With historically unprecedented power, we have become chief stewards of the Earth. How can we perform this task well? How can we ensure that future generations will be able to continue good stewardship?

The best answers begin with environmental literacy. Environmental education can shape every child’s awareness and direct every adult’s actions. But the environment is unlike all other subjects. In ecology, states Barry Commoner, “everything is connected to everything else.” Like the web of interdependent relationships in an ecosystem, the web of Environmental Studies is exciting and complex. Every thread we pick up leads to unexpected places—and to other threads. We can hardly understand the causes and significance of tropical deforestation, for instance, without knowing something about biodiversity and species endangerment, climate change and atmospheric chemistry, soil science and agricultural practices, anthropology and the cultural traditions of forest peoples, and the economics and politics of road building and oil exploration. How can one person make sense of it all? How can it be learned, and how can it be taught?

In the past three centuries, with the rise of modern science—engineering, powerful technologies, advances in medicine, and specialized research—human knowledge has accelerated, in large measure by dividing into specific disciplines. Boundaries of these disciplines at times change and reform, and advances in one discipline may trigger or influence discoveries in another. (For example, biology and chemistry share a shifting boundary in biochemistry; the study of anthropology has affected both law and literature.) Discoveries at the leading edges of specific areas of study add knowledge and new disciplines arise, breaking off and growing from older ones.

Yet now, our exploration of the natural world—the study of Earth and life on Earth—as well as of the massive impacts that human beings now exert on Earth and all its life, uncovers overarching questions, problems, and concepts that transcend the boundaries of any one discipline or approach. If we are to direct intelligently how our activities affect Earth and life on Earth (including our own lives), then it becomes vital to study institutions, beliefs, values, laws, economies, and history in light of what we know about the natural world. Let’s look at one specific example.

Changes in Earth’s climate are so complex that simply to measure those changes and to understand why they occur requires the methods of atmospheric science, oceanography, planetary science, climate history, mathematical modeling and supercomputing, chemistry, statistics, physics, and other disciplines. But measuring any change is only the first step. Next, to grasp how climate change affects life on Earth involves biological study, including species migration, endangerment, and extinction, as well as ecology, natural history, soil science, forestry, and hydrology. Finally, because human activity contributes to climate change, we need to examine how historical, religious, and philosophical assumptions, economic policies, laws, international treaties, building codes, engineering decisions, consumer choices, renewable sources of energy, conservation, and even sequestration of carbon dioxide will, in combination, affect climate change. As the interconnected character of these and many other issues grew increasingly evident, scientists, writers, and educators looked for ways to study them together. They also searched for a term to describe that kind of study. “Environmental” is a capacious word not tied to one discipline or way of thinking.

Routinely and accurately applied to aspects of many natural sciences, “environmental” also characterizes important elements of law, politics, economics, and the other social sciences, as well as approaches and emphases in literary criticism, the arts, ethics, and spiritual values. “Environmental” can refer to the natural world, the world built by humans, or a combination of both. “Studies” in the plural embraces multiple sets of disciplines and problems, areas and issues that by definition are not self contained. They lead to one another. In the last decade of the twentieth century, “Environmental Studies” became a flexible, common term, perhaps the most common term, for collective efforts to understand the interrelated systems and phenomena of nature, including the human presence in those systems and its effects on them.

Environmental Studies establishes knowledge of specific natural phenomena and specific human institutional beliefs and practices. It then mediates between these. Environmental Studies characterizes complex natural conditions on Earth and describes the interface of human with non-human activity. To establish such knowledge, to perform such a mediation, and to promote desirable human action, Environmental Studies relies not only on multiple disciplines but also on key terms and concepts such as “the commons,” “wilderness,” and “the precautionary principle.” This last principle might be roughly summarized as follows: Do not undertake any (environmental) action until you know with a fair degree of certainty what its consequences, unintended as well as intended, will be. So that the action may be weighed against alternatives, including doing nothing, do not assume lack of harm unless lack of harm is demonstrated. The word “conservation” refers more explicitly to the preservation and management of natural resources, species, or habitats. Conservation forms a key  part of Environmental Studies. “Ecology” remains most often applied to biological studies, to the relationship between organisms and their environment; however, since its essence is to trace relationships and interdependencies, “ecology” has acquired a larger, metaphoric valence in areas such as “industrial ecology” or “ecoengineering.” “Sustainable development,” a key though problematic concept, addresses how humans might live so that we do not impair but may even enhance the ability of future generations to enjoy a standard of living and quality of life as high or higher. Yet, sustainable development does not necessarily guarantee the continued existence of certain species or the preservation of all resources. It values nature not so much for its own sake as for our ability to enjoy continued or even higher levels of use. All these terms and their associated areas of interest interpenetrate one another. For example, conservation biology involves ecology. Similarly, sustainable development invokes ecoengineering and conservation. All these exist under the larger umbrella of Environmental Studies.

A working description of Environmental Studies thus involves several levels. First, Environmental Studies pursues and draws upon individual disciplines to understand the constituent elements of larger problems and issues. Then, to grasp and define such problems and issues, Environmental Studies combines the results of an appropriate set of these disciplines and may even foster new ones. Finally, in practical terms, Environmental Studies brings together relevant disciplines and concepts to address environmental issues and to resolve environmental problems. This process may entail technological applications, institutional reforms, government regulations, individual actions, or all of these. Environmental Studies engages science, social practices, values, and beliefs. Environmental Studies is a cornerstone of education and public policy. It calls on all of us. The environment is too precious and too complex to be left to special interests or to any one group of scientists, economists, philosophers, or poets.

Embracing so much of importance, Environmental Studies offers no easy formulas or answers. It is not a way to master facts that will by themselves determine policies and actions. Yet, Environmental Studies is the way to see how those facts are discovered and determined, how the interpretation of those facts may be contested, and then how those judgments might lead to actions,
policies, laws, and treaties. Conflicts and disagreements are inevitable. Environmental Studies engenders debates and difficult decisions. It sharpens awareness that environmental policies often entail trade-offs, compromises, and periodic revisions. While casting in doubt the effectiveness of a militant environmental purity, this process, often a political one, by no means rules out ideals or idealism. The fact that Environmental Studies now commands huge interest and is regarded as central to the education of every world citizen is grounds for great hope.

To undertake Environmental Studies is to re-envision liberal education in the arts and sciences. This book therefore poses questions of personal, civic, ethical, political, and global import, and provides perspectives from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. A liberal education is disinterested and self-critical. It encourages the open-minded, open-ended pursuit of life’s large questions wherever they may lead, including into differences of opinion, as long as those opinions are informed.

Disinterestedness and open-mindedness do not mean standing on the sideline. No course of study can claim more final practicality than what is presented in this book, or in Environmental Studies generally. It is hard to imagine a more useful course of study, or one that could lead to a greater number of careers and professions. It is impossible to glimpse something related to the fate of humanity and nature and not feel compelled to advocate certain actions over others. If liberal education is disinterested, and if it holds no direct agenda merely for personal reward or advancement, this does not mean that it should avoid conclusions about what is good—or harmful—for society and civic health, or for humanity and nature at large. The final goal of knowing is to act with greater foresight, to cherish what we know, and then to love what we cherish, not only in words but
also in deeds.

Individuals and corporate bodies—companies, organizations, and governments—that know a lot but only about one thing, or that have an intensive interest but only in a single goal, are capable of doing a great deal of unintended harm, environmentally
and otherwise. Because they know little about other things, and even less about how they all connect, they can damage the long-term prospects for humanity and nature. In every facet of society, we need leaders, citizens, and consumers who attain a broad, holistic view.

Some societies have sustained mutually beneficial relations with the environment for long periods of time. In the case of certain indigenous peoples, their science, culture, and environment are not just intertwined, they are unified. An intimate, practical awareness of the environment in a particular locality—of flora and fauna, of seasons, skies, and landscape—is the soil out of which a community’s laws, trade, morals, and myths grow organically. In such a context, the notion of spirituality, justice, or commerce that does not refer to the local landscape and to the manner in which it must continue to sustain the group would appear absurd. An individual becomes attuned to fine changes in the local environment and realizes how each action affects it. Such an understanding of, and sympathy with, the environment we call holistic.

Citizens of industrial and post-industrial cultures can explore a universe much wider than the one available to many indigenous peoples—through travel, books, scientific instruments, and electronic communication. This universe is so broad and rich, the information so complex, that it is hard for anyone to take it all in at once. While we still derive our sustenance from the land, water, and air, our culture no longer automatically attunes us to that fact, and, as such, our stewardship of the environment is no longer instinctual and habitual. The living world—the animate and inanimate bound in their larger, shared environment—is a shattered continuum. It is an evolutionary process at times broken, stressed, or partly destroyed, often by natural events but increasingly by human activity. Yet it remains a whole. If we wish to understand our relationships to the global environment as well as to the environment in our own backyards in ways that encourage us to make intelligent choices and changes—if we, too, want stewardship to become second nature—then we need to shape a new holistic vision.

We need to rediscover and to see again, as if for the first time, the connections between our physical and biological support systems, our political and economic institutions, and our habits as ethical beings. This is the task of Environmental Studies. It’s not for the lazy or fainthearted. Instead, it’s exciting, it represents the future, and it’s the right choice.