Hist. 392 Final
Great Departure
Beginning of the 20th century; nation state as a way to organize and control territory; industrialization pattern set in some places and drives imperialism and neocolonialism Gap between richest and poorest grows Emergence of entirely new technologies and industries World becomes more interconnected and interdependent; movement of ideas, capital, and labor Uneven benefits Exponential population growth
COP21 Paris
Climate Change Conference held in 2015 Creation of the Paris Climate Accords; set a goal to limit warming by 2 degrees Celsius, attempt to control it to 1.5 degrees Lack of protection for indigenous peoples led to protests Orange Cheeto Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accords
Pope Francis, Laudato Si' (2016)
Connectivity and holistic nature towards our environment and species that dwell with us Concerned with generosity with the poor; living a simple life Preservation of the climate is important to the health of human populations Dialogue must be shared with everyone World should be shared as a gift to all
Kyoto Protocol (1997)
Developed nations pledge to reduce emissions by an average of 5% by 2008-2012 Joint implementation, clean development mechanism, energy efficiency, emissions trading Byrd-Hagel Resolution: US won't join unless developing nations are held to same standards as developed nations; no economic harm to US President George W. Bush pulls the US out of Kyoto Becomes international law in 2005
IPCC
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Formed in 1988 to collect and assess evidence of climate change 1990: IPCC report concludes that temperatures have risen by .3-.6 degrees Celsius over the last century 2007: IPCC and former VP Al gore receive Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about climate change 2013: IPCC says scientists are 95% certain that humans are the cause of climate change since the 1950s
Stern Review (2006)
Nicholas Stern Climate Change could damaged Global GDP by up to 20% Curbing it would only cost 1% GDP Reversing global warming requires an urgent, world-wide shift towards a low carbon economy; delay makes the problem more difficult and more costly Developing nations must take significant action in addition to developed nations
Age of Ecological Innocence
Second wave movement following WWII; combination of increased capitalism, production, decolonialism, and an increase in leisure Post-WWII Americans and Europeans expressed a desire for more affluence; Earth thought to be an inexhaustible resource Re-occurrence of Neocolonialism; environmental degradation on a mass scale
Anthropocene
Steffen et al.: Human imprint on the global environment has become so large that it rivals some of the great forces of Nature in its impact on Earth No exact date; most agree it began with the Industrial Revolution Some say it began with the Great Acceleration or the Age of Ecological Innocence in the 1950s
Nuclear Winter
The apocalyptic effects of Nuclear War First strike scenarios, about 500 to 2000 warheads Carl Sagan used nuclear winter to make case for disarmament •(1983) Headed by Carl Sagan, a group of NASA-affiliated scientists (TTAPS group) published a report contending that ash, dust, and smoke from a nuclear exchange could reflect enough sunlight to create a catastrophic set of climate conditions that they dubbed "nuclear winter"; created significant controversy in the scientific community, largely because of the way Sagan (an experienced "science popularizer") used popular forums to spell out policy implications of TTAPS findings. •By 1986 a number of scientists, even Sagan's political allies (such as Schneider and Thompson), had begun to reassess the basic science of TTAPS. •Debate over nuclear winter further helped to realign increasingly bitter conflicts along partisan political lines.
Chipko/Chico Comparison (pp. 115-119)
•*CHIPKO*: Beginning in the 1970s in India, the Chipko movement, one of the most famous environmental initiatives of our times, is collectively constituted by protests where hill peasants stopped contractors from felling trees for external markets (movement of Himalayan peasants). -Each natural-resource conflict occurred by the process of: degradation-shortages-protest-controversy (local)-controversy (national). •*CHICO*: Campaign in the Brazilian Amazon associated with Chico Mendes, who was a labor organizer who achieved international fame for promoting the 'ecology of justice' in a region devastated by reckless economic exploitation (through stand-offs; first taking place in 1976). A series of stand-offs helped save 2 million acres of forest from conversion into pastureland. Mendes was killed in 1988 by ranchers. •*SIMILARITIES*: The Chipko movement and Chico Mendes's struggle are broadly comparable by which they are both struggles in which environmental protection has been inseparable from social justice. Both also drew on a long history of peasant resistance to the state and outsiders; thought up new and nonviolent forms of protest to stop tree-felling; protest forms in which tactically, women were the front-line of defense; leadership was provided by 'organic' intellectuals from *within* the community; both movements have taken recourse to an ideology that carries wide appeal in their societies; "Prolific misrepresentations of both movements by the international media". •*DIFFERENCES*: Clearing of Amazon represents a much more serious loss of biodiversity as compared to the ecological effects of Himalayan deforestation. Forest conflicts in the Amazon have been characterized by a much higher level of violence.
