Service Learning

Humboldt State University

Environmental Studies Program (ENST)

ENST Senior Capstone Class

Building Paradise in the Classroom –

The class Fiskio describes seems like an empowering step in the direction of change for students trying to cope with global climate change, because reduce, reuse, recycle is a consumerist mantra that really isn’t solving the world’s problems. Though that doesn’t mean anyone should stop recycling, necessarily. Fiskio states that “students often articulate a feeling of powerlessness in the face of structural inequalities that drive climate change”. That extends to any forms of societal oppression caused by structural inequalities, really. But that doesn’t make it any less difficult to imagine the collective action Fiskio is hoping for. If you accept that people are not just too selfish to change, but that structural inequalities are the cause of our problems, that still leaves you wondering what the hell to do about it. I can never come up with anything other than education or creating forms of art/literature that make people think or expose people to new ideas. Teaching or protesting.

This reading also raised a question for me – the concepts of a utopian or dystopian Earth as our only “realistic” options for the future of the human race are such an entrenched dualistic rhetoric in the environmental sciences (because that’s the best we can hope for?) that I can’t even imagine what the field of environmental studies would say is a more realistic future. Surely it cannot be to continue the status quo, and it will not be a utopia or Mad Max world, so what then should it be (you know, besides just and fair and all those good things)?

Teaching for Turbulence –

The notion that environmental studies is “easy science” bugs the bejesus out of me. At least at HSU, we mostly study social issues, not science, and there is nothing easy about the devastating wave of emotions that threaten to crush students when they first learn about all the systemic problems in the world. It’s weird to think that we are part of an environmental studies program explosion around the country, but the growing numbers give me hope that ENST may be valued for its interdiciplinarity in the future (because I hear people in other majors say we are easy science WAY too often).

Like the Fiskio reading, Maniates describes the hopelessness students can feel when they begin their ENST journey. The “urgency + inability” equation, he says, “can overwhelm students with a sense of hopelessness and despair and can foster the expectation that system-jarring crises are just around the corner”. Students are conditioned to think that the apocalypse is both inevitable and a possible catalyst for change. We take classes to analyze the issues and make attempts at problem-solving, but at least for me, I haven’t figured out how to solve any of the big issues. I just know that I can help a little. Maniates suggests activism and partnering with local organizations as a means to bring about the changes we are hoping for, that spreading the word and going green aren’t going to do the trick. Both Maniates and Fiskio make it clear that we need to break away from the “individual buying power”, change-by-consumerism rhetoric that we have been adhering to, and instead try to create change as a collective group.

The Affective Arc of Undergraduate Environmental Studies Curricula –

Of the three, the most interesting reading was Sarah’s, because students rarely get that kind of behind-the-scenes look at how their professors feel about their own work. I certainly identify with the feelings of dread that plague ENST students during their initial years in the major. Learning that the systems of power, privilege, and oppression in the world are a direct result of globalization and that individual buying power is as useless as taking a shorter shower in the grand scheme of things hurts, even if you had an inclination that things were messed up prior to joining the major. We go through this metamorphosis (well I’m assuming other students have similar experiences based on the reading) from idealistic and hopeful about our capacity to change the world, to learning that we may be a part of the problem, to learning that humans basically mess up everything we touch, to feeling like even the notes we take at school are wasting the lives of the trees that were killed for our notepad, to finding small differences we can make, to finally coming to terms with and being sound in the knowledge that even though we can’t realistically change the whole world, we may be able to change the world of a few people (or we may be able to help in a specific area). I felt empowered as I learned the names of these oppressive systems and found the words to describe my pain/anxiety/fear. At this point, I’m happy to be able to help at all.

~ Ciera