As you will soon learn by studying a variety environmental theories, ENVS 160 is highly interdisciplinary. But, I’ve come to find that its breadth has a point. Throughout the course, you will establish a solid foundation in environmental theory and cultivate writing and digital skills through individual and team assigned online posts. From climate change controversy in Why We Disagree About Climate Change, to the political nature of environmentalism in Who Rules the Earth? we managed to cover a wide range of environmental topics in the limited span of our semester. To help you get a better idea of the scope of course, I’m going to summarize the main books and assignments and my experiences in completing them.
- Climate Change Ideology
Mike Hulme’s book Why We Disagree About Climate Change was both our first assigned reading and taste at neo-environmentalism. As a distinguished climate change scientist, Hulme’s experience has made him realize that climate change is just not a problem in need of a solution. Instead, he argues that climate change is a complex, personal ideology. He draws upon sociology, theology, economics, philosophy, politics to explain the interconnectedness between climate and our identities. Simply put, we disagree about climate change because “we receive multiple and conflicting messages about climate change and we interpret them in different ways” (Hulme 2010, 215) which makes treating climate change as a problem that actually has a solution overwhelming and frustrating because it’s so wide scale.
With this in mind, we completed our first assignment by asking people about their climate ideologies; specifically, we asked them to personally rate the importance of climate change when compared to other current issues. I found that talking with people about climate change in context to other issues helped me better understand their reasoning.
- The Impact of Our Materials
In Vaclav Smil’s Making the Modern World, we learned about the complexities of materials used for consumption by drawing upon the production, usage and waste processes of metals, bio-materials, plastics, and more. Smil starts by discussing material flows, the materials that are visible in creating a product and the invisible ones behind it that but are necessary in creating its final product from shipping to production processes (Smil 2014, 1). He then goes on to challenge our positive preconceptions surrounding recycling and buying local by showing the material flows of those activities fails to reduce resource consumption. To prove these claims, Smil bases everything in evidence. Throughout the reading, it becomes apparent that numeracy is an important skill to have in order to interpret data and determine what is actually environmentally and resource conscience.
In our corresponding situating materials assignment, we were asked to simply Smil’s method and just focus on one material. In doing so, we were introduce to the idea of situating environmental problems in their local context to understand the unique political, economic, and cultural dimensions associated with material. My group chose pumice and found that it’s meaning varied depending on its region. From Italy we saw that it was a source of tourism whereas in Oregon it was a dying industry where mines were closing and being replaced with college extensions. Throughout this project we learned that the continued usage of material is contingent on its economic relevance.
- Environmental Theory Transformation
In this section, we covered a variety of prominent environmentalists who have created and refuted some of the most deeply embedded and assumed ideas about environmentalism. Starting with A Tragedy of Commons, Garrett Hardin argued that due to the limited space, a growing population, and everyone’s self-interest to maximize their profit, people would deplete our resources in a matter of no time (1968, 1244). And although from a first glance it made sense, Elinor Ostrom took a note out of Smil’s book and sought to prove it. Turns out, his assumption was largely false. Ostrom showed that Hardin failed to acknowledge the difference between common lands and private property (Ostrom 2008). These two serve as a strong symbol to the different types of mindsets that people adopt when thinking about the environment. In Leigh Phillips’s book Austerity Ecology and the Collapse-Porn Addicts, he criticizes the apocalyptic view that many extreme environmental leftists adopted. And then, he goes on the criticizes the complacency and fear-mongering that exists in the mainstream liberal population.
As contemporary literature has disproven many classical environmental assumptions, it’s also set a new optimistic tone for the future by advocating for increased technology to solve our environmental gaps. In our third group project, we researched different types of belief systems regarding classical or contemporary thought. Unlike most contemporary environmentalists, our interrogating ism was based on Agrarianism that called for a return to an agriculturally-based society and believed in the virtues of individualism and limited governmental control. It was interesting to compare different isms in context with each other and see how far environmentalism has come.
- The Power of Rules
In our last section, Paul Steinberg’s book, Who Rules the Earth? showed the interconnectedness between effective environmentalism and institutional participation. He argued that, “if we pursue the goal of sustainability while ignoring its political dimensions, we will simply never get there” (Steinberg 2015, 267) because our lives are shaped by our rules. Laws protect our rights to private property and also our right to engage within the political process. By not being aware of the processes of creating rules, or super rules, we actively exclude ourselves from the rulemaking process that controls the market and society. In a variety of individual posts, (one, two, three, four), I reflected on the previous lessons within the frame of institutional change. Personally, I enjoyed the individual posts the most as they helped me to digest the information from the term and put my feelings into an organized form.
Some Parting Advice:
All things considered, this is my best advice: do the readings. Speaking from experience, I doubt you’ll do all the assigned readings. And for your sake, I hope you prove me wrong. I don’t mean to patronize you, but I want to strongly emphasize the importance of reading the numerous works because reading them can either make or break the class for you. It’s your choice. They are designed to both challenge mainstream environmental beliefs and contain unconventional answers to classic environmental problems. I’ve consider the readings meaningful because they have reshaped my understanding of environmentalism and have helped me form a solid foundation in environmental theory and I’m sure that they will help you too. There’s a lot to learn, but make sure to enjoy.
Works Cited
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162 (3859): 1243–48. doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243.
Hulme, Mike. 2010. Why We Disagree About Climate Change. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ostrom, Elinor. 2008. “The Challenge of Common-Pool Resources.” Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 50 (4): 8–21. doi:10.3200/ENVT.50.4.8-21.
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.