I’ll have the students kind of take one issue. So, we’ll start with species extinction. They’ve been studying species extinction for the semester that we’re together, and they get in groups, and they start mapping what are the causes of extinction.
They start with the obvious things, like we’re cutting down habitat. And then, I push them to map those down to their causes, so every single time, they’re like, “Oh, I know. Habitat destruction is leading to species extinction.” It’s like, “Yeah, but what’s causing habitat destruction?”
And so, they kind of keep going, right? Well, what’s causing habitat destruction? You can see this could go in lots of different directions, depending on the student’s worldview and what their experience has been. They could go from habitat destruction to, you know, resource use or to human population size or to capitalism, right? They can go lots of places.
But I keep pushing them down until they get someplace that they can’t identify a cause underneath that. And usually they bottom out at very fundamental human things, like greed or loneliness or isolation.
Most of the students are really shocked because we’re so used to just going to kind of a material explanation of, like, “Well, there are too many people on the planet, we need so much stuff. We’re extracting and exploiting resources. And so, then things die.” And it’s like, “Yeah, but…” Right?
And so, once they’ve gone and mapped down to the root causes, the second half of that exploration is to come back up and look at how those same root causes affect other things they care about in their lives.
The last part of that exercise is that then I ask the students to think about how they could address the root causes in their lives, instead of addressing the symptoms.
It’s a very empowered stance to say, “OK, alienation is leading to species extinctions.” How do I address species extinctions? That is so far beyond any 20-year-old to feel like they can make a meaningful contribution.
But if I ask them, “How can I address alienation in my life?” Then all of a sudden, they’ve got this huge, 360-degree vista of really exciting things that really recruit their own talents and skills and dreams and aspirations.
And then, we spend a lot of time with the, like, “Well, is it OK? Is it OK if what I really want to do is propagate orchids and give them away to people on the street? Is that really combating climate change?” Well, it’s like, is it combating alienation? Yes. Is it something you’re passionate about? Yes. So, why wouldn’t that have intrinsic value?
Kara Manke: You mentioned this a little bit when working on the exercise with the students on root causes about how we get to almost, like, human values … I’m not sure how to describe them. But could you talk about some of those that keep coming up and how you think they’re contributing?
Bree Rosenblum: Yeah. So, in my experience — and a lot of environmental scholars have written about this, it’s not novel scholarship, it’s just the way I present it to the students — is that there are basically two worldviews that are competing in our society right now. And again, our Western society that has grown these particular roots.
The first is a many-thousands-year-old view that humans are superior to other species on the planet. That’s kind of like, humans are the best thing in the world. And that leads to a very particular environmental worldview where resources are materialistic things that are fine for us to extract and use as we want because we’re the best, and the whole planet is here for us. That’s one of the environmental worldviews that, even if people don’t admit to, it’s usually floating in the mix someplace in our psyches.
And this is how it’s so easy for us to kind of divorce ourselves from the degree of exploitation that’s required to maintain our lifestyles, right? It’s like, “Oh, well, we’re so great. So like, yeah, we’re destroying the rainforest, but like, I need my cellphone.” There’s a superiority mentality that’s embedded in kind of the capitalist machine.
I think young people are so tired of the cultural norms that led to the environmental crisis that we’re in, that I think there’s actually an appetite for addressing the culture, in addition to doing the other, more external-facing work.
The second competing environmental worldview is that humans suck, and we screwed up so badly that we should just be wiped off from the face of the earth.
I used to do this exercise with my students before every class where I’d have them just do a quick doodle on a theme. It was eliciting just their feelings about something without trying to make it really science-y.
When I used to ask, just take five minutes, and just doodle a picture of what you think the single biggest solution would be to our current environmental crisis, the most common picture I would get would be a stick figure person with an enormous eraser. So, something on that theme. So, the theme that if we could erase humans, everything would be fine.
So, these two worldviews are competing, not just in different people and leading to culture wars, but they’re actually competing inside us. Most people, if you actually get them to be really honest, hold both of these views simultaneously — that we’re totally awesome, and we totally suck. So, we are the problem, and we’re the solution. And it creates a lot of inner friction because people are spending a lot of time trying to figure out, like, “Am I awesome, or do I suck? Not only me individually, but my entire species.”
Obviously, I don’t think either of those environmental worldviews are particularly inspiring or fruitful, but I think that is where we’re at, in terms of how we need to kind of talk about the reality of the situation.
Kara Manke: Right, right. Do you think these are also contributing to the, kind of, feelings of helplessness and despair that people feel around these issues?
Bree Rosenblum: Yeah, of course, because not only are they contributing to an inner feeling of despair and hopelessness, but their effect on the world is devastating. You look at the evidence, and you’re like, “Oh, well, if humans are awesome, but that awesomeness leads to resource extraction, human exploitation and all of these other issues on our planet — wow, that’s not such a great worldview to live in.”
And then, on the converse, if we suck, and the best solution is just to destroy ourselves as quickly as possible and let the earth kind of rebuild after us, that’s incredibly depressing. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that both of these worldviews lead to a relationship with ourselves, each other and the planet that’s fundamentally depressing.
[Music: “Littl Jon” by Blue Dot Sessions]
I really think that if we’re not addressing culture at a really deep level, that we cannot address climate change. We can have technology be part of the solution. We can have activism be part of the solution. We can have regulation be part of the solution. But none of those things win on their own without addressing the cultural norms that got us to the place where humans… even if it wasn’t consciously thought it was fine to destroy other life forms, that humans subconsciously thought it was fine to treat other living things like this.
So, that, to me, is the biggest hope for this generation, is that I think young people are so tired of the cultural norms that kind of led to the environmental crisis that we’re in, that I think there’s actually an appetite for addressing the culture, in addition to doing the other, more external-facing work.
If I dim down all of the noise, like, all of the doomsday way we present things, if I dim down all the external noise and I listen to what feels true to me, it feels like a phenomenal time to be a human on this planet. We are in such an amazing individual and collective squeeze point.
Do we want humanity to mean what it has meant in the past, or do we want to create a new meaning for our species and our purpose?
Anne Brice: This is Berkeley Voices. I’m Anne Brice. Special thanks to Kara Manke, who coproduced and cohosted this episode.
This was part one of a two-part series about how building a sense of connection with our planet and all of its inhabitants is essential in reframing our time on Earth and our role in our changing climate and environment.
Hope Gale-Hendry: The American pika is considered the canary in the coal mine for climate change. They are extremely temperature sensitive and very likely going to go extinct in the next century.