ENVS 160 is a breed of course like no other: it aims to connect science with opinion and everything in between while remaining scholarly. I have often found it difficult to navigate through the course as the material twists and turns through the streets of Portland, Oregon where I studied public opinion, to the far reaching roads of rural China, where I researched impacts of graphite mining on communities. My intention for this post is therefore to create a “roadmap to success” for future ENVS 160 students.
Why Do We Disagree About Climate Change?
We began the course by reading Mike Hulme’s book Why We Disagree About Climate Change, which explores what shapes an individual’s opinion on climate change. The book opened many doors in my mind, and began to make me realize that climate change is an issue that will take more than just scientific effort, it will take spiritual and emotional motivations as well. In interviewing individuals in downtown Portland, I learned about the issues that Oregonians keep near and dear to their hearts, and how certain demographics care about different factions about climate change. You can read more about my findings in my post Portland on Climate, How Does it all Add up?
What Makes the Modern World?
Next, we read Making the Modern World by Vaclav Smil. The text took us on a historical tour of stuff, showing us what materials mean to humans. In class we used the text as a tool to discuss the alarming rates of materialization in the modern world today, and explored real world examples. For my post on the subject, my group explored the influence of graphite mining on rural China, India, and Brazil.
Environmental Attitudes
The next part of the course focused on the contemporary. In this portion we read classical works such as The Tragedy of the Commons by Garret Hardin to explore how people have been conditioned to feel about the environment. Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts (Philips 2015) showed how technology can create widespread environmental degradation if not handled correctly. These texts generally felt negative, airing on apocalyptic, as they raised deep flaws in society that are hard to look past. We used these contemporary pieces to explore our own “isms” that is, a term that is attributed to environmental thought. My group chose neoliberalism, and we explored how the influence of capitalism and consumption is changing the trajectory for climate work.
Individual Action
The final portion of the course was centered around Paul Steinberg’s Who Rules the Earth? which explores how social rules impact our institutions and challenges readers to break them. Steinberg emphasizes how individual action is theoretically irrelevant, and that we need institutional change to reverse climate change. Steinberg’s book was used in individual posts. The first explored the metamorphosis of my own opinions. The second led me to connect different portions of the course and create an individual spiderweb of ideas. The third explored the immense power of the social rule, and the final post compiled what I had gained from the course as a whole, in my scholarly and personal life.
Moving Forward
ENVS 160 is certainly a roller coaster of information. The texts pull you every which way, and certainly give you a lot to think about in your academic and personal life. However, if you let it, ENVS 160 can give you the tools needed to navigate through the incredibly complex and multifaceted world of Environmental Studies. Best of luck!
Works cited
Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge University Press.
Smil, Vaclav. 2014. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley.
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162 (3859): 1243–48. doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243.
Phillips, Leigh. 2015. Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence of Growth, Progress, Industry and Stuff. Winchester, UK ; Washington, USA: Zero Books.
Steinberg, Paul F. 2015. Who Rules the Earth?: How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.