Introduction
I think the most important thing to remember when coming into this class is to be open to new ideas. This class will challenge a lot if not most of your preconceived perceptions on environmental action. To be honest, many students come into this class with an adamant ideology on how to create change and these students are intrinsically changed by the sections offered in this course. This course has four major sections which give you all the background knowledge needed to continue in this field. Each section we have includes one book that we read completely through that is then intertwined with a post, the first three sections including group posts, and the last section which includes four solo posts.
Section 1:
At the beginning of the course, we read the book Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction, and Oppurtunity by Mike Hulme. This book is very important to read at the beginning of the class, because it allows for us as students to actually learn the reasons why people disagree on the concept of climate change. Whether the disagreement be if climate change is real or not, or what do actually do about climate change. This book provides support for the rest of the semester, as it helps dealing with the other books and projects we do. Hulme says in his book that because of cultural differences, works like nature and environment have different meanings based on society (Hulme 2009). By saying this, he shows that there is too much ambiguity when using these words, causing the intended meaning of the word to be distorted based off of where you are from and what you believe in. Going along with the theme of disagreement about climate change, our first group project was to survey people around Portland on climate change public opinion. Based on the findings of every group, we made graphs to detail their opinions and ended up having to write a full post on the survey.
Section 2:
For the second section, we went over the book Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization by Vaclav Smil. This book relied heavily on the use of data to get the author’s point across. This is by far the section in our class that deals with the most qualitative data, as Smil uses data from sources across the board. This book is probably the most confusing, but if you pay attention in class during this section and go to office hours then you will get the help you need. Smil in this book talks mostly about consumerism and dematerialization (relative and absolute), and uses these two things to outline his argument and data. (Smile 2013) Going off of this book, we did our second group project on situating minerals. I was very enthusiastic about this project because I took a college course on geology on high school. My group ended up doing the project on arsenic. We focused on how it is used and the effects it has on different locations around the world.
Section 3:
The third section was by far my favorite. We focused on classic and contemporary environmental thought. Since I come from a socialist background reading Austerity Ecology by Leigh Phillips reinforced a lot of my prior ideology. Coming from an International Affairs and well, socialist background, this book provided a lot of my beliefs in a through an ecological perspective. His alignment with the contemporary train of environmental thought is something that throughout this course has attracted me to become a believer. His book for the most part, highlights a hopeful idea of the future and how humans can help (Phillips 2015). His argument is based massively on rationality and that is why this book is very important, because it challenges opposers of his beliefs with hard facts and makes a strong case for his ideology. The view that nature ismore hybrid than pure, technology can help solve our ecological woes, and a focus on the future. While we covered contemporary thought with Austerity Ecology and articles by many other scholars, including the esteemed James Proctor, we also covered environmental thought in many other articles. They showed how classic environmentalists believe in the idea that nature is pure, the future is apocalyptic, and for individual action. One article that we read that really highlighted classical thought was “Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin. He states in it that we need to help curb overpopulation because in the future it is a problem and is a good example of a a tragedy of the commons. (Hardin 1968) To supplement this section, we had a group project on “isms” with my team exploring modernism in the ecological context. This project was by far the hardest for me, as it was personally difficult to tie in abstract philosophical concepts with ecology.
Section 4:
To end the year, we focused on Who Rules the Earth? How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives by Paul F. Steinberg. This section ends off the year nicely, with the book tying together most of our ideas along the course while providing steps to solve our ecological problems, and the four individual posts at the end provide a nice way to reflect on the semester as a whole. The book discusses the role of social rules, the role of the individual and the institution, how important they are and steps to implement successful and lasting change to our society. His main argument is against the classical thought if individual action, saying that we need to work at an institutional scale, using multiple levels of government to mae effective change. But he also argues that the role of the individual ties into this, as individuals ned to make these changes at intuitional levels. (Steinberg 2015). To end off the final section, and well the year, we had to make four individual posts that went over the whole year. The first one talked about three key lessons we learned over the course. The second post was a synthesis post, making us combine parts of all four sections, seeing how the different ideas intertwined. The third post was reflection post about Steinberg’s book, making us summarize the main argument of the book while also reflecting on how it will apply to our personal and scholarly life. Finally, the last post of the year made us reflect on what we learned over the year, and how what we have learned will be an intrinsic part of our everyday life, and how it will affect us.
Conclusion
ENVS 160 will introduce you to new ideas and provides all the necessary tools to create, modify, or solidify your ecological ideology. The class will challenge you to broaden your mind and make you question your preconceived notions of ecological issues. Overall, the class is very difficult and goes over and includes a heavy amount of course work, but if you try and pay attention in class it will become a lot easier. I would recommend not missing any of the readings as they are all important, and if you ever come across a section you do not understand, please go out of your way to attend office hours as the teacher will help a lot and help clarify anything you do not understand. If I were to give any word of advice to a student joining this class, it would be to utilize office hours and capitalize on the expertise of our ENVS teachers.
Bibliography
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science.
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. 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.