I had never taken an environmental studies or environmental science course before ENVS 160, so I went into the class feeling unprepared and behind compared to many of my classmates. However, the concepts introduced in this course are new to everyone, and shake everyone’s ways of thinking. Over the course of ENVS 160, I have […]
Expanding My Horizons
My dad is an environmental lawyer so I have lived in an environmentally-minded household all my life. Environmental conservation has always been something near and dear to my heart and something I thought I knew a lot about. I have always held very strong and unwavering opinions regarding many environmental issues, such as fracking, mining, […]
Who Rules the Earth? Institutions Do.
The main argument underlying the text Why We Disagree About Climate Change by Paul Steinberg is that change at the institutional level is the most effective. He claims that the best way to make real change is through changing the social rules that govern society, and he discusses a variety of ways in which to […]
Connect the Dots or… Connect the Thoughts?
Over the course of ENVS 160 so far, one of the most important concepts that has been in ingrained in my mind is that most issues are much more complex than popular discourse often reveals. Issues that I had previously interpreted as fairly black and white have actually much more gray area. In accordance with […]
Started from the Bottom Now We Here
My perception of what the field of environmental studies entails has changed dramatically over the course of this past semester. I had never taken any environmental science classes in high school, so I was unsure of what to expect. I knew that I liked spending time outdoors and was a proponent of environmental conservation, but […]