What exactly is the course ENVS 160 you might ask? It is a series of sections that each dive into important aspects of what getting a grasp on environmental studies might be. It’s about learning both the numerical and conceptual aspects to maintaining our beloved Earth and how we might go about helping it in the future. It’s everything political, economic, and cultural about the differences and similarities we share with other countries on how we understand and care for our Earth. This post takes you, the reader, on the journey that is ENVS 160 and will provide a guide to make going through the course a little easier.
Section I
The beginning of the course is structured around the book “Why We Disagree About Climate Change” in which we delved into the different social, political, economic, and cultural reasons why people often disagree about climate change on local, regional, and global scales. We learned about how to identify what kind of questions are being asked when analyzing a text to go about answering them such as descriptive questions (what) that lead to Explanatory questions (why) which leads to Evaluation questions (so what) which leads to Instrumental questions (how can). We also learned a great deal about cultural theory, in which each individual falls under a certain kind of grid/group and therefore determines how that individual might think about climate change in the near future. Image 1 contains the graph that shows what the axis grid/group means and where each individual might fall when thinking about climate change. In conjunction with learning about cultural theory, we did a survey and a team post on climate change public opinion, found here, about how people in downtown Portland versus the periphery of Portland think about climate change accounting for demographics such as gender, age, and race. This team post was very interesting because it was just a peek in how those around us view climate change based on location before diving into other topics throughout the course that were more complex and detailed.
Section II
This section of the course got into the nitty-gritty numbers of our modernizing impacts on the earth with the book “Making the Modern World” as we looked at the possibilites of dematerializing in the near future. We looked at the differences between absolute dematerialization and relative dematerialization to see which ones were applicable to our everyday lives and which ones would be possible within the near future. We took a look at the specific numbers of how much energy humans consume, which is about 300 giga-joules per person, in terms of different natural materials such as wood, metals, minerals, etc. comparing the US to the rest of the world. To go along with this, we did a team post on situating minerals, found here, in which we did in-depth research on a mineral and its impacts on different communities throughout the world culturally, socially, and politically. This post was very interesting because it allowed us to look at the mineral from first a historical lens with how the mineral came to be and how it is made, then with a critical lens that allowed us to see how this mineral that some might use on an everyday basis has such deep impacts on places throughout the world and the ways in which these people are going about their lives with these impacts.
Section III
This section of the course went into classic versus contemporary environmentalism in which we compared and contrasted the two ways of analyzing environmental thought. With classic environmentalism came theories such as “Tragedy of the Commons” and “Limits to Growth” in which we talked about models of populations and their growth/decay rates as well as rates of food supply, industrial output, persistent pollution, and renewable resources. With contemporary environmentalism, we looked at readings such as “Austerity Ecology & The Collapse-Porn Addicts” and talked about the notions of consuming less and how it can be problematic to use previous assumptions of a consensus view of society that we shouldn’t hold. We also looked at “isms” which are conceptual theories that are preferred ideas such as purity versus hybridity. For our third team post interrogating isms, found here, we looked at the definition of a specific ism and critiqued that ism in relation to how we define nature and how it might relate to industrialization, politics, economics, etc. in order to see how it might impact the future. This post was important because it also allowed us to look at our ism and see where it fell on the spectrum of classic and contemporary environmental thought as well as its impacts on both.
Section IV
This last section of the course looked at the text “Who Rules the Earth” by Paul Steinberg which talked about how the Earth is diminishing and that we need to look towards achieving sustainability. Steinberg points out that in order to achieve sustainability, we need to look at the world we live in to modify its human behavior and the rules we follow to shape how we interact with the Earth. In order to analyze this, we did a series of four posts that reflected on the readings throughout the course as well as the WRE text to see how we can change how we think and interact with out changing environment. In the first individual post, found here, went over three key terms or topics of importance that we have learned throughout the course to provide a base for other topics linked to the readings to be discussed. In the second individual post, found here, a synthesis can be made about those key topics learned and can be linked to texts used to create more depth in our understandings of the issues of environmental studies and how these ideas might be applied in the future. In the third individual post, found here, we had to analyze what we thought the main argument of WRE was about and link to evidence in the text to support our claims as well as what we as individuals in our personal and academic lives can do to support a future in sustainability. In the final post, found here, we were challenged to think about how we will personally and academically use the knowledge attained in ENVS 160 and how we can share that knowledge with others. All of these individual posts collectively were great outlets for reviewing how we interacted with the texts and how we can apply what we have learned to other subjects throughout our academic careers.
ENVS 160 was a wild ride with ups and downs, complex numbers and units, and grappling with theories that are both accepted and critiqued by many environmentalists. The class was able to Skype with many of the authors of various readings throughout the many sections, which made it all the more fun to do the readings and come up with questions for the authors themselves, allowing room for the students to have productive and constructive conversations with the theories and authors they were engaging with. Overall, this class has been an eye-opener to how the world views environmental studies and how to go about thinking and inquiring about what we as both individuals and as part of communities can do to better our environments.
Sources
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science. Accessed on December 22, 2011.
Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Phillips, Leigh. 2015. Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: a Defense of Growth, Progress, Industry and Stuff. Winchester, UK: Zero Books.
Smil, Vaclav. 2005. Limits to growth revisited: A review essay. Population & Development Review.
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. New York, NY: Oxford Univ. Press.