week 2: intro to the field

Question 1

What is environmentalism?

Answer 1

A political ideology with the core belief that the natural environment should be protected.

BUT there are diverging, conflicting peripheral beliefs and values within environmentalism.

Question 2

What are the 3 key questions at the heart of environmental thought?

Answer 2

1. Does nature possess an intrinsic value that humans need to respect and protect, or should environmental protection be determined mainly by the benefits it creates for human society?
   - Reflecting on how human-centered our concept of the environment and environmental protection.
2. Does environmentalism involve the expansion of our ethical horizon to include the non-human world, or is it sufficient to ground it in notions of human interest?
   - The idea of non-humans: geographies, ecosystems, water, animals, plants
   - Giving a palace to non-humans and non-human relationships.
3. Should environmental objectives be pursued through reform and accommodation within the existing political economic order, or as part of a strategy of radical change? Can environmental ideas sit next to and work with the established norms of state-centric international society, or does successful environmental action point towards a new form of politics?
   - How do the ideas around environmental thought translate into action?
   - Working in the existing system or trying to change the system incrementally or radically?

Question 3

What is the root of environmental thinking?

Answer 3

The industrial revolution

Question 4

What were the main ideas around environmental thought that were in tension with each other during the Industrial Revolution?

Answer 4

1- Romantic environmentalism (~1798-1837) → anti-modernist, distrust science, conservative, oriented around conservation

2- Modern era → utilitarian, scientific, rationalism (1860-1899)
Focus on rational thought → what would then become the field of ecology

Question 5

When was the field of environmentalism officially born?

Answer 5

Lead up to the 1992 Earth Summit, first wave of journals and textbooks

Defining moment for the international community to think about global environmental problems and create international interventions/relations.

Question 6

What were the 3 turns in GEP that influenced broader debates in IR?

Answer 6

1970s: concerns about population growth, resource scarcity, security. Concern was spurred by concern about population growth and what that would mean for the planet’s resources

1980s & 1990s: “Neo-neo” debates (neoliberalism vs neorealism)

1990s, 2000s: Constructivist turn
Social construction of ideas and the power of ideas.

Question 7

What does the Tragedy of the Commons symbolize as a metaphor?

Answer 7

The “commons” = commonly held resources that are “free, ” or not allocated by markets (e.g., groundwater, fisheries, or forests). These are finite resources that will run out at some point.

A type of collective action problem (i.e., better off cooperating but don’t) - People thinking of their own self-interest deplete a shared resource.

Question 8

Explain Mildenberger’s argument in “The Tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons”

Answer 8

Mildenburger argues that Hardin was wrong and we are not facing a tragedy of the commons. Hardin believed poor populations threatened the earth’s “carrying capacity”

Mildenberger that the tragedy of the commons addresses environmental scarcity to justify racial discrimination.

Question 9

What did Elinor Ostrom (the only woman to have received the Nobel Prize in Economics) say that could solve CAP?

Answer 9

Well-designed institutions solve the collective action problem e.g., self-determination, monitoring, sanctions

Question 10

According to Bernstein and Hoffmann, why is the tragedy of the commons a salient but limiting metaphor?

Answer 10

It is limiting in explaining why we are faced with the climate crisis → there are different ways to think about the climate crisis.

Credible commitments reduce incentives to freeride. We have institutions and global governance with credible commitments to reduce incentives to free-riding

Question 11

What is fractal:

Answer 11

The term ‘fractal’ refers to the complex nature of the carbon system.

Global carbon lock-in is not a single coherent global system but rather arises because multiple, interdependent systems at local, regional and national levels, as well as the economic activity within and among them, are locked into the use of fossil energy.

It is a self-reinforcing system: the more we produce fossil fuels, the more we depend on them.

Question 12

What is the fractal carbon trap?

Answer 12

The ‘trap’ is created by the fractal nature of the system.

There is a dependence on fossil fuels at multiple scales – household, community, region, country, international trade. These are interrelated systems - translates to our own community and ways of living and governing in the ways we use energy.

These similar patterns are happening across multiple systems and at different scales.

Question 13

What are the different elements of a theory of change?

Answer 13

1. Assumptions/evidence:
   - being clear about your assumptions
   - evidence about the problem: who is being affected and to what extent?
2. Interventions:
   - policy change, action, producing a film, etc.
3. Outcomes & Impacts
   - the result of the intervention
   - are the impacts long lasting? is it actually breaking us out of a carbon lock-in?
4. External drivers/conditions:
   - TOC is happening in a complex system- there can be other external drivers affecting it

Question 14

What are the 2 ways of breaking out of carbon lock-in?

Answer 14

1. Collective action
   - every nation does their fair share
2. Fractal:
   - disrupting carbon lock-in at different scales, which could be at the local level and could go back up to national, international