Environmentalisms: The New and The Old
In reflecting on my realization of the complexity of “environmentalism,” my mind initially travels to my first fall at Middlebury. I was taking Contested Grounds: one of the four core classes required for the environmental studies major. A semester-long research project in high school had piqued my interest in environmental studies, and I was eager to pursue it further. Although I had an idea of environmentalism prior to Contested Grounds, it was not long before I felt that concept begin to unravel as our class poked holes in the traditional narratives surrounding “the environment.” I thought back to high school and the research work I had done there that informed the majority of my perceptions around the environment that I held coming into the class.
As juniors in high school, we were required to write a junior research paper. We could choose any topic that interested us as long as we could connect it to U.S. history (and also produce around 50 pages of content). I chose to write mine on Earth Day and the history of the environmental movement that arose during the late 60s. My paper addressed the motivations behind the environmental movement in the 60s, such as the pressing concerns over water and air pollution, and the environmental messaging that came as a result.
Prior to that research process, I felt I cared about the environment and matters of climate justice, but it was all pretty uninformed. For instance, I would advocate for endangered species conservation, while not knowing what was actually leading to the endangerment of certain species in the first place. In recognizing this, I decided to dive deeper into the environmental movement in an effort to ground myself properly in environmentalism. I envisioned that writing about the history of Earth Day would help me give off the impression of an environmentalist, which is what I was ultimately hoping for. I thought environmentalism was cool, and I wanted to be thought of as someone who really embodied that idea.
In looking at the environmental issues at hand in the 60s, I saw the notion of environmentalism as the “saving grace” of the planet. It became apparent that as the concerns around the conservation, preservation, and restoration of the earth grew, our country made progress and was able to brighten the future of the planet. In this way, my perception of environmentalism really became one of salvation. In my mind, if environmentalism was our ticket out of the environmental crisis back then, it could also help lead us out of the crisis we faced in the present. It was the solution. As such, I felt there was a call for environmentalists to really spearhead a second wave of the environmental movement, and after completing that project, I felt I finally had the tools to participate.
This entire perception of environmentalism was then first challenged as I sat in Contested Grounds one day early in my first Middlebury semester. My class dissected the concept of an “environmentalist” as it related to environmentalism. We asked questions of what it means to be an environmentalist that fed into discussions around inclusion in the space of the outdoors. For example, we discussed “How might the connection to ‘nature’ be different for the African American than it is for the white American?” Or we inquired about the implications of the lack of females in the traditional list of environmentalists like Muir, Thoreau, and Leopold.
This created a bit of a complex for me, being a woman and a person of color, because I suddenly felt like I might not actually hold the membership I thought I held within that group. If my conception of an environmentalist was one who prescribes to environmentalism, then where was my place? Did I still “belong” or have a legitimate voice amongst the environmentalists? I wasn’t sure. For so long, I felt I did. But it was at that moment that I felt that my voice might not always be heard or recognized within the grounds of environmentalism. It seemed like that part of my identity I had constructed back in high school had just been undermined, and my mind was inundated with thoughts: Was the image of environmentalism I was projecting actually what I thought it was? Should I even be projecting one at all? Is that a group I still want to prescribe to?
As I tried to locate myself with respect to environmentalism and its changing definition, I found myself returning to my junior year project and my idea of environmentalism then. Given my sentiments from Contested Grounds, I realized my new understanding of environmentalism ought to be one that acknowledged and pushed back on the neglect of women and people of color in the traditional narratives of the environment. It needed to encompass all the layers and complexities that come in dealing with matters of the environment. My old notion of environmentalism could not be the solution, as I had first hypothesized.
I used to hold an idyllic conception of environmentalism, one stripped of its true layers. In this way, I am fortunate for those conversations within Contested Grounds that encouraged me to redefine what environmentalism meant to me. Now as I work to fully understand its complex nature, I am still deciding if I think this “new” environmentalism will truly be an effective solution for helping us at this time of climate emergency.
