Does Environmental Studies Need Science? A Polemic

I know that's a provocative question.  Spoiler alert: obviously, we need science.  But read on: it's complicated.  Studying the environment is not the domain of scientists-- nature itself is at stake when we assume so.

Let's start with a few vignettes of weird science/studies moments in my career, to set the stage:

- In grad school, a student I TA'ed for thought that "science was in the driver's seat, social sciences was in the passenger seat, and the humanities and arts was in the back seat" of some proverbial environmental studies car.

- I just completed an external review of the Environmental Studies program at my institution, which I lead, and despite about 20 other programs existing on our campus that do variations of environmental science, the review stated that our program--the ONLY one in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences-- should collaborate more with and integrate more sciences.

- Whenever an article gets written in our student newspaper about what environmental studies students are doing (e.g. collaborating with the Art department to create an environmental photography course, or collaborating with journalism to make climate change PSAs), environmental "science" gets the credit, just because everybody confuses environmental sciences and environmental studies, and thinks they basically do the same thing anyway, so who cares.

- My neighbor keeps asking me things about biology and ecology because I have a PhD in environmental studies.  I don't know shit about the lifecycle of that bug, dude.

- Colleagues keep asking me to help them out with science.  Sarah, can you come lecture about climate science to my class?  That would be funny.

- Colleagues who do work in social theory or critical race/gender/colonialism studies always dismiss me as a tree-hugging, deluded, unsophisticated positivist.  Secretly, sometimes, it makes me want to whisper assurances in the hallway, "I hate science.  Shhh.. Don't tell anybody."  Actually, I'm always saying this: "I'm terrible at science. I have no science background. I'm sorry I can't help with your science need."

- Students interested in the environmental studies program here always want to get their hands dirty, get in "the field," and save the planet one species at a time, or so it seems.  But they are bad at and/or hate science and math.  Is environmental studies a good fit for them?  HELL NO!  Who do you think we are, watered-down, easy, wannabe environmental science?

- When my students make appointments with the career center to discuss grad school, internships, etc, they get assigned the science advisor, which helps them NOT ONE BIT.  In fact, it just amps up their anxiety that environmental studies won't get them any jobs, that they don't fit anywhere, their newfound skills have no value, etc. This is really damaging.

-  In recruitment, advising, and marketing, misrepresenting environmental studies as "like environmental science, with less math" is not only inaccurate, and not only does it shortchange the awesome other stuff we do, but it just repeats back to prospective students that non-science/math skills are worthless, and if they pursue them on their path to save the environment, they are not doing good enough work.

You may be thinking by now that I have a complex, a chip on my shoulder, about being mistaken as an environmental scientist, and the program I lead and the students thriving in it confused for environmental science.  Ok, I may be a bit annoyed.  Let me rephrase that.  It really bugs me.  I'll tell you why.

Let me begin by assuring you that I do not actually hate science.  I am married to a scientist, and nearly everybody in my family is a scientist.  As an interdisciplinary scholar, I value science more than the average person.  There are so many reasons we need to advocate for science right now, no joke.  Science is under attack, and I don't want my critiques or grudges to just add fuel to the conflagration against truth and facts going on in current debates about climate change, the dismantling of the EPA, etc. etc. Scientists, I am with you.

However, I do want to examine some of the assumptions I take issue with when people confuse environmental studies for environmental science, assume the studies field is just a watered down, wannabe science, or tell me I need more science to make my work credible. I love scientists, but the study of the environment is not just about nature "out there"-- ecosystems and plants and weather and carbon cycles.  Anybody who believes as much is perpetuating the dichotomy between humans and nature that got us in trouble in the first place.

Problematic Binaries
Hard vs. soft knowledge
Male vs. female
Thought vs. emotion
Mind vs. body
Human vs. animal
Applied vs. Theoretical
Action vs. Speech
Knowledge vs. Imagination

Need I say more?

Information-Deficit Myth
When we say that we need more science to make our work more robust, we are implying that more quantitative or "hard" information will help us do something better.  It may help us think better, and we may need more science to make the work more robust. But robust, actionable ideas don't always need science, and when it comes to thinking about how to tackle climate change and global environmental injustice, in fact, I would argue that we don't need more science.  Kari Norgaard does a great job in her fantastic book, Living in Denial, showing that the lack of action around climate change does not have to do with lack of information.  Even scientists the world over are saying, "more information won't make people change their minds".  This "information deficit model" that underpins the arguments for more science fail to see that our problems are fundamentally social and political.  Figuring out how to change society, alter political will, envision sustainable futures, critically analyze scientific claims about the environment, and develop resilience at the individual and collective scales will all require imaginative, cultural, political changes.

How can we move the dial on these domains?  The non-science-based environmental studies fields, such as environmental ethics, environmental history, environmental justice, environmental humanities, environmental art, environmental sociology, not to mention all kinds of non-academic bodies of knowledge.

Back-Seat Driving
Going back to that godawful metaphor about the artists in the back seat, I want to also challenge the assumption that scientists are producing primary knowledge and information, while the artists and humanists' job is to communicate that information to the public, to get more people to care about it, and to generally be the cheerleaders for the scientists who are doing the real work.  I love cheerleading scientists, don't get me wrong, but do you see the problem here?  This idea that humanists and artists have value only to the extent that they do the work of communicating, of changing "hearts and minds," is a very limited notion of what they do-- also known as the "translation model."  Humanists and artists are creating their own original forms of knowledge about nature, for one.

