular position or point in space” (dictionary.com, accessed 04/03/17). Before completing our situating minerals assignment, I would never have been conscious of the amount of unintentional bias we impose onto areas of study. This is incredibly important for a student like me, as I am aspiring to become a field researcher. Had I not taken this class, it may have been years before I realized that it is necessary to view a place through as many lenses as possible before making even the most seemingly harmless assumptions about it. This means that before I can make decisions about whether a certain species is ethical to curate, for example, I would first need to address any local connections with the organism to understand its value through more than just money or legislation.
Example of my ornithological curatorial work as part of the Lewis & Clark College Natural History Collection
Second, I have learned that there are more than only two ways to think about climate change’s effects on the future. Beyond just apocalyptic or hopeful, Mike Hulme explained four distinct categories that were designed to include everyone and their varying views. In his book, Why We Disagree About Climate Change, Hulme described these four categories as Lamenting Eden, Presaging Apocalypse, Constructing Babel, and Celebrating Jubilee (Hulme, 2009). I have found that I can more easily identify with Lamenting Eden than I can with being a hopeful. It was oddly comforting to come to the realization that there are people who believe in the same ideas that I do. I am not only secured in my connection to the purity of Earth in its most untouched state, but also to those who feel that same connection. I am not a spiritual person, so this gave me a rare glimpse into what it could feel like to be part of a religion.
Lastly, I have learned the importance of how easily an idea can be twisted with only a change to one word. In our Interrogating Isms assignment, my group investigated ecoterrorism. Throughout our research we repeatedly came across the same variations in our term, depending on who we were reading from, which were eco-terrorism versus eco-justice. It occurred to us that both words are referring to the exact same subject, but just that one word switch takes the ism from being something to be afraid of, to something you can rally behind. These types of slight biases are something unintentional that I know I must be doing in my scholarly writing. It is my hope that once I finish this class, I will carry this new awareness, along with that of the two previous lessons, into the rest of my academic life.
Works cited:
Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.