Intro to Environmental Studies is not a class that gives you facts that will spur environmental action, however ENVS 160 will teach you how to think and approach different problems and situations that are not limited to the mainstream environmental focus and solutions. As reflected in the Environmental Studies major, this course will take on an interdisciplinary approach to gain insight into multi-layered and intersectional players and institutions involved in environmental problems like climate change and conservation. In this course, we will learn that disagreements about climate change can arise out of historical, cultural, and institutional perspectives through Mike Hulme’s book Why We Disagree About Climate Change. In Making the Modern World, Vaclav Smil uses his detailed statistics about materialization to show the misinterpretation of dematerialization, and the resource use around the world. In the end of the semester, you will tackle Paul Steinberg’s Who Rules the Earth. Steinberg will approach environmental problems like habitat loss and pesticide use through a historical lens to show how rules and regulation can have a huge lasting effect in solving or worsening environmental problems.
Why We Disagree about Climate Change
By Mike Hulme
To begin the semester you will read Why We Disagree About Climate by Mike Hulme. Hulme will delve into various historical perspectives, cultures, and governing institution to explain myriad of viewpoints people can take on climate change. For me, this book’s explanations varying perspectives continued to influence me throughout the class whenever I came across any environmental literature or media. Through each chapter, there are ten, Hulme explains one reason why we disagree about climate change. Hulme rejects the terminology of climate deniers and explains that through how we value nature, what we believe our duty is to others, how we believe science should act or is, and how we perceive risk, creates the disagreements about the idea of climate change. Mike Hulme gives a valuable and applicable explanation of Cultural Theory. He categorizes individuals and social groups into four different perspectives (Fatalists, Individualists, Egalitarians, and Hierarchists) who value the natural world and all react to risk differently (Hulme 2009, 186). People listen to and accept different narratives of climates because of their differing truths, creating conflicting frames of climate change.
For your first project, you will see how disagreement about climate change is reflected in greater Portland area. Through surveying Portland residents from the downtown and periphery regions you will see how people value climate change compared to other societal issues. Through a group reflection post, you will consolidate your data and see how it expanded your thoughts on the climate change debate. You can find my full post here.
Making the Modern World
By Vaclav Smil
Making the Modern World by Vaclav Smil might be one of the hardest books you will read in this course. Through deep dives into complex data of resources, Smil shows the huge extent of material use in the modern, developed world. By specifically understanding Smil’s central point, you can easily read this data intense book. Smil argues that we have not reached absolute dematerialization, and that this goal is difficult to reach in our modern, developing world. Entering this class I had assumed that we should all dematerialized, buying less, eating from our gardens, and recycling more. Through this book, Smil critiques this perspective giving me other more effective solutions for dematerialization. First, Smil rights the assumption that we all must and can dematerialize, arguing that many parts of the developing world are unable to dematerialize and retain comfortability (Smil 2014, 173). Secondly, Smil provides some solutions for dematerialization like sharing and leasing systems, longer product life, and more recycling.
As Smil teaches you about how materials flow, you will follow your own material and situate it in a specific place. This provides you with the valuable lesson on how a mineral (or a concept) can change it’s value and meaning depending on the place and its history. By following the mineral silver to the northwest Australia. I discovered how a silver refinery created a whole developed and functioning town, but how it also raised high levels of lead in the populations. Through this project and Making the Modern World I learned that looking at materialization should not be only about the environmental impacts, but also the cultural and historical implications of that material. You can find my full post here.
Classic vs. Contemporary Environmental Thought
From growing up and learning in various different liberal bubbles, I formed a very narrow idea of what being an environmentalist meant. You will read Classic and Contemporary environmental literature, demonstrating new and old environmental thought and how they affect the frames we solve problems. Including literature like “Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin and “Limits to Growth” by Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows, Classic environmental thought includes notions of a needing to preserve a pure nature, and an apocalyptic view of the environmental future (Proctor 2017). On the other hand, Contemporary environmentalism includes ideas of the Anthropocene and deep ecology where nature is cast as a hybrid (the natural and the human world). Contemporary environmental thought takes an intersectional approach like Mike Hulme’s clumsy solutions calling on more regulation through large and small government (Hulme 2015). A major divergence between Classic and Contemporary environmental thought is how one should act. In classic environmentalism saving the planet is one person at a time, one more bike rider or recycled bottle, whereas contemporary environmentalism focuses more on changing the institutions to combat environmental and social problems.
With an understanding of both classic and contemporary environmentalism, you dive deeper in either though with a specific “ism.” Although confusing and maybe personally conflicting, you will gain a more critical awareness of the frameworks that surround environmental narratives. With a group, I choose to study Ecofeminism. With this project, we had to define, contextualize, and critique our “ism.” This project developed the skills to research and historically contextualize a specific movement which developed my understanding of two overarching movements of classic and contemporary environmental thought. You can find the full post here.
Who Rules the Earth
By Paul Steinberg
For the final weeks of ENVS 160, you will read Who Rules the Earth by Paul Steinberg. Steinberg follows the cerulean warbler, a migrating bird, who is currently threatened because of habitat loss to show the importance of strong regulation concerning property rights (Steinberg 2015, 64). Steinberg emphasizes the importance of looking at a habitat’s history to determine why and when deforestation occurred or why and when the habitat became a haven for the warbler. Steinberg contextualizes each problem he faces by looking into the past showing that one must understand why the problem occurred and the underlying cultural and social values that are connected to that problem. Steinberg shows the reader that to affect the most change to revise our flawed socio-political systems, we as citizens should create strong government regulation to have long lasting effects. Who Rules the Earth will give you lense to see the “invisible worlds” of governing bodies and institutions that control our world, and that through them with strong environmental rules we can solve environmental problems (Steinberg 2015, 20).
With Who Rules the Earth you will do four personal reflection posts. With the first post, you will reflect on what you have learned through this Environmental Studies Intro course. The second one will have you draw connections between the four reading and topics that I have laid out for you. With the third post, you will reflect on the main argument of Who Rules the Earth. With your final post, you will consider how you will use the lessons that you have learned from ENVS 160.
You can view my posts here:
Intro to Environmental Studies is a difficult and challenging class that involves many different ways of thinking. At times this course my critique and criticize your own frameworks and perspective, making it difficult to know what to think. Nevertheless, this course will teach you how to be aware of your own and other thoughts that will force you to adapt a more flexible and intersectional framework. Good luck!
Work Cited
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162, no. 3859: 1243–48. doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243.
Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Meadows, Donella H., Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens.1974. The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe Books.
Smil, Vaclav. 2014. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Steinberg, Paul F. 2015. Who Rules the Earth?: How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.