Environmental Studies 160 defied all of my preconceptions. That is not meant to sound scary or ominous, but I found it to be quite true. If I can immediately offer one very important piece of advice, it is to enter the class with an open mind. Expect your nearest and dearest environmental beliefs and ideas to be challenged. It can be difficult to dismantle the thoughts that you have had potentially for years, but it will allow you to emerge from the class with a greater ability to deeply analyze your personal beliefs, construct new ones, or defend your old ones with more fervor. The class has four major sections, all of which are vastly different and invoke many different types of thought. Some sections will be more challenging to comprehend and work through than others, but each one brings valuable information to the attention of every student.
Why We Disagree About Climate Change
This section introduced the concept of understanding and studying varying environmental perspectives which I viewed as the largest hurdle to jump throughout the entire class. The ability to listen to and accept the opinions and perspective of others is hardly an easy task. This section centered around a book titled Why We Disagree About Climate Change (2009) by Mike Hulme. This text evaluated the influence of religion, economics, foreign relations, market structures, and even class status on perspectives regarding climate change. In my own personal opinion, the most important lesson that I took away from this text was that of effective models of communication when approaching a controversial topic such as climate change. Ultimately Hulme determined that the most effective way of communicating about climate change is to have a mutual discussion in which each party feels as though their voice is being heard, also known as the dialogic model of communication (Hulme 2009, Ch. 7). As you will see later on, this makes the all-important introduction to solutions to climate argument stalemates. Along with this section, we completed a polling assignment about the varying perspectives on climate change around Portland. This not only allowed us to practice communicating about a controversial issue, but it also exposed us to a massive variety of different opinions.
Making the Modern World
I found this section to be the least upsetting to my own personal beliefs and views but also much more disturbing, bringing my attention to the extreme use of materials in our modern world. The book around which this section was built was titled Making the Modern World (2013) by Vaclav Smil. This book taught me the definitions of relative and absolute dematerialization, which I believe are important concepts to know in the field of Environmental Studies. Smil also managed to situation materials among history, relate countries to one another, and overall develop an overwhelming but easily understood web of stuff. The team assignment that accompanied this section was titled Situating Minerals. This assignment required us to choose a specific mineral and then position it in a particularly small and zoomed in area of the world. By doing this, I learned how difficult it can be mentally to allow the history and sociology of a particular place to govern the condition and purpose of a material. This section was one of my favorites, but expect to leave it with your head swimming with thousands of numbers that probably won’t make sense by finals week.
Classic and Contemporary Environmental Thought
This is where you will find yourself wondering what exactly it is that you believe in. After diving into this section, I quickly realized that I had no real, viable evidence to back up the things that I had argued for so long. I could not make a clear and intellectual claim to defend my beliefs. Therefore, I decided to develop new beliefs that I could actively defend. Though this section featured a number of texts, I found that the one that I resonated with the most was titled Austerity Ecology (2015), written by Canadian socialist Leigh Phillips. When Phillips started to bash “green magoos” or the green-minded leftist liberals, I found myself becoming personally offended (Phillips 2015, Ch. 5). When I evaluated my reason for being offended, I realized that I did not have one. Everything Phillips claimed about extremist green liberals was true, and I was only angry because I had been taught that I was one. Not that I am not a passionate environmental advocate, because I am, but I realized that I wanted to be rational and help develop real, institutionally focused solutions rather than attempting to force my beliefs down the throats of others. The assignment that accompanied this section was titled Interrogating Isms, and it forced me to think beyond surface environmentalism. My group elected to evaluate romanticism, and it proved to be an extremely difficult task. There was so much that went into it, and I would say that that can be said for most topics of environmentalism.
Who Rules the Earth?
I found that the final text titled Who Rules the Earth? (2015) by Paul F. Steinberg was the one that I truly believed I would remember and carry with me through my ENVS journey. One of the major claims that circulates through the book is that individual environmental action (going vegan, composting, turning off your engine in parking lots) will never be as effective as institutional action. By institutional action, I mean that channeling energy, money, and time into powerful groups of intellectuals will have a greater impact on society. Our assignment for this section was to write four individual posts (Post #1, #2, #3, #4). These posts tested my newfound ability to defend my changed world views. Whilst trying to maintain my modesty, I believe I did a pretty good job. It was not long before I found myself preaching about institutional action to anyone who would listen, suddenly unafraid to challenge the beliefs of others that I had once held myself.
While there were certainly bumps in the road throughout my semester as an ENVS student at Lewis and Clark, I find myself leaving the class with far more than I ever imagined I would. I could write a step by step guide to conquering ENVS 160, but I truly believe that it is a class where everyone should evaluate, develop, and strengthen their own opinions while also acquiring the skills to understand and accept others. As I initially stated, I entered the class with the desire to encounter new perspectives and develop my own thoughts, opinions, and ideas that I could develop a scholarly defense of. Already, I have discovered a new passion for intellectual discussions of modern environmentalism with those who will listen, and I am prepared now more than ever to both absorb and understand the opinions of others while also actively defending my own.
Citations
Steinberg, Paul F. 2015. Who Rules the Earth?: How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives. New York: Oxford University Press.
Phillips, Leigh. 2015. Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence of Growth, Progress, Industry and Stuff. Winchester: Zero Books. Kindle Edition.
Smil, Vaclav. 2014. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Sussex, UK: John Wiley and Sons.
Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction, and Opportunity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.