Ingrid Leman Stefanovic: Which challenge should we grapple with now?

Why Canadians should put their eggs in the environmental basket

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      By Ingrid Leman Stefanovic

      From terrorist attacks to Ebola infections, crises dominate the news. And while Canadians’ eyes may glaze over at the words climate change, author and social activist Naomi Klein has a point when she notes that it “carries the risk of destroying lives on a vastly greater scale than collapsed banks or collapsed buildings”.

      How shall we best respond to these threats?

      In pondering this question, consider a true story of personal crisis—one that takes us back more than 60 years. Near the Rocky Mountains, a brigade of firefighters parachuted into a gorge to extinguish a blaze that initially seemed easily manageable. But then, unexpectedly, the winds shifted. Flames quickly advanced, 60 meters tall and 90 meters deep. The squad was instructed to draw back as the fire roared towards them at a speed of 50 kilometers per hour.

      Realizing that it would be impossible to outrun the flames, the team leader made an extraordinary, counterintuitive decision. Rather than attempting to evacuate, he intentionally set the area around him on fire. Crouched amongst the ashes, he watched as the blaze raged about him. Despite his attempts to communicate to his team, others could not comprehend what he was doing and continued to run. As a result, 13 members of his team died as the fire overtook them. Eventually, the team leader’s technique of scorching the ground to prevent the flames’ spread was accepted as a standard firefighting strategy.

      There are at least two take-away lessons here. The first is that a standard reaction to crisis is panic and a narrowing of attention to the threat at hand. Cognitive scientists acknowledge that in situations such as the one described above, the first reaction will be to respond to the fire and run. The mind focuses on the threat at hand and limits awareness of other matters or options, often encouraging flight.

      The second lesson is that it is precisely in such a crisis situation that we need to do something quite different. We need to attend to more than the obvious. While problems may appear in the form of singular, dramatic threats, the fact is that the situation is usually more complex. Whether we are seeking to address imminent crises of Ebola spread, terrorism or the longer-term impacts of climate change, we need to stand back and think critically and creatively about how we respond. We need to think out of the box. How do we do this?

      Let me propose three strategies to advance smart, critical thinking.

      First, we need to attend to connections. No event in life stands alone. As foreign correspondent Geoffrey York points out in a recent Globe and Mail editorial, Ebola reflects larger issues, such as vulnerable health and sanitation systems, poverty, illiteracy, and even civil wars. With resource depletion and climate-change impacts, we can expect increased political strains worldwide, likely exacerbating terrorist ideology. Understanding singular events can happen only within the context of broad-based, multidimensional strategies.

      Second, we need to recognize that for many of these problems, there may be plural possibilities for change. In the case of the firefighters, beyond the team leader, two others survived by seeking shelter in a crevice in the foothills. Multiple voices generate multiple opportunities for answers to most problems, especially those that are complex or non-linear.

      Finally, we need to stay positive to uncover creative, practical, innovative solutions. By considering counterintuitive possibilities and staying positive, the firefighting team leader was able to survive the crisis at hand. The popular country singer Willie Nelson reportedly said: “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” The glib phrase is supported by psychologists’ “broaden-and-build” theory, where studies repeatedly show how positive emotions lead to positive outcomes.

      All of which leads to the big question: how do we actually develop such smart, critical-thinking skills? The answer is that it requires a special kind of training.

      The only faculty of environment in Western Canada is at Simon Fraser University, where a new, interdisciplinary “bachelor of environment” (BEnv) degree has just been launched. At this stage, it is the only “bachelor of environment” degree in the country.

      Its name has carefully been considered to reflect topical breadth: it is neither a bachelor of science degree, nor is it one of many “bachelor of environmental studies” programs that increasingly seem to privilege the social sciences and humanities over the hard sciences in universities across North America. Instead, the SFU degree brings together multiple approaches, multiple voices, to ensure that students are exposed to a genuinely interdisciplinary conversation that spans the humanities, the social sciences and the sciences.

      How does the degree encourage awareness of connections? Courses such as “Systems Thinking and the Environment” recognize that environmental problems are foundational and complex. Acknowledging plural possibilities for change and that multiple voices deserve to be heard, students are introduced to questions of “Environmental Controversy” and to cross-cutting issues such as “Science and Public Policy: Risk Communication”. Deep-time and aboriginal perspectives are provided in offerings such as “Cultural Heritage Stewardship in a Global Context”. Exposure to strategies of environmental modelling, biochemical cycles and ecological economics expose students not only to different content areas but also to different methodologies and analytical ways of thinking.

      One of the majors under the BEnv degree invites students to address the topic of sustainable business. This option aims to break down that stubborn, historic perception that we must choose between the environment and the economy. It is time to put that language aside once and for all. The issue is not one of privileging either the environment or theeconomy; it is not even a matter of addressing the environment and the economy.

      Rather, the economy is the environment and vice versa. Long-term environmental health requires economic investment; and long-term economic viability requires environmental sustainability.

      Finally, the degree emphasizes the need to develop positive, practical, innovative solutions to problems of environmental sustainability. Albert Einstein proposed that “the world that we have made, as a result of the thinking we have done thus far, creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we created them.” Through capstone courses, shared lived experiences, and international field study, students are encouraged to think in exactly such inventive and novel ways.

      I am personally concerned how, since the 1970s, environmental messages have typically been pessimistic: from pollutants to acid rain to global warming, the story has been one of impending catastrophe and fear. No wonder that the public has been slow to appropriate the message that global climate change is human-induced, even though 97 per cent of scientists worldwide now accept that fact. It is a discouraging story to hear, and denial is a normal human reaction when it comes to problems that seem insurmountable.

      But the fact is, as Yale-NUS College in Singapore’s environmental studies expert Michael Maniates points out in State of the World 2013, “a politics of guilt can never mobilize and inspire.” Canadian WWF-Canada president and CEO David Miller reiterates this thought when he describes the need to build “innovative partnerships to create solutions” rather than simply inspire fear.

      The new BEnv degree offers strategies for just that kind of hopeful, innovative thinking, seeking to build a better, more sustainable world for ourselves and for future generations. And while the degree is not the only way to encourage global change, let us not underestimate the essential impact of such a program to open the way to positive possibilities.

      As the words of Nelson Mandela poignantly remind us, “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

      Comments

      3 Comments

      .Lee L.

      Nov 17, 2014 at 7:10pm

      Bachelor of deep green indoctrination, I'd say.

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      Philip Byer

      Nov 18, 2014 at 9:31am

      Very insightful and clear messages with a hope for the future.

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      RUK

      Nov 18, 2014 at 1:18pm

      I'm not a defeatist, but if you take environmental studies at all seriously, you are led to wondering if there should be the parallel program called "Human Extinction Studies," to account for the very likely and foreseeable outcome when you combine gross and increasing overpopulation with the diminishment and poisoning of the sources of food for that population.

      Such studies would also encourage adoption of the obvious, humane and practical plan - (1) vasectomize every male at birth so that the human population can gradually descend from an unsustainable 7B to a sustainable 1B (2) plan for the cultural, economic, and administrative challenges of having an ever growing percentage of the population being the retired elderly.

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