When enrolling in ENVS 160, I had a minuscule if not nonexistent idea of what this course would be about and how it would challenge me as a freshly formed college student. I approached the class with what I thought was a pretty definitive idea of what environmentalism was and what it had to offer. I could draw out facts, figures, and concepts that I learned from AP Environmental Science to PBS Nature documentaries which educated me from a young age. With confidence, I could hold up this discombobulated map of lessons and say, “Well, this is the most of it!” Over the semester, however, I came to realize that there was a lot more to Environmental Studies than I could have ever imagined. The complexity concepts and critique from classical to contemporary thought has thrown my mind into a bit of disarray. My map is no longer so certain. There seems to be no “x” that marks the spot of consensus to certain environmental problems, even within the scientific and scholarly community alone. My assumptions are being reevaluated, and my understanding of the world is changing as a result. Yet when reaching this point in the semester, there are three lessons that I have learned in relation to my evolving comprehension of what Environmental Studies has to offer.
The first important lesson I have learned concerns a specific theory we covered while reading Mike Hulme’s Why We Disagree About Climate Change. In chapter six, we learned a specific lesson concerning wicked problems like climate change: People’s rule-oriented (grid) and social (group) alignments play a massive role in how they will approach and conceptualize these issues. The idea was described through cultural theory, which categorizes these perceptions into four distinct and polarized categories. But the fatal, hierarchal, individual, and egalitarian perspectives do much more than just explain where a certain individual may be placed on the grid-group axis. They determine how that individual will understand climate in relation to humanity, the method of communicating climate change, reformist approaches of sustainable development, possible solutions to climate change, and much more. The hierarchist may view climate as tolerant when managed effectively, yet the fatalist sees it as fundamentally unpredictable, always posing a risk that we as a species cannot control. Egalitarians may communicate climate change in terms of catastrophe, wildlife, and justice, where as individualists communicate in terms of economics and the private sector (Hulme 2009). This axis of perspective, although not perfect, helps me better understand and approach the opinions and arguments of others in relation to environmental crises like climate change.
A second lesson I have learned is to adopt an important skill that can be applied to just about any aspect of environmental scholarship: recognizing the inherent structure and meaning of questions (categorized as descriptive, explanatory, evaluative, instrumental). With this knowledge, I provide more concise understandings and responses to environmental scholarship. We have worked our way through the semester from focusing on more descriptive and explanatory styles of literature such as Why We Disagree About Climate Change (Hulme 2009) and Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization (Smil 2013) to higher emphasis on evaluative styles seen in Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts (Phillips 2015) and Love Your Monsters (Shellenberger 2011) to more instrumental prominence in Who Rules The Earth? (Steinburg 2014). I’ve learned that I could not skip to any instrumental scholarly investigations without addressing the descriptive, explanatory, and evaluative elements that act as the essential foundation. Our team assignments specifically served to incrementally familiarize us to follow the structure of these question styles. From addressing data concerning Portland’s views on the relevance and importance of environmental issues to critiquing scholarly isms within environmental scholarship, we have addressed each style with exceptional attention to detail.
The third lesson that I have learned from this course falls in the realm of instrumental thinking. As we have studied contemporary environmental thought, a growing consensus has come to the forefront of the class: when evaluating environmental issues and constructing feasible solutions, one must prioritize institutional-scale over individual-scale thinking. The latter was more emphasized in classical environmental thought, starting with Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons essay. Hardin emphasized the role of the individual in both corrupting common-pool resources as well as protecting them. Through coercion, individuals can be motivated to not abuse the commons for their own benefit (Hardin 1968). Individual-scale solutions were pushed further in the formation of isms like Deep Ecology, where Naess proposes an individual’s stronger ethical relationship with the natural world with an emphasis on autonomy and decentralization (Naess 1973). However, critiques of this type of thinking within the realm of contemporary environmentalism propose a stronger argument favoring institutional-scale thinking. Maniates begins it well, suggesting that by thinking of ourselves as consumers first and citizens second we are robbing ourselves of the more important conversations surrounding the role of institutions (Maniates 2001). Proctor further emphasizes how we must not see our reality as a collection of separately functioning islands but as elements which are fundamentally dependent on each other (Proctor 2010). The idea of social rules discussed with impeccable detail in Who Rules the Earth? serves to act as the binding agent that threads us all together in a more broad, cosmopolitan reality rested in institutions (Steinberg 2014). Of course, thinking institutionally is not as easy as buying organic and locally sourced foods then calling it quits. It requires dedicating time and patience to deconstruct and reevaluate the world we live in. Moving forward, I will take this lesson to heart when evaluating proposed environmental issues and solutions, making an effort to appreciate the interdependent complexities that make up both.
Through these lessons and many more, a new map of my understanding of environmentalism is being drawn, and my confidence is slowly growing with it. It will not be an easy road ahead. But through my upcoming time in the ENVS program, I hope to graduate with the ability to learn even more within the realm of the professional world and affect positive change for the well-being of our planet and the people occupying its soils.
References:
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162 (3859): 1243–48. doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243.
Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge University Press.
Maniates, Michael F. 2001. “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?” Global Environmental Politics 1 (3): 31–52.
Naess, Arne. 1973. “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement.” Inquiry 16: 95–100.
Phillips, Leigh. 2015. Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence of Growth, Progress, Industry and Stuff. Winchester, UK ; Washington, USA: Zero Books.
Proctor, James D. 2010. “True Sustainability Means Going beyond Campus Boundaries.” Chronicle of Higher Education, December 3.
Shellenberger, Michael, and Ted Nordhaus, eds. 2011. Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene. Breakthrough Institute.
Smil, Vaclav. 2014. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley.
Steinberg, Paul F. 2015. Who Rules the Earth?: How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.