Hope In My Studies

“Taking into account intersecting trends in political, academic, and popular engagements with environmental issues, we delimit four problems that currently frame our relations to the environment. These include: the problem of alienation and intangibility; the post-political situation; the negative framing of environmental change; and compartmentalization of “the environment” from other spheres of concern- both in practical and ontological terms. Addressing these problems, we argue, is not possible without environmental humanities.” (Gomez’s Four directions for the environmental humanities) 

Growing up and going through school in a time that focuses on the doom and gloom narrative of environmental issues, a world where “more Americans can imagine the end of the world than can envision a switch from fossil fuels or an economic order other than capitalism” (Norgaard 2) puts a great deal of stress and sense of responsibility on my colleges and I. These are times that seem to say that I cannot make a difference, that there is no hope for the future. Before I can find hope for the entire planet and all its daunting issues, I first have to find hope in myself as member in creating positive change. As a student at Humboldt state studying environmental studies I am part of environmental humanities that Sergio Gomez describes. I take comfort and great pride purely in the fact that environmental humanities are dedicated to the uphill struggle of real positive change. Change that does not look at the human world as something that is intrinsically bad for the environment, change that is “starting to invite experts on the human values, ideas, history, thinking, religion, and communication to bring their knowledge to bear on critical global issues.”(Gomez’s Why should biologists interested in the environment take the humanities seriously?)

While it often feels like environmental humanities are creating more problems when we critique and evaluate mainstream environmental narrative. In reality environmental humanities are filling a vital and neglected role in the environmental movement “We cannot dream of sustainability unless we start to pay more attention to the human agents of the planetary pressure that environmental experts are masters at measuring but that they seem unable to prevent.” (Gomez’s Why should biologists interested in the environment take the humanities seriously?). Just the growing presence of environmental humanities in the environmental movement gives me hope for a real positive change.