Wicked Problems

I remember enrolling in an Environmental Ethics class at Front Range Community College (a small community college in Colorado) - in 2020. Even though I had always wanted to attend art school, I couldn’t afford tuition at a pricy private school, so I enrolled in what I could afford - reasonably priced community college courses online through a Colorado community college. I wasn’t even living in Colorado at the time, but had an ex boyfriend who owned a condo in boulder, and he let me use his address so I could get in-state tuition.

I have always loved mother nature and as I had some internal dialogue with myself that year, and agreed with my inner being to “do this college thing” … I flipped through the course catalogue and found an environmental ethics course. I signed up for the course and showed up for it. My mom grew up going on walks with me through the prairie in Illinois and these daily walks are some of my favorite childhood memories. I also grew up going to the Morton Arboretum and learning about different plant and tree species. This is a subject that I still enjoy learning about, at 29.

Now, the first thing that’s a little strange about doing the college thing online is the use of technology - specifically, of webcams. You have to point your webcam at your face and smile, sort’ve like you’re taking a school picture, to let the teacher know that you are present and accounted for. So, not only are you listening to what’s going on in class but there’s also another layer. You’re aware that you may be being watched by some other random person on the internet while you are “enjoying the privilege of a college education”. You’re sitting there, behind your computer, with the intention of “participating in class” - but there’s this level of being watched by someone else that adds a level of hyper-vigilance to the experience. Now I’m not saying that this a little bit creepy, but it’s a little bit creepy. So here I was, sitting in an Environmental Ethics course, looking into my webcam, with my face on the internet, listening to a teacher in Colorado ramble on about environmental ethics and the environmental concerns that the state of Colorado faces due to …well, basically, oil companies and housing developers not having respect for the land. I mean, this isn’t a new story - I wasn’t learning anything new in this class.

One of the topics that came up in our course was the idea of a “wicked problem”. Now, as far as environmental ethics goes - when we talk about a “wicked problem” we are not talking about a witch problem, or a wicked witch problem. There is no wicked witch with a broomstick who lives way up in the sky, changing the PH levels of the water that comes down from the clouds and home-brewing up acid rain. No no no, my friends, this is not the case at all. The wicked problems don’t have anything to do with the wicked witch of the west, and they don’t have anything to do with the Broadway show “Wicked” either. There is no Idina Menzel in the cast of this Wicked. 

However, wicked problems are pretty…unpopular. A wicked problem, according to an environmental ethics textbook - is something that arises out of several complex problems. For example, water pollution is considered a “wicked problem” - due to the fact that there are several factors that contribute to it. One of the factors that contributes to water pollution are corporations that dump toxins into oceans and rivers, another factor of water pollution could be that the public trashes beaches with beer cans, etc etc. The reason why the problem is considered “wicked” has to do with the fact that there are many sources contributing to the issue that are beyond researcher’s and scientists and environmentalists control. 

I noticed, though, while the professor was teaching that when she said that these problems were wicked - that they were something that could not be defeated. Now, I don’t know if anyone else grew up reading fantasy novels but there has always been this tug and pull in fiction books and folklore between the great forces of good and the great forces of evil. While the great forces of good are fighting for purity, the great forces of evil are giving the corporate executives of BP tax breaks. However, the professor seemed to believe that the environmental problems that we faced are in fact, unsolvable, and wanted us to talk about the reasons why the wicked problems were wicked, without giving us the hope that the knowledge we were gaining could actually help us in the future to solve these problems.

Now, I could be wrong - but I thought that college was supposed to be a place where we discover our passions and talents and share those with the world. So maybe someone in that class had the passion or talent for solving a wicked problem but this professor’s crappy attitude and adherence to the status quo as she graded her papers in the morning amounted to some student not believing that they had the capacity to help the environment as a student of “environmental ethics”. It felt a little like some sort of right winged Illuminati force was hanging out with this teacher and telling her that she shouldn’t encourage her students to make a difference in the world. You wouldn’t tell a student going to school to become a heart surgeon that they couldn’t save someone’s life just because it’s difficult to perform a complex congenital heart surgery. You would teach them how to perform this surgery and have them study it thoroughly. 

And that right there is the issue with environmental science education versus, say, going to school to become a doctor or a dentist. Most teachers and professors who are running the programs don’t believe that the work they are doing can actually change the world. Maybe they are wrong though - look at the positive impacts of windmills and of the clean energy that people have created. That’s one successful area of environmental science. All I’m saying here is that homo sapiens are very smart when we are allowed to be, and if we can figure out how to build grand pyramids like Machu Picchu, or do stuff like program AI, or if I can figure out directions in the middle of Mexico - then we most likely can figure out how to solve some of these problems that seem SO big and so unsolvable. We need to drop the narrative that we tell kids in school that says “hey, you decided to become an ethics major, AND you care about trees, AND you parents might be hippies - so therefore, your life, and the life of the planet, is fucked”. No. We need to stand up for our capacity to critically think, one day at a time. 

No one mourns the wicked, and we don’t have to mourn wicked problems. If educational systems started treating environmental science students with the same respect that they treat students that want to go into the field of medicine, our planet would have an entirely different trajectory. It’s a value system issue.