Throughout Who Rules the Earth, Paul F. Steinberg has uncovered many parts of life that influence the way that social rules are constructed. Through hidden barriers and economic markets, large landscapes like National Parks all the way to someone’s front yard are influence in a multitude of ways. These rules are complex and winding. But, […]
Individual Posts
How to be the Catalyst for Change
In Who Rules the Earth? How Social Rules Shape our Planet and Our Lives Paul Steinberg tackles the question, what would it take to move the world to a more sustainable path? Steinberg argues the only way to achieve this is to change the social rules that govern our lives. Social rules are the institutions that […]
Beach Walks and Peaches
In the end of the Who Rules the Earth by Paul Steinberg, Steinberg finally addresses the question that the title asks: who rules the earth? “The people who rule the earth are those who leave behind a legacy of rules that shape the actions and opportunities of generations to come” (Steinberg 2015, 264). Although a […]
Understand Your Cause!
Paul Steinberg writes in his book Who Rules the Earth? about how social rules and civic governance affect the environment. Society creates both formal and informal rules that can either protect or harm the earth, affecting natural resource usage, pollution, deforestation, and many more major human impacts. Each of these rules have been debated by […]
Who’s Flying the Plane??
In Who Rules the Earth?, author Paul F. Steinberg argues that in order to make real (and lasting!) environmental changes, we must change the very rules that we live by, as opposed to only making changes at an individual scale. In this sense, as a society, we are governed by social rules that Steinberg refers […]
The Power of the Social Rule
Climate change is an issue that crosses boundaries: whether it be effecting communities across borders, or changing the economy. As it is such a multifaceted issue, climate change can not be responded to like global problems in the past; it requires breaking the status quo and shifting how we think about social rules. In Who Rules the Earth? […]
Unruly Solutions to Unruly Problems
In Who Rules the Earth? by Paul F. Steinberg (2015), the author argues that the way to make real and lasting environmental change, is by changing the social rules that govern us. Social rules, in this sense, are institutions. Today the public tends to hold the ideology that power is unassailable, but this, as it […]
Re-Rooting the Rules
Rules are what make humans the way they are and they are also what make and what have made the world the way it is. Rules have made humans progressive and intelligent but they have also made us restrained and complacent with exploitation and global atrocities which are caused by rules. Formal and informal, rules, […]
Certified-Ineffective: Institutional Action in Who Rules The Earth?
It’s challenging to know which direction to pursue after ENVS 160, especially after reading up on multifarious environmental perspectives. In his book Who Rules The Earth?, Paul Steinberg addresses the institutional approach to environmental problems (Steinberg 2015). In the opening of the book, Steinberg addresses individualistic approaches to environmentalism, most prevalent in opening his book […]
Do Rules Run Our World?
The final focus of ENVS 160 has been the book Who Rules The Earth? By Paul F. Steinberg. In this book, we have learned about social rules, constructs, and norms that shape the way the world works and interacts. Steinberg’s main argument is that if there is to be environmental change in this world, we must think institutionally […]
Ruling an Institution
In his book, Who Rules the Earth?, Paul F. Steinberg asserts that lasting solutions for climate change and other environmental issues must come from institutional change because the world afflicted by these problems is governed by social rules. Steinberg begins the book with a commentary on why individual-scale change is often unsuccessful. Steinberg poses the question, “Scientists […]
All Sides of the Conservation Story
The last section of our ENVS 160 course has been focused on the text Who Rules the Earth by Paul Steinberg, and built off our discussions throughout the course demonstrating the importance of scaling up in order to solve environmental problems. He addresses the importance of institutional thinking, as well as how much social rules […]
Amalgamating Upwards
Multi-national politics often result in countries not cooperating with one another. One would expect that concerns such as the implementation of environmental policies in governments would especially be overlooked in the means of capitalism or socialism. However, such is not the case for Europe, as Who Rules the Earth? presents (Steinberg, 2015). Because of the […]
Drawing together important connections in environmental science
I have learned a lot from the Environmental Science 160 class and it has opened me up to ways of thinking about the environment that I had once never considered. Although all our readings focuses on different aspects of the environment there were many ways in which they had connecting themes and lessons to think […]
Social Rules are Everywhere
Summary of the main argument in Who Rules the Earth In his book Who Rules the Earth?: How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives, Steinberg informs us that social rules are everywhere; these rules and regulations are embedded in every aspect of our lives even if they are not immediately noticeable to us […]
Creating an Individual Spiderweb of Ideas
In reading responses from my peers in the first individual post, I was surprised to see so many common themes between my peers and myself: namely the influence the course had on student’s ideas of what climate change was and meant to citizens all over the world. This thread has spanned across all of the […]
Drawing Lines, Circles, and Squares
In ‘Who Rules the Earth’, Paul F. Steinberg (2015) discusses how markets need rules and regulations to function properly. He argues in favor of cap and trade and regulation. “Market-based regulation can provide landowners with incentives to keep trees on the land, rather than clearing them for crops and pasture” (Steinberg 2015, 122). His point […]
Common Threads Weaving Together
There are many common themes that have revealed themselves throughout the span of our course. Of the many, I have chosen to focus on three that serve critical roles in environmentalism: institutionalism, spirituality, and the hybridity of the natural world and humans. -Hybridity- As we enter into the Anthropocene, or the modern age of humans […]
Wait… Haven’t I Heard this Before?
Institutional over Individual! I would like to begin by expanding on a “lesson” that I included in my previous post, which I titled, “Individual Action isn’t nearly Enough…. But, HEY, it’s a Start!” While I mentioned the idea that sometimes it takes an individual to spark an institutional change, I would like to further emphasize […]
Delve into the Deep
Post 1 was simply a poke at the vast ocean of connections and ideas that can come up in ENVS 160 and was a portrayal of how important those key topics can be. In this post, a synthesis can be made about those key topics learned and can be linked to texts used to create […]
Combining Complexities for a Cohesive Analysis
This semester in ENVS 160 we read four main texts pertaining to the general ideas of ENVS. The works we read are as follows, Why We Disagree About Climate Change by Mike Hulme (2015), Austerity Ecology & The Collapse-Porn Addicts by Leigh Phillips (2015), Who Rules the Earth? by Paul Steinberg (2015). Of these texts some proved […]
The Underlying Themes of ENVS 160
By Max Lorenze The various sources we have examined when looking at how the world interacts with the environment. To this point in the year the two sources that have held the largest impact for me have been “Why We Disagree About Climate Change” by Mike Hulme and “Making the Modern World” by Vaclav Smil. […]
Its All Connected
As much as they seem separate, two things such as Making the Modern World, which is about physical materials and the usage of said materials, and the comparisons of contemporary and classic environmental thought, which is, as the name suggests, focuses on the ideas, are actually connected. How? you may ask. Well, there is […]
Connections, Connections, Connections.
By Jack Kamysz There have been four main readings in ENVS 160 that we as a class have read, these include Why We Disagree About Climate Change by Mike Hulme, Making the Modern World by Vaclav Smil, classic vs. contemporary environmental thought readings, and most recently Who Rules the Earth? By Paul F. Steinberg. Authors […]
Connecting Concepts
Through reading the texts presented in environmental studies certain patterns and connections emerge. These connections reinforce the points made by the different authors by building upon one another. As our class reads more literature, our arsenal of common themes and connections of environmental thought grows deeper. My first connection is the method of situating oneself […]