I’ve always considered myself very earth friendly. My mom shopped at Whole Foods, used reuseable shopping bags, we carpooled to school, I rode my bike to soccer, I was teased by peers for washing and reusing ziploc baggies, and my dad waited till Thanksgiving every year before he would turn the heat on in my house. Living in high elevation, cold, and snowy Salt Lake City, Utah this seemed like the ultimate sacrifice. Throughout this course I learned to analyze my life and reevaluate the decisions that I was making and the impact that my decisions had on my surroundings as well as how I approached discussing environmental issues and possible solutions with others.
This course definitely drilled into my head that individual action is great on a small scale but overall to truly bring about widespread environmental change, policies need to be implemented by a governing body. In “Who Rules The Earth” Paul F. Steinberg, the author of the book, discusses on multiple occasions how social rules and governmental policies change the way we think about nature, wildness, and how we address the global dilemma of climate change (Sternberg 2015). Before this course I believed that individual action and civil disobedience would create enough media attention which would drive policies to be created. After carefully following the DAPL movement I realized that while the water protectors withstood harsh conditions and spoke out the cultural significance behind their native the only thing that could save the land from the creation of a pipeline was a new governmental policy. This realization was rehashed with the conversations held in class about individual v.s institutional action.
The interdisciplinarity of Intro to Environmental Studies has never been more apparent to me then when it comes to economics. In chapter 5 of “Who Rules The Earth” Steinberg discusses the importance of markets as an attempt to decrease lead and particulate matter pollution. Steinberg highlights the market revolving the EPA distributed lead permits and how the trading of the permits in a cap and trade society has lead to an environmental market of it’s own. This chapter teaches us that economics is widely used in environmental studies and although it is not commonly considered as a factor that should influence public relations with their natural surroundings, it does (Steenburg 2015). I was incredibly shocked that even though scientists and health experts had warned lawmakers that lead was a hazardous substance because it made the gasoline run more efficiently the possibility of lead contamination was overlooked.
Until this course I always believed that if someone didn’t understand that global warming or climate change, as it is now most commonly referred to, pose a serious threat to humanity that they must just be uneducated. I believed that showing someone the facts would automatically make them see that what I saw as truth was right. Understanding the deficit model was eye opening to me. It showed statistics that people are not easily convinced of one side or the other even when presented with facts and that oftentimes a lack of education or misunderstanding isn’t the issue. We all perceive our climate in different ways, some climates are more vulnerable to our changing Earth than others. While I would like to believe that educating everyone about climate change would cause them to take up arms and join the climate revolution I realize now why the climate debate is so controversial because there are many aspects to consider that play into someone’s attitude about conservation and many different priorities that need to be taken into account.
Steinberg, Paul F. 2015. Who Rules The Earth. Oxford: Oxford Press.