Further, the conceit that science is not objective truth, existing outside of social meaning, political power, and historical context. Scholarship analyzing the relationship between science and art in terms of how they affect cultural knowledge is robust. I'd recommend checking some of it out.  CP Snow's Two Cultures, Nabhan's Cross-Fertilizations, Latour's We Have Never Been Modern, Harding and Figueroa's Science and Other Natures, Donna Haraway's work, Peter Bowler's History of the Environmental Sciences, the list goes on and on.  Then there's all the critical science studies coming out of indigenous studies, feminist studies, and cultural studies.

It is just so egregiously uninformed to assume that culture--the area of study of social sciences, humanities, and arts-- isn't itself producing the lenses through which we even come to think about science as truth.  To put it another way, culture makes science, not the other way around.  When people assume that there's no difference between environmental studies and environmental science, they're ignoring all the ways that science is imbricated in culture, and the real material impacts that culture has.

Positivist Conceit: Science as Knowledge/Power
Which leads us to the question, Who's an agent of knowledge? Why do we surrender truth to experts? Within what kinds of institutions/structures are these people deemed experts?  What about power and politics in determining who gets to be an expert on the environment?  Here, I love Timothy Luke's essay on Environmental Studies as Eco-Managerialism, in which he uses Foucault's ideas of power/knowledge formation to rip apart the use of environmental science fields as a way for capitalism to commodify all nature.  I wouldn't myself go that far, but it's a provocative essay to teach, and gets to this point well.

When we assume that environmental scientists are the only ones who have anything true to say about nature, that they're in the driver's seat so to speak, we devalue all the other claims to truth about nature that ever existed espoused by anybody else.  We perpetuate power relations of the status quo and say that some kinds of claims about the environment or nature are valid while others are not.  How do you think this pans out for all kinds of disempowered, oppressed groups?  Why do you think environmental science is such a white field? Oops, did I say that out loud?

Environmental Studies is Doing Something Different
Do you want to know what we're doing over here in environmental studies, and why I'm kicking up such a stink about how all that work gets either ignored or coopted when you fail to distinguish between environmental studies and environmental science?  Ok, I'll try to summarize in a short paragraph the entire purpose of an entire suite of fields, from environmental humanities and environmental justice to ecocriticism and eco-media studies and eco-art, and environmental political theory and queer ecological studies and critical technology studies and critical geography and ecofeminist theory and traditional ecological knowledges, and... Hang on, let me catch my breath.



Environmental non-science studies has some stuff it wants to do that's important. Loads of people have explained this better than I will here.  Try seeing the vimeo video on the environmental humanities, or Astrida Neimanis' essay on four problems/directions, for starters. But to be really basic, the non-science kind of environmental studies seeks to achieve these things:

1. help us understand political, geographic, cultural, historical, emotional, and economic contexts within which environmental problems arise, are framed, and are addressed as such
2. help us imagine, using this knowledge, better futures
3. give us tools to understand how environmental issues are entangled in other problems
4. help us understand how identities are entangled in environmental ideas, so that we can cooperate on environmental things better
5. help us grasp how social justice/power structures interplay with environmental problems and claims
6. tell different stories about the environment to change existing power relations 
7. using scholarship, provide us with the affective tools needed to face problems, with attention to positionality and difference

Just to name a few things...

And you can see why science may be helpful in all of these goals, right?  YES, we need science to do some of these things.  I'm not rejecting science!!!  Let me repeat. Cultivating a strong knowledge of how science operates in culture and across history is not a rejection of it.  This isn't the same as not "believing" in evolution or climate change.

I'm saying, please don't confuse these goals with what science is doing, and please stop giving scientists credit for our work. We are DOING DIFFERENT THINGS. Sometimes those things are complementary, and sometimes they're in healthy tension.  That's good. It's called the marketplace of ideas. It's good.

Students of environmental studies need to get over their environmental-science envy, or their science-inferiority complex as I like to call it, and get down to the business of doing some awesome work and awesome thinking.  Bring in some science, sure, but be thoughtful about which science to bring in, and when.  Scientific literacy is really important here, for sure.  But to suggest that the science that environmental studies students need is oceanography, or wildlife, or earth systems, is to repeat all kinds of troubling assumptions about what the environment is in the first place.  Why not toxicology, epidemiology, or citizen science?  What about TEK?

When we make claims about needing environmental studies to be grounded in science, we really have to think carefully about what knowledges we're privileging, which sciences we're implying are needed, and what definition of "the environment" we're perpetuating.

After reading this, I hope you might actually confuse a few scientists with me, see how that shakes down.  "So, you're providing a roadmap for a just and sustainable future, based on critical analysis of how we got in this pickle? Oh no, you're counting bugs? Oops, sorry, I confused you for someone who is actually in charge of driving this car."  That's obviously over the top, and I apologize to all my beloved science colleagues and friends reading this, but the reversal of roles does reveal the irksomeness, eh?

So, the answer to the question is, our need for science depends entirely on the question we're asking.  I'll boldly state also, that sometimes, for some of the biggest questions we need to answer these days, experts in culture, identity, power, politics, history, discourse, and justice have a huge role to play in the climate movement.