ENVS 160 has taught me a variety of interesting and useful ways to engage with environmental discourse. Below, I will outline a few of the ways I hope to conduct myself both personally and academically over the course of my life after taking this class.
My newfound appreciation for hybridity has urged me to rethink some of my beliefs, especially those concerning a pure nature world outlook. As a scholar and as an individual with a vested interest in solving global climate issues, I will not be “Lamenting Eden,” (Hulme 2011, 342) which is to mourn the loss of the natural world of the past but to instead celebrate the natural world as a constantly evolving organism. ENVS 160 has made available to me a couple of contemporary environmental frameworks that will help facilitate my ideas on hybridity, such as the “situated approach” framework, which studies the how nature, culture, action, thought, global, and local elements interact with one another to define a place. I hope to apply some of these frameworks and newfound perspectives in my day-to-day life and appreciate the resilience and adaptability of nature, which I think is especially important in a time that some might call an environmental crisis.
After learning of the importance of marrying individual-scale action with institutions-scale action, I would like to commemorate this beautiful relationship by applying some of the ideas of Paul Steinberg in my future renewable energy projects. My first renewable energy project will focus exclusively on trying to communicate to the Malaysia government the importance of electricity in villages excluded from the national electrical grid. Steinberg states that “A spirit of volunteerism and overflowing with ideas… may amount to little down the road if you fail to institutionalize new practices and perspectives.” (Steinberg 2015, 268). By communicating through the media the success of my project and by encouraging more renewable energy projects, we can at least bring to the attention of the Malaysian government the importance and feasibility of renewable electricity. That, I believe, would be an important step forward in the pursuit of institutional changes in my home country.
Furthermore, Steinberg describes the importance of combining advocacy with academia, which is also something of great interest to me. Steinberg states in his book “we need more routine opportunities for meaningful collaboration between researchers and agents of change.” (Steinberg 2015, 270). As an individual and scholar interested in renewable energy, I acknowledge that there are shortcomings to renewable energy sources, especially renewable energy provided via solar panels. However, after doing my research and finding the most efficient panels for my project, I can’t help but argue that solar panels are incredibly beneficial to villages and communities separated from the national grid and lack the money to invest in expensive generators. Renewable energy is relatively affordable, just have a look at the project organized by Lewis and Clark student, Valcourt Honore, whose renewable energy project in Haiti is providing electricity to a school and powers computers to educate the young. His project cost approximately $17,000, and has even lit a whole street in a neighbourhood! Now that is something I can and will advocate for among other things I feel passionate discussing. The medium to convey my beliefs, which I have found very powerful, especially over the course of the last couple of weeks, are online news articles from accessible news providers, such as the Huffington Post.
Spirituality within environmentalism should be entertained as an alternative method to current environmental solutions. Before arriving at Lewis and Clark, I was an avid atheist (excuse my phrasing) and took shameless comfort in academic studies showing that religion had a diminishing influence on the world’s population, which was evident in a pew research study published recently illustrating the decline of Christianity in the United States. Today, I have come to realize that religion isn’t as hostile and dangerous as I had perceived it to be and that there is a branch of belief called spirituality that is not directly related to praying in a church or reciting a religious text, which I found much more comforting as a religious non-believer. For example, Arne Naess discusses the deep ecology movement, which I believe has some interesting attributes that can be applied in my personal and scholarly life. Naess discusses how the ecological field worker” (Naess 1973, 95) has a deep-seated respect and veneration for nature (Naess 1973), which, in turn, is meant to heighten our sense responsibility for our environmentally degrading actions both locally and globally. What I have stated here may seem contradictory to what I had said in the first paragraph describing my perception of nature as hybrid. However, I believe there are cases, such as the depletion of the black rhino population, that need to be addressed urgently, and can be done so by trying to empathize with species in a way usually only reserved for other humans and a select few animals. I will certainly embrace spirituality when I conduct animal conservation work, which will be the case two months from now when I travel to work with a turtle conservation group in Lang Tengah, Malaysia. (Check it out, it is truly a beautiful place!).
In conclusion, the skills that the students of ENVS 160 have inherited are numerous, and their applications in the world are even more so. At this point, action, above all else, must be taken to make the differences both subtle and monumental. Together, we can change the world, either piece by piece or by leaps and bounds. The future, as they say, is ours!
Works Cited