I recently looked back at my posts from my environmental studies intro class. My very first post, titled Limitlessness, connects our foundational Limits to Growth and IPAT readings to Wendell Berry’s Faustian Economics and his essay “Staying Put” from his book The Unsettling of America. I first read Berry when I was a junior in […]
Introduction to Environmental Studies (Spring 2014)
ENVS 160 is the introductory course for the Environmental Studies major at Lewis & Clark College. I took ENVS 160 in the spring of 2014. In this course, we examined literature from classic environmentalism and contemporary environmentalism, delved into an independent situated project, and tied it all together with a final synthesis post. ENVS 160 created a foundation for academic exploration in the interdisciplinary world of environmental studies for future courses, projects, and travels.
Local in the Global Scale
When we discussed the concept of “local” in relation to french fries and Burgerville, I realized how incredible impossible it is to be completely “local.” Just in the room I am sitting in, I can’t see anything that I would in any way consider “local.” Shoes from Germany, a water bottle purchased in Idaho, chairs […]
What do Tuna, Lawns, and Bottled Water have in Common?
Privilege. I remember the first time my mother told me to never, ever, ever drink bottled water- I was a sophomore in high school and Take Back the Tap was going viral, especially amongst environmentalist circles. I never really drank bottled water growing up, since we had a nice BRITA filter on our tap and […]
Grand Coulee Dam Project
The object of focus for my ENVS research project was Grand Coulee Dam, situated in the historical context of the Great Depression and World War II. The dimensions that most surprised and fascinated me were the rhetorical strategies used by proponents of the dam project to create a larger-than-life media sensation to spur public and […]
“Enrich Your Soil, Not Uranium”
My mother was arrested in 1978, protesting the Diablo Canyon nuclear site in Northern California. She worked for the Snake River Alliance, “Idaho’s Nuclear Watchdog” in the 1990s, and traveled to the Soviet Union in 1990 to protest nuclear armaments. I grew up with a poster that said “Disarmament for a Safer World for our […]