Coming from Vietnam, a country where we still only talk about environmental problems as daily news, but never discuss it in a scholarly context in school or prominent public platform, I had very little expectations of how ENVS 160 would actually turn out, and I was not surprised to learn how challenging this course was. Undoubtedly, I have come out of this course with some invaluable lessons, and a new perspective in approaching the environmental debate.
As a natural science student, I was completely taken aback by the heavy emphasis on the social science as I went through the materials of the course. However, as I look back, I realized how useful and appropriate this approach was since concerns for the environment are essential concerns for the quality of life. Life here also encompasses a multitude of categories: human life, other forms of living organisms, the Earth itself and the ecosystems within it. Furthermore, within the category of human life alone, there are many aspects to its quality that need to be considered, such as physical well-being, development, socioeconomic equity, etc. As complicated as it is, environmental issue need to be looked at from different aspects of life as Hulme skilfully laid out in his book Why We Disagree about Climate Change (Hulme, 2009). As I have mentioned in my earlier post, Hulme manages to brings forth different camps of view on the environmental issue through the different essential aspects of life, or the modern life; thus suggesting that this issue can only be solved when all aspects are addressed. This multi-perspective approach to problem solving is something that I can apply to many of my other disciplines besides ENVS. It is an invaluable tool to visualize every problem as multi-faceted as it actually is in real life.
Not only did this course expand my understanding of environmentalism, it also changed my opinion on the direction of environmentalism. When I took the Ecotype survey during the course, my results did not seem surprising, but after the course, I could be fairly confident in saying that I would not expect the same results if I retake the survey. My initial survey results indicated that I was very much a classical environmental thinker. However, clearly this type of thinking is too idealistic and impractical for the multi-perspective approach that I have mentioned above. And as we proceeded in the course, this idea of a move to contemporary thinking was emphasized over and over again. And as I gained more understanding about contemporary environmentalism, especially through reading our last text Who Rules the Earth (Steinberg, 2015), I reflected on my own thoughts and habits, and came to the realization that what I had been doing was what Steinberg says “Peering into the garbage can” (Steinberg, 2015). I was “recycling” my thoughts and efforts within the garbage can with little awareness of the real effect of my actions; I was trapping my thoughts in the garbage can of classical thoughts.
Moving forward, I would like to use these critical and multi-perspective thinking skills in both my personal environmental practices as well as in other disciplines where these skills are also extremely useful. I also hope to channel Steinberg’s suggestion of using the power of individual to change institutional environmental policies as explored in his chapters “Scaling up” and “Super rules” (Steinberg, 2015) by communicating my concerns with political representatives. Unfortunately, I would not be able to exercise such privileges in my own home country, as a fully democratic government is one thing our people still struggle to achieve.
Bibliography
Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why We Disagree about Climate Change : Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Steinberg, Paul F. 2015. Who Rules the Earth?: How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.