Mike Hulme’s sympathetic tone in Why We Disagree About Climate Change is fitting; with so many ideas built upon each other in environmental scholarship, being open-minded is important. Just as Hulme shows how personal climate ideologies warp our perceptions of climate change, environmentalism as a study and practice is equally contentious and variable among scholars. By […]
Post 2 (Due Apr 10)
Student posts below addressed the following: "Identify and briefly describe three key connections between the main sections of the course as defined by our readings."
Connections Which Allow Us To Make Corrections
There are many different connections between the readings we have done thus far in our ENVS160 course. These Connections allow for us as individuals to form our own opinions on the pressing issue of climate change and eventually make our own impact on the future of our world. Learning different opinions of possible solutions and […]
The Web of Environmentalism
After going through all the readings in ENVS 160, a clear web of connection emerged in my head, presenting in itself the various perspectives behind the race to “save the environment”. First, we have Hulme who presents all the different agencies that are in play in the conversation on “climate change”, explores and challenges behind […]
Reaching institutional, complex, and governmental solutions
ENVS 160 has been full of readings that weave topics together and explore them from many different angles. There are many big ideas that are common among most or all of them, but I think three stood out in particular: the complexity of environmental issues, the idea of institutional action, and the governance of climate. […]
Excavating Value in ENVS 160: Key Connections
The absorption of novel information presented throughout the short semester of ENVS 160 in the form of books, articles, essays, and other scholarly publications can easily send an ENVS student into a whirlwind of confusion. Often I have asked myself: how is this new reading relevant to other scholarship we have studied? What conclusions, if […]
Complexities of Impossible Solutions
Throughout the course of this semester, it has become apparent to me that each reading contributes to our understanding of complex connections between environmental dilemmas and their respective solutions (or lack there of). Below I will explain the connections I have found and discuss the sources from which they arose. My first connection falls between […]
Lights, Camera, Action: Spirituality, Communication to the Public, and Thinking Globally or Locally for Environmental Issues.
This course has many interconnected concepts that tie throughout the different texts and units we have studied and observed. Each different idea is demonstrated from multiple different points of view, from different authors. The three connections I chose were mentioned in the above title of the post: Lights, Camera, and Action, Lights regarding religion […]
Environmental Connection
I have found that information learned in distinct separation can only lead so far into complete education of a topic. I think a person could reach application at most on Bloom’s taxonomy of education pyramid. Without finding connections throughout different sections of in a course and being able to compare and differentiate these topics, one […]
The Ecotypes Lens: Analyzing Human Impact
Introduction The Ecotypes survey can provide reasonable groundwork for the synthesis of a wide range of material in Environmental Studies. Various sections of the course can be easily grouped under the broad headings of Nature, Spirituality, and Time. As defined by Jim Proctor these terms can be used to analyze the political and scientific beliefs […]
Connecting the Concepts
In my ENVS 160 class, we read multiple texts that discussed climate change and other modern environmental problems affecting the our world. These texts include 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), and other […]
What Goes Around Comes Back Around (or Does It?)
The Significance of the EU (comparing WRE and MMW) Vaclav Smil, the author of Making the Modern World, and Paul F. Steinberg, the author of Who Rules the Earth, have similar views of what Europe is doing right environmentally and how their actions compare to the environmental actions of other countries. On page 88, Smil […]
The Web That Saved Me from the Information Whirlwind
Environmental studies includes many disciplines. Being in this class, I was bombarded with many readings, many platforms, and many documents. However there is an interconnectedness to this whirlwind of information, all of which I can relate to. The documents all have an influence on others and current, as well as past, beliefs. So how do […]
Clumsy Solutions and Complex Connections
Many times in Intro to Environmental Studies 160, I feel pulled apart by contrasting opinions, each new piece of literature seeming to make its own claim on how to approach environmental thought and solutions. Although at times authors can be venomously disagreeing with each other, at other times they also seem to agree on […]
The Interconnectedness of Varying Perspectives
Though ENVS 160 has expanded my knowledge regarding numerous perspectives, mindsets, and teachings of environmentalism using a variety of readings, I quickly discovered that each author and each idea was connected in some way to another. After careful consideration, I settled on just three. Break away from individuality to make a difference (AE-WRE) We are […]
Reflecting Through Synthesis
While studying and discussing our readings for this course, three key connections came to the forefront in my mind: an emphasis on the relationship of environmental action and religion, the need for institutional change in place of incrementalism, and the tragedy of the commons. 1. Religion: Both Mike Hulme and Lynn White agree that religion, […]
The Very Fabric of Environmental Studies
While it’s often easy to look at what we learn in ENVS 160 under the lens of a microscope, it is also easily as important to pull away and view specific argument and beliefs in conjunction with each other. This allows for a greater understanding of the texts as a whole, and can often create […]
No Rest for the Wicked: Weaving Trends Together
Of the several texts we have read so far, many reoccurring themes and ideas have surfaced. Interconnecting themes throughout the texts reflect the interrelated issues we have been discussing. Dematerialization? Vaclav Smil’s Making the Modern World discusses several commonly used materials throughout history, from stone to plastic. He describes their extraction, production and uses. He […]
Humans, Politics, and Cradle-to-Grave Evaluation
I was able to find a few connections and common themes between the books that we read this semester in our ENVS 160 course. Although they did not jump out at me right away, with a careful analytical eye, I was able to recognize the similarities between Mike Hulme’s Why We Disagree About Climate Change, […]
One Thought to the Next
Who Rules the Earth –> Austerity Ecology & The Collapse-Porn Addicts Who Rules the Earth by Paul F. Steinberg (2015) explains that social rules influence our understanding of what we believe is the truth. Steinberg (2015) writes, “When rules are routinely followed…we internalize them as habits, routines, and standard operating procedures” (Steinberg 2015, 12). Steinberg’s theory helps […]
Dancing Around the Climate Change Dilemma
In the small bubble that encompasses the beliefs of most Lewis and Clark college students one might think that there should be no disagreement about climate change. There are things we LC students believe: climate change is real, it’s a threat, and it is high time to do something about it. However, this course has […]
Commonalities in Tangled Ideologies
Like the field of environmental studies, the many works and topics we have covered in this course, while distinct from one another, clearly are interconnected. By nature, what we discuss is part of an elaborate web that links concepts from reflecting on how we view nature to discussing complex subjects like international material flows. However, […]
An Environmental Studies Jigsaw Puzzle
The Environmental Studies introductory class here at Lewis & Clark College was designed knowing that it is important to expose students to as many credible viewpoints as possible to begin to understand the breadth of knowledge this area of study operates within. To achieve this, we alternated between studying published papers, books, podcasts, documentaries, […]
Let’s Make the Lorax Proud: Evidence, Apocalypse, and Action
Looking back on the works we have read over the course of this class, I am realizing that there are more common threads than I had previously recognized. It is all too easy to read something, enjoy it (or hate it), and move on. In this post, I will illuminate the connections between the diverse […]
Piecing it all together
The interdiscplinarity of Environmental Studies not only encourages us, as students, to connect different disciplines, but also different opinions, perspectives and ideas about environmental issues. In this post I explore some connections that I have discovered throughout this semester. Consumerist Hypocrisy (AE & MMW) Both Leigh Phillips and Vaclav Smil talk about the dangers […]
Contentions or Connections?
The ever-growing environmental movement is much more diverse than one would initially believe. There are a whole slew of unique environmental organizations, ideologies etc. that an individual can be a part of as well as an endless supply of books, articles and resources that someone can use to get educated an involved with the movement. Yet, […]