This week in ENVS, we reviewed the material presented thus far, looking at the broader view of how classical and contemporary environmentalism compared. We finished the review of Lach’s article on water issues in California, paying attention to the four conditions he sets out as necessary in any group venture to solve “wicked problems” (i.e. those lacking consensus about the problem itself and lacking a permanent, clear-cut solution). Namely, these conditions were the existence and recognition of accumulating problems, all actors having more to lose by inaction, these actors having experience with settlement, and possessing a leadership willing to take risks.
Following this, we reexamined the three elements common in much classical environmentalist literature (apocalypticism, essentialism, and reductionism), and found the contemporary literature we looked at to be generally opposed to these elements. Additionally, the anti-apocalyptic, anti-essentialist, and anti-reductionist views were all shown as connected to each other within the contemporary environmentalist ideological framework in an interconnected triangular diagram. While this emphasis on connections is a useful framework to help think about similar themes in both classical and contemporary environmentalism, these elements are not necessarily present in all contemporary or classical thought we have examined. As was pointed out in class, Population Bomb and Limits to Growth, while apocalyptic and reductionist, had few essentialist elements, and Ecotopia, though strongly essentialist and reductionist, was a portrayal of a utopia in a world that, while polluted and still obsessed with growth, had not experienced an apocalypse. Moreover, while the contemporary readings we examined never proclaimed a coming apocalypse, and were frequently anti-essentialist, often criticizing the construct of nature from that direction, the anti-reductionist thread seems far more incomplete than the interconnected triangle would suggest. “Evolve” and “The Global Green Brahmins” even had strong reductionist arguments, with both finding continued technological development to be the single answer to our ecological problems.