As the poster children of Patagucci, many of us came into the ENVS 160 class with the pretension of Bill Mahr and the assumed intellectual credibility of Neil deGrasse Tyson. But without having earned the authority through experience and accreditation, we were only flouting our naiveté and cockiness. Part of me bought into this sentiment; I felt as though I had a good grasp on climate change and effective activism, and I assumed I was ready to dive into substantive issues. But, my expectations quickly caught up with reality when I realized that it was important to have a good foundation in environmental theory in order to properly grasp on the complexities behind deeper climate change and ecological issues. Throughout ENVS 160, the works of Mike Hulme, Paul Steinberg, Leigh Phillips, and Vaclav Smil, taught me the values of communicating well, maintaining a healthy level of skepticism, and asking for proof for behind any widespread assumption; moreover, in my personal and scholarly life, I want to integrate these ideas by being a simultaneously engaged and curious listener to properly understand the interconnectedness of environmental issues.
One of the best lessons that I’ve taken from this class is that practicing effective communication and sympathy is important for learning and bridging ideological differences. As I’ve learned from Steinberg, environmentalism is a social problem as its survival is largely based on matters concerning politics, economics, and ideologies (Steinberg 2015, 269). Since it is inherently social, it means understanding others is as important as being understood. Not only is it important to understand the feelings of others, but understanding their frameworks, histories and personal environments allows us to acknowledge the validation of others experiences. At the same time, environmentalism is also inherently political and we need to know how to communicate within the confines of those rules and systems as well (Steinberg 2015, 265).
As I discuss in my second post, Mike Hulme also addresses this idea of ideological diversity because “one of the reasons we disagree about climate change is that we receive multiple and conflicting messages about climate change and we interpret them in different ways” (Hulme 2010, 215). Treating climate change as an ideology instead of an empirical fact allowed me to step back and not take opposition against it personally. It’s made me more sympathetic to dissent because there are several factors that shape our climate ideologies. For example, when we conducted our first assignment and asked people how highly they prioritized climate change when compared to other current issues, seeing it reframed as a single agenda item on a long list made me understand why not everyone rated it highly. Now, I want to incorporate this open-mindedness into my scholarly work so I can remain ostensibly objective to learn more about others perspectives. It is important to listen well and treat others with respect if I hope for them to open up to me and share their beliefs. We can all learn more from each other.
Just as there are different climate ideologies concerning climate change, people have different ways to view the world and act within it. Leigh Phillips points out that environmental extremism and complacency has become pronounced in certain liberal groups, and cautions that it is on equal, problematic footing as certain extreme far right attitudes (2015, 10-11). Although we should listen to people and their ideas, there are still ideas that are destructive and counterintuitive for our long-term environmental goals. Phillips taught me that we should be open-minded to differences, but also maintain a healthy degree of skepticism to question their motives and ask them to back their claims up with evidence. And Vaclav Smil’s book, Making of the Modern World, compliments this point well. In it, Smil discusses the environmental and economic costs of many industrial materials, and challenges our assumptions about the efficacy of recycling and buying local (2014, 114). His book stands as a testament to the importance of evidence and proves the feasibility of gathering this information.
ENVS 160 has helped me to appreciate the breadth of environmental theory as a basis for framing and understanding complex environmental issues. With a better understanding of communication, classical vs. contemporary environmentalism, and the importance of institutional regulation, this semester has been insightful. With a good foundation in theory, I am excited to start learning about these issues further in an applicable framework.
Works Cited
Hulme, Mike. 2010. Why We Disagree About Climate Change. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Phillips, Leigh. 2015. Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts. United Kingdom: Zero Books.
Smil, Vaclav. 2014. Making the Modern World. United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Steinberg, Paul. 2015. Who Rules the Earth?. New York: Oxford University Press.