December 6, 2015 - 15:49
Latour tells us “there is no distant place anymore”, in a sense he is saying that those horrible environmental issues that threaten to diminish our planet can no longer be deemed as fiction, they are not the boogie monster, they are very real and very near. He is saying the possibility of the earth that Kolbert described in “The Sixth Extinction” is not fiction, but a premonition. He proceeds with saying that “the very notion of objectivity has been totally subverted by the presence of humans in the phenomena to be described-and in the politics of tackling them.” Exploring the idea of objectivity being completely subverted, we can understand that it is easy for humans to think of us as the subject in relation to the earth who plays the object, however Latour challenges that perspective, stating that because of the phenomena with environmental issues and our weak politics of tackling them, the earth is the subject and we are the objects. We can see this today as we hear the news of tragic hurricanes and threatening sea levels and CO2 concentrations, the earth is hitting us where it hurts leaving us vulnerable in all aspects.
Bowers would argue that in order to prevent that, we have to utilize our ecological intelligence. He would say that we cannot discuss these issues and come up with solutions without thinking holistically and “taking account the relationships, contexts, and impacts of ideas and behaviors”. Van Jones arguably does utilize his ecological intelligence with the unique solutions he proposes to combat environmental issues. He looks at the problem abstractly, observes that poor neighborhoods are most vulnerable to environmental issues, that people living in poverty tend to be over-criminalized, and that those two things may be very deeply connected to the environmental issues we face today. Van Jones then uses his knowledge of how these seemingly different issues are connected and comes up with one solution to multiple problems. “We have people coming home from wars, coming home from prisons, coming out of high school with no job prospects whatsoever. Let us connect the people who most need work with the work that most needs to be done” with this Van Jones’ demonstrates his ability to observe that what we are currently doing is not what the planet needs from us, and further propose a better solution.
Part of ecological intelligence is to have the willingness to change things when they need to be changed. This idea is presented by Bowers when he praises the Quechua of Peruvian Andes for their ability to “observe the changes their environment is communicating” about what they should do. This is very different from what we see take place in “The Sixth Extinction” where people were not able to acknowledge what needed to be done to protect the planet and thus caused a mass-extinction. In a more positive note, Bowers does suggest that social scientists hold a bit of an understanding of how to use ecological intelligence when they study “the patterns that connect, such as how the patterns of discrimination and class differences impact the lives of people.” By acknowledging this aspect of ecological intelligence Bowers suggests that you must be able to subtract yourself from the equation in order to truly be able to observe what is taking place, analyze it, and furthermore be critical about in an effort to change it for the better.
Now comes the question of if/how we learn ecological intelligence. If the basic idea behind ecological intelligence is to approach issues with an inter-disciplinary perspective and to be willing to adjust anything for the health of our ecosystem, we need to be taught that money is not our most valuable player. I took an introduction to environmental studies class this semester and 90% of the discussions in class were about how we can approach environmental issues in an economically intelligent way. Even the simple fact that a class with the word “environment” in the name is dominated by conversation about economy proves that our priorities are not in place. We can assume that we are the ones who teach our children to value money more than the environment, considering the fact that from the very beginning of their education they are obligated to learn math in a way that constantly includes money in the word problems, yet environmental classes are not even offered until middle or high school (and even then they are optional). We grow up not thinking about the environment with the amount of frequency that we think about money, so it’s easy for us to understand that we have to eat tonight therefore we have to make money, but difficult for us to understand that we are completely dependent on the earth and need to communicate with it. This is why we see environmental issues as “distant” even though they are not.
It is important to start early when trying to implement ecological intelligence into our minds, therefore early education systems need to establish a curriculum that will teach our children to prioritize the environment and to consider how everything is very connected. We need to teach that the environment is not dependent on us but we are dependent on it and being so, we need to consider the environmental implications of everything. Middle school and high schools should challenge students with questions that require them to think about all aspects that may affect a problem and how to come up with a solution that is considerate of those aspects. Learning these skills at an early age will make people more adept at approaching issues that we currently face and issues that will arise in the future. Ecological Intelligence is something that we are all capable of if we understand it’s value and commit to utilizing it.