Through reading the texts presented in environmental studies certain patterns and connections emerge. These connections reinforce the points made by the different authors by building upon one another. As our class reads more literature, our arsenal of common themes and connections of environmental thought grows deeper.
My first connection is the method of situating oneself in the position of an unexperienced community. Mike Hulme is the original advocate for situating places or people for our ENVS 160 class. Why We Disagree About Climate Change states that we need to understand the differences between certain opportunities or practices of peoples other than ourselves (Hulme 2009). By gathering a worldlier view, policy makers can implement more effective and positive solutions. The other book that supports the notion of situating in a distant lifestyle is Vaclav Smil’s Making the Modern World. In Smil’s book he consistently strengthens the necessity of prioritizing the needs of a community. Namely the issue of situating ourselves in the countries that are large contributors to pollution, but face much larger issues of poverty. Poverty, according to Smil, should be recognized as a much more pressing matter before conquering any causes of climate change (Smil 2014). Through Smil and Hulme, the connection of situating is made and they demonstrate the need for situating.
Another connection is the connection of individualism and the value that we assign to certain objects. For Smil, he makes use of life cycle assessments to demonstrate objective qualities to our consumption of materials and the value we receive from them (Smil 2014). Smil also calls to note the humanitarian value that our actions have and discusses the value of people. His writing typically seems very calculated, but most of his statements point to a certain human worth. Similar to this, Mike Hulme uses nearly the entire book to address our individualism and dissect why disagreements arise within anthropogenic climate change discussions. His book carries a tone of individualism and hence assigns a lot of value and consideration to human differences (Hulme 2009). I learned through this connection to value individualism and the materials used by growing countries.
The final connection between Smil’s Making the Modern World and Hulme’s Why We Disagree About Climate Change is the thread of the growth paradigm being imperative to reducing anthropogenic climate change. Hulme talks about the growth paradigm, where the human nature for growth will lead to a world with “. . . unsustainable economies and hence perpetuating climate change” (Hulme 2009, 264). Making the Modern World expands upon this concept by linking most issues of pollution and environmental degradation back to large city growth. Vaclav Smil goes on to define a term that summarizes this phenomenon which is called Jevons Paradox. Jevons Paradox verbalizes the effect of making a product more efficient, which leads to the increased use of that product (Smil 2014, 130). Essentially growth will require more materials regardless of the innovations made. Both authors connect the relationship between growth and the increase of consumption.
Smil and Hulme are related in many of the topics they include in their books. These books are the basis for many of my early connections in ENVS 160 and connections that I still consider in our class.
Hulme, Mike. Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Smil, Vaclav. 2014. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley.