Since I can remember, my life goal has always been to make a ‘change in the world’. In the past I attempted reaching this goal by individual action, blogging, photography and educating myself through documentaries and my own research. However, these steps only looped me back around to where I began and the world remained unchanged. ENVS 160, and in particular the readings of Why We Disagree About Climate Change by Mike Hulme and Who Rules The Earth? by Paul F. Steinberg, have recently pushed me down a trail uncharted that in no way resembles that familiar loop I got to know so well. This pathway has lead me outside of the constricting box of social rules and regulations, so that I have the ability to find a real platform for a point of action to make my change. ENVS 160 has also left me with a vital piece of advice that I need to get started, and that is:
Think as a scholar, feel as an activist and act as a leader.
Think as a scholar
To think as a scholar means thinking critically in terms of questions, root causes, framing and complexities. Complex problems like climate change, stem from many different aspects of life that each add another layer to complicate potential solutions. These layers include religion, economics, place, politics and social status (Hulme 2015). Each of theses fundamental factors need to be examined in a scholarly way to fully understand how to go about finding fixes. As an environmentalist, I now realize the importance and benefit of knowledge and how it can be used to my advantage. Scholarly knowledge is a key tool as an activist that I have not yet utilized to it’s full extent, but am working with it, using it as I grow into a well rounded individual.
Feel as an activist
To feel as an activist, touches on the ideas of the contemporary author Steinberg, who wrote, “I try to combine the activist’s sense of urgency with the scholar’s professional skepticism” (Steinberg 2015, 18). I’ve never had any problems with emotion, I always have had a place in my heart for everything breathing, growing and unmoving. The problem with this is that I tend to get so caught up in feeling so deeply, that I lack the important sense of urgency and intensity that environmental activists share. ENVS 160 has made me aware of the fact that my thoughts and my actions have not yet met an intersection, they have stayed on very different ends of the spectrum. My feelings are as a consumer, staying in the individual scale instead of as a citizen, in the collective scale. This course has challenged me to work and bridge this gap and feel urgently instead of apocalyptically.
Act as a leader
To act as a leader requires combining my education and my passion to find a point(s) of action. As I touched on in my WRE post #2 (evaluating ideas: means for realistic change), some realistic possibilities for change I learned in 160 are confronting power, changing the norm and educating the public. Steinberg (2015) argues that there are eight principles for real institutional action, the ones that stuck with me include ‘beg, borrow or steal’, ‘building unconventional coalitions’, ‘creating public value’ and ‘thinking vertically’. Acting small scale has been my point of action because it has been the easiest to reach. However, if I am going to make some sort of impactful difference, I have to expand my scale vertically to intuitions and leadership using these principles.
In some ways, ENVS 160 has been a wake up call, telling me that I need to get moving and actually do something. This has been at times frustrating but untimely a very healthy push into the real world. This course clearly laid out the complications, the disagreements and the solutions in front of me for examination. I have no more excuses for being in a continuous loop. It is time that I put my thoughts and feelings into operation and take some steps onto that uncharted trail.
References
Hulme, Mike 2015. Why We Disagree About Climate Change: understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Steinberg, Paul F. 2015. Who Rules The Earth?: how social rules shape our planet and our lives. New York, NY: Oxford Univ. Press.