A Roadmap to ENVS 160 – Situated from a Transfer Student’s Perspective
I began ENVS 160 in the spring semester of my sophomore year as a second year transfer student. I entered the class with several college level Environmental Studies and Science courses under my belt. Despite having quite a bit of previous knowledge, I constantly found myself challenged by the way in which the course is constructed. In the course we read four main texts, Why We Disagree about Climate Change, Making the Modern World, Love Your Monsters, and Who Rules the Earth?. We used these texts to identify the differences between classical and contemporary environmentalism and the different philosophies and thoughts within each. We also analysed both individual and institutional action and moving forward, how we can make change in the real world.
Why We Disagree about Climate Change
It was during our first book, Why We Disagree about Climate Change (Hulme 2009) that we also completed our first group project on Climate Change Public Opinion. Our projects on public opinion examined Portlanders views on Climate Change. We set out with a goal to question residents of the PDX periphery how important they viewed climate change. We did this by rating their responses on a scale of 1-10, 1 meaning climate change is not a considerable issue when compared to others and 10 meaning climate change is the most important current issue. Our results found that the majority of portlanders rate climate change as a 7. This project tied into our chapter readings and class discussions surrounding the main reasons why people disagree climate change which ranged from religious and political views to economic or cultural interest.
Making the Modern World
In our second reading, Making the Modern World by Vaclav Smil (2013) we were bombarded by facts, figures, and mathematical equations. It was difficult to piece out, but once able to I had much greater understanding of the importance the economy plays in climate change politics. This text examined the impacts of technological advancements and their impacts on the environment as well as the economy.
In order to further explore the nature of location our second group project on situating minerals. Through this project we were able to examine the relationships between people, the built environment, as well as the natural environment. Many groups changed their views on mining particular minerals after learning of the economical and social implications it has on a location.
Classic vs. Contemporary Thought
The third text we read in the course was, Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene (Ellis 2011). During this portion of the class we also read Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts (Phillips 2015). These two texts along with other classic environmental works led us to examine the two major thoughts regarding environmentalism; classic and contemporary.
The third group project, where each group tackled an ism and took this exploration of classic and contemporary thought one step further. It was through this project that we were able to identify the different philosophies in which people use to approach large environmental problems.
Who Rules the Earth?
Our final text in ENVS 160 was an engaging read focused on institutional change. Who Rules the Earth by Paul Steinberg (2015) challenges the social rules that govern our behavior and prevent us from taking action against climate change. Steinberg provides specific ways that we can take action that makes change at an institutional level rather than a local one. This book was by far my favorite as it applied to the real world, something I felt as though the other texts had missed. To apply the text we each created four individual posts (1, 2, 3, 4) that analyzed the information in this book and the general knowledge we had gained from taking ENVS 160.
ENVS 160 was definitely different than any previous Environmental Studies course I had taken. It challenged my motivation and patience due to the lack of real world application or interaction; a component all of my other ENVS classes had. However, the situated approach has proven applicable even outside the realm of 160 and I appreciate looking at all of the different environmental philosophies in order to understand a point of view other than my own.
Works Cited:
Ellis, Erle et al. 2011. Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene. Breakthrough Institute.
Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Phillips, Leigh. Austerity ecology & the collapse-porn addicts: a defence of growth, progress, industry and stuff. Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2015.
Smil, Vaclav. 2013. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Wiley Publishing.
Steinberg, Paul. 2015. Who Rules the Earth?: How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press