The ever-growing environmental movement is much more diverse than one would initially believe. There are a whole slew of unique environmental organizations, ideologies etc. that an individual can be a part of as well as an endless supply of books, articles and resources that someone can use to get educated an involved with the movement. Yet, despite the diversity and sheer size of the environmental network and everything it includes, this semester I have noticed that there are key connections that can be made between many of the reading materials that were covered. These connections allow for a greater understanding of the big picture and the synthesis of more effective and cohesive conservation strategies.
Between reading Making the Modern World by Vaclav Smil and Who Rules the Earth by Paul Steinberg It became very clear to me that social rules and their implications are a common theme in environmental discourse. Not only that, but I began to understand that our social rules need to be changed in order to greatly influence the effectiveness of the environmental movement. Steinberg argues that change needs to come form a more institutional level through the alteration of our social norms or rules. “After all, if today we find that the workings of our economy and society are tilted in the wrong direction, this is because of changes made in the past… So the question before us is not whether change is possible. Change is ubiquitous. The question, rather, is who is participating in the process” (Steinberg 2015, pg. 59). Steinberg would say that it is the elites, corporations and governments that need to be participating in order to truly change social rules and Smil would completely agree with this. Dematerialization is Smil’s vision for the planet but he too clearly understand how this will not be possible without changing social norms. “This makes it highly likely that in order to reconcile our wants with the preservation of the biosphere’s integrity we will have to make deliberate choices that will help us to reduce absolute levels of material consumption, and thereby redefine the very notion of modern societies whose very existence is predicted on incessant and massive material flows” (Smil 2014, loc. 201). Changing social rules is clearly a common theme in environmental discourse these two authors really highlight and draw together a convincing argument that illuminates this connection for me.
Changing the social rules is not something that all environmentalists advocate for surprisingly enough. There are many environmentalists that are strong proponents of technology and modernism, who truly believe that we can embrace capitalism and technology in order to solve climate change. This idea is voiced in Shellenberger’s Love Your Monsters: Environmentalism and the Anthropocene. Shellenberger advocates for, “replacing the antiquated notion that human development is antithetical to the preservation of nature with the view that modernization is the key to saving it” (Shellenberger 2011, pg. 215). This is a popular idea and many people view it as more realistic than some conventional environmental strategies especially because it doesn’t require a massive change in social rules or day to day life . Leigh Phillips also voiced this idea in his book Austerity Ecology & The Collapse-Porn Addicts and in numerous articles where he says, “The patchwork of hair-shirted, back-to-the-land, anti-industrial and degrowth prescriptions common on the green left should really be described as “eco-austerity”. Green anti-modernism is a cuckoo’s egg in the nest of the left.” (Phillips 2015). Eco-modernism is very recurrent in environmental discourse but in many ways is a source of conflict within the environmental network as there are also many individuals who advocate the opposition.
Despite the fact that most people would say that nature is that the center for concern for the environmental movement, the word nature can be fairly vague and lack true meaning. This is due to the fact that nature is a big word, and that people’s views and opinions on nature are closely related to their personal experiences and background, and most importantly their spirituality. After reading a small segment of Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia I really began to see the recurrent theme of spirituality and how intertwined it is with nature. Callenbach paints the picture of an individual’s relationship to nature that is unlike anything that most American’s could be understand. “Certainly Ecotopians regard trees as being alive in almost a human sense–Once I saw a quite ordinary-looking young man, not visibly drugged, lean against a large oak and mutter ‘Brother Tree!” (Callenbach 1975, 58). This innate connection of spirituality that forms a direct relationship between a person and the natural world creates motivation and a fundamental incentive to conserve and protect that natural world. This connection brought me back to the beginning of the semester when we read Hulme’s Why We Disagree About Climate Change in which he outlines Dunlap and Lovelock’s position about the importance and necessity of a spiritual connection to nature. Hulme suggests, “These secular principles of environmental concern, when applied to climate change, suggest the possibility of some bridge-building between the different traditions of religion and environmentalism” (Hulme 2009, pg. 150). The connection between spirituality and nature is not something that is immediately clear however I believe that it is a very strong connection that could foster conservation success when fully realized.
No one knows how to solve the issue of climate change, it is just too vast and diverse. However, it is pretty clear that spirituality, modernism and institutional action will play a role in the process to some degree. These themes and connections are points of contention in environmental discourse but they will eventually need to be tackled if the climate change is to be dealt with.
Bibliography
Hulme, M. Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Phillips, Leigh. “Why eco-austerity won’t save us from climate change.” The Guardian. November 04, 2015. Accessed April 9, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2015/nov/04/why-eco-austerity-wont-save-us-from-climate-change.
Shellenberger, Michael, Nordhaus, Ted eds. 2011. Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene. Breakthrough Institute.
Smil, Vaclav. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley, 2014.
Steinberg, Paul F. Who Rules the Earth?: How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives. New York, NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 2015.