Mitchell Thomashow on Environmental Learning

From “Environmental Learning in the Anthropocene” by Robert Thomashow:

Forty-five years have passed since the first publication of the Whole Earth Catalog. How shall we conceive of environmental learning all these years later? And how can we build on some of the important concepts from the first phase of environmental studies—place-based learning, bioregionalism, wilderness conservation, ecological restoration, natural history education, environmental justice, ecological economics, global environmental governance—while we confront the Anthropocene reality?

I’ve been considering six dynamic challenges that must be incorporated, internalized, and activated to expand environmental learning:

The urban planet
A cosmopolitan culture
Ecological equity and social justice
The proliferation of information networks
Virtual natural history
Synthetic biology

These are by no means inclusive categories. There are countless ways to think about environmental learning in the Anthropocene. In my view, environmental studies is necessarily adaptive and the conditions that inform its structure are always in flux. Let’s launch the conversation.

Read the rest on Terrain.org.