After taking this class, I feel I have gained a much broader understanding of how to view environmental thought with a critical lense. Coming into this class I felt confidant thinking about problems with the natural world and ways in which we as a society could go about solving them, feeling that the answers should be simple. After reading even the first text, Why We Disagree About Climate Change I began to understand that these issues were much more complex than I had imagined. I had never taken into consideration before the importance of history as well as understanding the cultural differences between people when addressing large scale problems.
The text Why We Disagree About Climate Change appeared to confuse me even more, I had always thought that climate change was a pretty simple to define. In my head, the climate of the world was changing and a huge cause of this is global warming was caused by human interference. After reading this book I questioned some of the ways I viewed the climate, especially when Hulme proposed the idea that “climate is a constructed idea that takes these sensory encounters and builds them into something more abstract”(Hulme 2009, 4). Questioning the whole idea of climate itself made me understand that the world, or even a country coming to a consensus on what to do about climate change is nearly impossible. Understanding that the world is full of many different viewpoints and cultural perspectives, gave me a more realistic approach on the magnitude of understanding what climate change even is.
Reading the text Who Rules the Earth really brought together a lot of the questions and concerns that I had had throughout the semester. I felt a lack of structure and that there were no answers to these large problems we had been addressing and that being critical of others view on the environment was not the right was forward. This text helped me to think about the role of government can be applied to making policy decisions that could potentially help our climate. The idea of institutional action being much more effective than individual action was another component to this book that changed the way I viewed solving problems. The idea that the individual actions that I had been doing my whole life did not make a huge impact, was something I had a hard time coming to terms with. The text did end on a positive note though, summarizing that “it is a matter of balance, complementing these everyday acts of individual conscience with larger actions that promote social change” (Steinberg 2015, 278). After reading this book, I felt a lot less confused about how to go about addressing many of the issues that we have covered throughout the class, knowing that policy and social change are two great approaches to take.
Even though this class appeared to end in somewhat of a concise way, I still feel slightly dumbfounded by some of the material that we covered, not knowing how to form an opinion and process it. Exploring so many different perspectives on what I originally felt were simple enough issues, and then realizing quickly that there are never simple answers. Taking time to process some of these materials, I am glad that I was able to be exposed to these perspectives and look forward to learning more and being able to apply these perspectives to more critically view environmental thought and issues in the future.
Citations:
Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Steinberg, Paul F. 2015. Who Rules the Earth?: How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.