By Natalie Casson
I’ll admit it, my ego has taken a beating this semester. Not my personal mentality on life and myself, but my egotistically sense and attitudes towards the environment. Prior to coming into ENVS 160, the environment was something I could control to a certain degree if I recycled, reused, ate vegan, rode my bike, took short showers, and did all those other miniscule individual actions I had dedicated my life to. I had a very pure sense of the environment; I was convinced regressing from the new anthropocentric intermingling world of what we see as traditional pure ecosystems and natural land mixing heavily with humans and human creation. However, I have learned this semester that that mentality is problematic. Human materials and consumption are so deeply engrained in our world and anthropogenic climate change is a universal issue, so we can simply expect to retract what we’ve created. All the different actors and causes of climate change operate on such a large scale that we cannot realistically work on tackling it without scaling up to the institutional level. Thus, in my own life I have shifted my tactics: I plan to embrace the hybrid environmentalism of new technologies and materials, and I plan to scale up in my actions to the best ability that one individual can.
When taking a pure environmentalism mindset (much as I used to) you will see many problems arise. The first is the issue of realistic dematerialization that the pure mindset inherently implies as necessary. Although relative dematerialization may be possible to achieve in Western European countries where they are no longer developing as rapidly, but many countries in the world are still developing and inevitably will increase their material usages. Thus the concept of absolute dematerialization is not possible on a global scale (Smil 2014). This means that if we are to have these materials around, it’s time we stop rejecting them and work towards utilizing them in a beneficial way: through technological advancements. The book Love Your Monster by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus (2011) is an example of a contemporary text that highlights the benefits of embracing new technology in moving forward in environmentalism. In my own life, I now see the necessity of embracing new technology. By using my political power, I want to move forward by continuing to rally behind new potentially beneficial systems like nuclear power for example.
Another problematic issue my previous outlooks and implementation of environmental action in my personal life was the scale to which I chose to tackle these things. I used to think doing my little individual actions would be enough, but I’ve learned throughout this course that it is necessary to tackle these issues at multiple scales and acting vertically (WRE). That can be done through both governmental regulations or market systems that are meant to tackle specific environmental issues. To implement these rules, we as individuals have to work through institutions and people who do have the power to implement these laws—like politicians and citizens interests groups. Thus to make real changes, I’ve realized it is necessary for me to become politically active through letter writing, getting involved with interest groups, voting and staying aware of issues both locally and nationally, and protesting to show my beliefs. Personal individual actions may be effective in that they change the mindsets of the people who will consequently be the catalyst of political institutional changes, but they won’t necessarily be effective on a global scale. In order to do that laws and regulations must be put in place by the government, and I plan to actively continue to fight for those laws that may really be the key to making a change on a global scale.
Within my academic life, I have taken a lot from this course even despite the fact I will not be majoring in it. I am so thankful for this class because beside the actual factual ideas of climate change, I have learned environmental protection is interdisciplinary. After seeing the seniors present their theses and concentrations in class, I can see how studying environmental issues can be implemented and looked at through the lenses of many different disciplines. This has allowed me to come to the conclusion that even though I won’t be devoting all my studying to environmental studies, I can still be an activist for the climate in whatever field of study I fall into. That along with embracing technology instead of dematerialization and institutional change through exercising my political activism, will allow me to shift my focus to more effective forms of action and implement them into my academic and personal life.
References
Shellenberger, Michael, and Ted Nordhaus, eds. 2011. Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene. Oakland, CA: Breakthrough Institute. http://www.amazon.com/Love-Your-Monsters-Postenvironmentalism-ebook/dp/B006FKUJY6.
Smil, Vaclav. 2014. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley.