Future ENVS Students, Welcome!
Environmental Studies can be a difficult yet rewarding course, filled with lots of hearty information from each section. Although, it can prove to be overwhelming as the texts are in depth and complex, throwing lots of different opinions and ideas your way that can bog you down a bit if you have no life line. I hope that this post with provide guidance in navigating these sections of ENVS that can be a lifeline for those of you who feel lost, overwhelmed or just want another perspective. So here goes…
The first section of ENVS 160 is Why We Disagree about Climate Change, by Mike Hulme (Hulme 2009). You may be thinking, why would I disagree about climate change? I am taking a course about the environment, which usually means you care about it. Well, Hulme gives us plenty of reasons. This book was a little intense for me at first, especially because in no way had I ever denied, or been skeptical of climate change. The main thing that this book taught me though, is that not only is it important to hear multiple sides to this complex issue, but each side is just as valid as your own. I talk about this realization in my first synthesis post. I talk about how important it is to ‘get over yourself’ and realize that people have their opinions for a reason. I also talk about how privilege has a role in the opinions and perspectives that we form. Understanding these important lessons makes navigating this first book a lot more simple. Another thing that helped with this realization was the Climate Change Opinion Survey. I outlined what I learned from that project in my Climate Change Opinion Post. I think this project served as a big turning point for the class as we were able to see why people disagree about climate change first hand.
The next section of ENVS 160 is Making the Modern World, by Vaclav Smil (Smil 2014). This book is an overwhelming amount of numbers and data about materialization and dematerialization. It throws a lot at you, but don’t get bogged down in the sea of numbers and materials. The main point of this text is that materials are complex, so don’t get frustrated if you are overwhelmed by their complexity, because if you are feeling this you get the point! Towards the end of the book Smil makes a lot more sense of this nonsense for us, so stick around until the end and things will come together. My favorite part about this section of the course was the situating minerals project. This was a project where we chose a mineral and well, situated it. I learned a lot not only about my material but the effect that its production has. This was what Smil was getting at. Everything we own has an effect somewhere, and the main thing is to be mindful of that because items don’t just appear for our pleasure and consumerist addiction, they can all be traced back to real places and real people.
Classic vs. Contemporary thought was the third section of ENVS. This section was made up of a bunch of little readings, covering the changing and abundant thoughts of environmental studies. This section was interesting as a student, who had a mix of both classic vs. contemporary ideas. This section is easier to absorb if you try and relate these different perspectives to yourself and see where you fall on the spectrum. This section was interesting because I learned so many different ideas, some of which I melded together to create my own thought about environmental studies in my own life. We also looked at big words which we call ‘isms’. We explored the meanings of an ism in our Interrogating Ism Posts as well as talked about the vague nature of big words and how it is important to be specific with our language in order to limit ambiguity in our scholarly writing (really watch out for this, everyone becomes big word vultures).
The last section of ENVS is Who Rules the Earth (Steinberg 2015). This book wraps up the course in a nice way, as it is much more broad than strictly materials and climate change and teaches a lot of important lessons about how to go forward with this knowledge. I highlight the main message of this book in my third post , so feel free to look at it as a way to stay on track throughout the book. Overall, this book encourages us to think bigger, act institutionally as opposed to just individually, and fight against stagnant systems. He teaches us this lesson by showing us inspiring success stories and numerous examples of how this can be very effective. Alongside this book, we were asked to synthesize what we have learned throughout the course, how what we have learned connects together, the main message of Who Rules the Earth and how we will take what we have learned and use it in our own life. These posts helped me tie together everything I have learned and organize all of my jumbled thoughts.
My main piece of advice for the course is to really put time and effort into the projects at the end of each unit, and the posts at the end of the fourth section of the course. Not only were they interesting, but they were very effective in synthesizing what we learn in ENVS 160. Each one helps you understand the material much more so they are really worth your energy!
Good luck, you have a lot to learn!
Works Cited
- Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why we disagree about climate change: understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
- Smil, Vaclav. 2014. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley.
- Steinberg, Paul F. 2015. Who rules the earth?: how social rules shape our planet and our lives.