WWD and MMW
Our World in Context
The texts Why We Disagree about Climate Change (2007) and Making the Modern World (2014) both serve the great purpose of laying a strong, descriptive foundation for the environmental movement. Mike Hulme and Vaclav Smil break down common misconceptions about key concepts considered in many environmental debates and movements such as the overarching definition of climate and the importance of each resource in production (Hulme 2007, Smil 2014).
One fundamental concept Mike Hulme exposes in WWD is the diversity of people and opinions influencing decision making about the welfare and future of our planet (2007). Hulme addresses the importance of an open mind for “our beliefs have a profound influence on our attitudes, on our behaviour and on our politics,” (Hulme 2007). With politics comes change. Hulme helps to put the debates and environmental issues, such as climate change, in the context of the people affected and involved (2007).
Smil situates common resources and production in the cultures and economies of the specific nations involved in the industry and their connection to the global scale. He displays the importance of physical materials and their uses. Material flows often show an accurate view of the developmental and economic status of communities, and therefore the people (Smil 2014, x). Smil analyzes the effect of material consumption on people’s happiness. He acknowledges that “too many people still live in conditions of degrading and unacceptable material poverty,” (Smil 2014, 173). These people “need to consume more materials per capita” in order to obtain a good quality of life (Smil 2014, 173). People with a “material excess” are shown to have a higher quality of life, but not be happy (Smil 2014, 173). Understanding things that affect people’s lives, will, therefore, give a foundational base of knowledge to start initiating important conversations about the future of the earth.
Richard White and Collard & Colleagues and WRE
The Purity Problem
The distinctions between classic and contemporary environmental thought have created a divide between members of the environmental movement. Ideas of classic thought usually follow a technophobic, apocalyptic, individual-based view of reality and the future, while contemporary thought promotes a more hopeful, progressive, institutional-based outlook (Proctor 2017). A disagreement often debated and highlighted by environmentalists between these two ideologies are the conflicting views of nature. Classic environmental scholars customarily promote a pure view of nature. Contemporaries, embracing the idea of the Anthropocene, commonly advocate a hybrid view of nature where humans and “nature” aren’t separate entities.
Richard White, an esteemed American historian, is considered by many scholars to fall into the classic environmental thought category. In 2000, White wrote a piece where he disputes the common classic view of purity. The Problem with Purity attempts to explain the seemingly universal human desire for purity (White 2000). White claims that humans want purity in order to understand the reason behind different human actions and mistakes. Categorization between ideas is often used as a mechanism of purity (White 2000, 213). Many classic scholars believe that environmental issues can be boiled down to the simple problem of “a transgression of boundaries” (White 2000). Like contemporary scholars, White proposes that natural and human material have been mixing between categories for a long time. His solution affirms that humans should not strive to completely “disentangl[e]” human/social material from the idea of nature, but to look at these concepts not in distinct categories but as “gradations” (White 2000).
Rosemary-Claire Collard and her colleagues further reject the idea of pure nature, claiming the absence of its existence. They claim that ” it is impossible to go back to a past [of pure nature] that never existed,” (Collard et al 2015, 324). The evidence of this rejection being the presence of invasive species and climate change (Collard et al 2015). Embracing the Anthropocene, these scholars believe that due to humans’ newly realized power and responsibility, “the environment will be what we make it,” (Collard et al 2015, 324).
Finally, Steinberg, in Who Rules the Earth?, considers progressive solutions to spawn from “feasible worlds” of hybrid reality instead of the “imaginary” pure nature realities (2015, 37). Feasible worlds are based on realistic visions of improvements to our hybrid human society, culture, and politics that could reasonably happen in the near future (Steinberg 2015, 37).
All of these scholars reject stringent categorization and embrace the melding and weaving of human material and the natural material forming the hybrid reality present today.
AE and WRE
So What Now?
Both Leigh Phillips, of Austerity Ecology and the Collapse-Porn Addicts (2015), and Paul F. Steinberg, of Who Rules the Earth? (2015), embrace modernity and institutional-scale action as the means of positive environmental progress. These scholars don’t just embrace pure institutional action but highlight the individuals within the institution.
In Austerity Ecology (2015), Phillips both supports and critiques institutional and governmental action. He says that often policy makers are only concerned with their own incentives. Therefore, there is a need for an emphasis in education which exposes the evidence of persistent environmental problems and empowers individuals to have conversations with such organizations (2015). However, he also largely believes in planning and government regulation to hold people accountable and implement effective action. Phillips thoroughly discusses the debate between private and public power, or in other words individual vs. institutional power. He states that with public institutions in control, once a consensus of change is made, it will take a shorter amount of time to see these decisions enacted because the public wouldn’t have “to try and incentivise private companies into doing the right thing,” (Phillips 2015). Phillips rejects privatization or localism claiming that such “small, local….and decentralized” companies are used to escape governmental and publically agreed upon regulation (Phillips 2015, 106).
Steinberg, in Who Rules the Earth?, also believes in institutional action as the recipe for effective and long lasting change (2015). The main mechanism supporting institutional action is social rules and regulations. Steinberg points out that the invisible network of “social rules shape our planet and our lives” (Steinberg 2015, 23). Although he does not believe in the effectiveness of consumer education alone, Steinberg does state that a barrier preventing the obtainment of “feasible worlds” is that “decision makers…lack the information they need to make the best decision,” because the cost of time “gathering” outweighs the “benefit” of gaining the best information (Steinberg 2015, 44). WRE proposes that private and public aren’t always two separate institutions and that though private property and institutions do escape some important environmental regulations, seen through the hardships of the cerulean warbler, overall private institutions cannot function or have power without being “backed by the force of law,” (Steinberg 2015, 66). Institutional action doesn’t only transfer the power to large scale institutions, but it also transmits the blame as well. The EU, a successful public institution, looks at the overall causes of pollution and instead of pushing individuals to improve their actions, such as recycling, they hold companies accountable for manufacturing less packaging (Steinberg 2015, 179). Steinberg’s purpose for individual action holds individuals accountable for having conversations with policy makers and institutions to change social rules for a long lasting impact (Steinberg 2015).