At the beginning of the semester, I thought ENVS 160 would give me the tools needed to save the planet and from there, I would be able to educate others on the simple, individual level change needed to reverse climate change. However, that was not the case. Mid way through our first book, Why We Disagree About Climate Change, I realized that my vision of happy little small-scale actions was not what this course was about. Although ENVS 160 has not provided me with a “roadmap to success” on saving the planet, it has provided me with a new way to think. I hope to apply this new way of thinking in my scholarly and personal life to better understand the forces affecting the environment and to better consider possible solutions to them.
One of the hardest changes that I had to overcome this semester was understanding and considering all perspectives of environmental thought. Now, normally I would consider myself very open to different ways of thought, but when it came to some of the contemporary environmental works we read, I surprisingly found myself very conservative. For so long I had believed that classic environmentalism was the only solution to environmental problems, so when the time came to read Leigh Phillips’s Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts, I was significantly rattled. I became increasingly close-minded as Phillips critiqued environmentalists that I had come to know and love. I could tolerate some critiques of Bill McKibben and Vandana Shiva, but somehow critiquing Jane Goodall just seemed excessive (Phillips 2015, 25, 163, 235). What had Phillips done that entitled him to critique these environmental gurus? In the end though, I finished the book and through reading it, I was exposed to new ideas of environmentalism that I would have never considered had I not read it. By going out of my comfort zone and considering contemporary sources, my thought process became more open to critique, which I’m sure will influence my way of thinking in future classes.
The second hardest challenged I faced, if not the first, was modifying the way I thought about science. I knew that nothing in science has 100% certainty, but I still felt that there was an overall consensus that most scientific theories could be thought of as facts. When David Hulme, in his book, Why We Disagree About Climate Change, pointed out that “We may disagree about climate change simply because we understand and use science in different ways” (Hulme 2009, loc. 1711), I was confused. How many different ways were there to understand science? Additionally, in a world where the United States government believes in “alternative facts”, I felt more inclined to blindly follow accomplished scientists, no matter how constructed their ideas might be. But just like my previous point, I came around to being sort of okay with considering science from all perspectives. Sure, I still believe evidence-based theories to be sounder than others, but now I understand that there are multiple layers to the field of science. As I move forward to pursue my interest in biology, this change of thought is one that will hold extra significance in my life.
Finally, the last influencer in my change of thought concerns understanding change at an institutional level. As I said at the beginning of this post, coming into the class I believed that if everyone teamed up and recycled, climate change would go away. Now, after having read all of the class readings and sitting through discussions, I understand that change happens at all levels, though the institutional level holds the most influence. This idea was present throughout the majority of our readings, though I found it to be the most understandable in Paul Steinberg’s Who Rules the Earth?. Steinberg argued that social rules shape our world and the only way to initiate change is by changing social rules. However, many of social rules are shaped at the institutional level, therefore the big components of change happen at this bigger, broader level as opposed to the small, individual level. This change in thought has already influenced the way I think about climate change. For example, while scrolling through my Instagram feed yesterday (which was earth day), I came upon multiple posts of pictures of my friends in nature urging me to use my Nalgene instead of a plastic water bottle. Sure, using a reusable water bottle does impact the amount of waste one generates, but for there to be actual change in the way the world drinks water, there needs to be more than individual level action. For there to be a change in the usage of plastic water bottles, there must first be a change in the way the public thinks about plastic water bottles. Although institutional level change seems scary and hard to initiate, by thinking of it as the basis of change, by thinking of it as the basis of social rules, I have been better able to understand how it works.
Works Cited:
Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Phillips, Leigh. 2015. Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence of Growth, Progress, Industry and Stuff. Winchester, UK: Zero Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=6OSOCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT30&dq=austerity+ecology&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEw5Phhq7PAhVjVWMKHYHqBn8Q6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=austerity%20ecology&f=false.
Steinberg, Paul F. 2015. Who Rules the Earth?: How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.