ENVS 160 is not your ordinary science class. Rather than your typical lecture style high school class with labs consisting of fire and chemicals, ENVS 160 strongly focuses on many aspects of environmental theories and ideas. Over the course of the class, we focused on four major sections: Why We Disagree About Climate Change by Mike Hulme, Making The Modern World by Vaclav Smil, Classic vs. Contemporary Thought, and Who Rules The Earth by Paul F. Steinberg. Some of these ideas and books were easier to grasp than others due to the writing styles of each author and the way that they portrayed their main ideas. Personally, I am not a math person, so Making The Modern World was a very overwhelming book for me because it was filled with numbers and economic ideas. However, once I zoomed in and figured out how to focus on the main concepts and ideas from the text, it became much more manageable and attainable. Some of the books might seem dense like this one, but if you figure out what works for you, they will be great reads and you will come across some noteworthy ideas.
The first text we read was Why We Disagree About Climate Change by Mike Hulme. Hulme (2009) brings many different ideas to attention, like science is not always consistent. He shows that even though science is beneficial in decision-making about how to solve climate change or other environmental problems, it is not going to lead us to the perfect solution. Hulme says, “this story about the idea of climate change is not a simple one of science progressing purposefully in a straight line from blissful ignorance to a state of confident knowledge” (Hulme 2009, 68). I learned that science is so ambiguous, therefore it is unreliable and doubtful, so solutions to climate change and other environmental issues are difficult to be solved. We got into groups to complete a project inspired by this book called Climate Change Public Opinion. In this project, we actually went out into the “real” world. We wandered around downtown Portland and asked different people to complete a survey about their opinions on climate change and how important it was to them. We recorded their ideas and put all of the data together as a class of complete gathered information. We looked at trends and tried to piece it all together. We asked ourselves questions like, what did it all mean? Why do we disagree about climate change? Hence, the title of the book.
The second book, Making The Modern World by Vaclav Smil, analyzes the consumption of materials around the world and how exploiting them are causing environmental issues. Smil (2014) does this through following materials back to their sites of production, considering the Nature, Meaning and Social Relations of them. Most commonly, Life Cycle Assessments are performed to evaluate the burdens of production, reuse and performance of materials like aluminum and plastics. This system enables one to consider the factors that play into the addiction of over consumption as well as unveil some of the hidden flows that have created so many of our compilations. This book inspired a project called Situating Minerals. For this project, we defined place as a gathering of processes and perspectives in one location. Groups picked a mineral and studied where it was located, the impact it had on the local community, and what it is used for. We were able to think about what the modern world is made up of.
The third section had to do with Classic vs. Contemporary thought and how they interact with environmental thoughts. There is a strong difference in the meaning of development for these two thought groups and in their ideal mechanisms and maneuvers to promote this development. People adhering to classic environmental thought generally hold a conservative view on time and an idealistic view towards the purity of nature. In addition, classic thinkers typically fear technology as a way to promote environmental change. In contrast, contemporary environmental thinkers embrace the future, hold a hybrid view toward nature, and look up to technology as a tool to work towards environmental solutions. Looking at these opposing views, it is clear that classic and contemporary thinkers hold different views towards what constitutes development and how to go about achieving it. Contemporary thinkers would likely view development as using modern technology and innovation to further society while at the same time protecting the environment. However, classic thinkers would view development as establishing a world in which we can live in harmony with nature by reducing human growth and impact. The project dealing with this was Interrogating Isms. We looked at “isms” like neoliberalism, ecoterrorism, and cosmopolitanism. This project taught me a lot about people’s personal opinions and ways of thinking, especially dealing with environmentalism.
Finally, the last book we read was Who Rules The Earth? by Paul F. Steinberg. Steinberg (2015) explains that social rules influence our understanding of what we believe is the truth. He writes, “When rules are routinely followed…we internalize them as habits, routines, and standard operating procedures” (Steinberg 2015, 12). They are constantly mentioned so it makes complete sense as to why we believe it to be the truth. Steinberg (2015) urges that to solve our climate change problem, the social rules must be changed. He states that the responsibility for the solutions are in our hands and that we are the ones who need to make it happen. Although policies usually pertain to larger groups of individuals, it is still up to the individual to fight for the rule change and make it happen. Steinberg (2015) asks us, “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). This book has brought us to our final posts, which have all been individual reflections. The first post was about how taking ENVS 160 has changed us so far by stating three lessons we learned from this course. Being the first post we did alone, it was fun to be able to write about my own thoughts rather than mine plus 3 more. The second post was to identify and briefly describe three key connections between the main sections of the course. This post was the most difficult yet interesting post in my opinion because it made me look at the big picture for each book and draw connections between them all. It’s cool to see that each text shared the same ideas, yet they were such different books. For the third post, we had to summarize the main argument of Who Rules the Earth? and reflect on how it applies to our scholarly and personal life. This one was the easiest for me to complete because I was able to talk about how I plan on using what I learned from this book in my every day life. The final post served as a conclusion of this course, because we had to reflect and synthesize all of the ideas we have learned in ENVS 160. It was cool to see the connections between everything that we learned throughout the course.
This year has been full of learning experiences, frustration, real life applications and most importantly, looking at the bigger picture. The reason why I say frustrating and looking at the bigger picture is because I learned that sometimes, you may not get the grade that you were expecting, but it is okay because the most important thing is that you are learning something new and putting in the work. For example, in ENVS 160 you will take daily reading quizzes on the assigned chapter readings. I struggled a lot with the quizzes and did not score very high on a lot of them, even though I did the readings along with the reading guides. This can get really stressful, but I realized that one, I was never the best at test taking compared to others who can take tests like it’s no big deal and two, it’s all about the process. It gets better, trust me. Although this is obviously a graded course, the structure of this class is built with really high standards and is meant to be challenging. The content of this class forces you to use your brain and think outside of the box. With that being said, it is not an easy A class but then again, that’s not the ultimate reason to be taking college courses. The goal is to learn something new every day and to expand your horizons. If you have the mindset of looking at the bigger picture, then you will get the most out of this enjoyable class.
References
Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction, and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smil, Vaclav. 2014. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Steinberg, Paul. 2015. Who Rules the Earth?: How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press