Chernobyl Disaster Facts: Causes, Disaster, Consequences
•26 April 1986, at 1:23am, a near meltdown occurred in reactor four of the Chernobyl nuclear energy station (during a safety test) in Ukraine (then part of the USSR), close to border with Belarus •A series of explosions occurred, followed by nuclear fire •Airborne radiation spread northward and westward, into Belarus, Poland, Scandinavia •Scientists give Chernobyl the maximum rating of 7 for measuring nuclear disasters •"Largest technological disaster of the twentieth century" (Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl, p.1) •Fukushima also a 7, some scientists think Fukushima was worse •Reasons Why- Poorly designed reactor, Incompetent staff, The lack of transparency exacerbated he negative effects as people did not know to take precautions in the immediate aftermath of the disaster Consequences -Toll is debated, estimates vary widely o Human costs-Deaths 31 to 64 deaths direct to the explosion and its immediate aftermath (staff and emergency responders) 4,000 to 200,000 from cancer caused by exposure to radiation o Other health effects Intellectual disabilities, genetic mutations, neurological disabilities, birth defects, non-lethal cancers o Environmental effects Poisoning of forests, crop lands, waterways
Liquidators
•Aleksandr Kudryagin •Compares working in the zone to a war— o with a perverse sense of freedom there normal rules of behavior are suspended o Anthropological concept of liminality (Victor Turner) o"There's a loneliness to freedom. I know it, all the ones who were at the reactor know it. Like a trench at the very front. Fear and freedom! You live for everything. That's not something you can understand, who live an ordinary life." (p. 188) •"So does vodka help or not? Well, at least psychologically it does. We believed that as much as we believed anything." (p. 189)
Consumerism vs. Productionism
•During the Cold War (1947-1991) •*Productionism*: the more that was produced, the better (esp. of and for heavy industry, e.g., coal, iron, steel, electricity); the communist Soviet Union and, after their 1949 victory, the Chinese communists' productionist biases had horrific environmental consequences: -In Soviet Union: Lake Baikal in Siberia was clouded by industrial pollution; the Aral Sea dried up as cotton fields received all its water; the air around most cities was among foulest on Earth; *heaps of industrial waste polluted land, air, and water*. -In China: "war on nature" led to steel complexes spewing pollutants, covering vegetation; rivers running black with industrial poisons; residents of Beijing wearing masks to keep charcoal dust out of their lungs; excessive amounts of water taken from the Yellow River for irrigation. •*Consumerism*: economic theory which states that a progressively greater level of consumption is beneficial to the consumers//a system of economy driven by consumer spending -The mass consumption culture was created in the U.S. in the 1930s to the 1950s. By the early 21st century, 70% of the domestic economy was devoted to producing consumer goods (in the beginning of the 20th century, 70% of domestic economy was devoted to producing producer goods). *Americans had come to equate consumer purchases with "freedom" and to condemn the Soviet Union for its absence. In the 1950s, the consumer society spread to Britain and Canada, and in the 1960s to France, Italy, other West European societies, Japan, and pockets in Latin American cities. -The consumerism of the West had significant environmental consequences: refining oil and burning gasoline polluted the air in virtually all major cities in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, and extracting the oil and moving it around the world left spills on land and sea; making cars creates nearly 30 tons of waste for ever ton of car made and uses charcoal burned from the Amazon rain forest, directly contributing to global warming and deforestation; fracking also significantly impacts water quality and (probably) seismic activity.
Environmentalism of the Poor (pp. 99-108)
•Guha first gives 5 examples of poor peoples' environmentalism (The Penan, Save the Narmada Movement, monoculture plantations of eucalyptus in Thailand, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, and Kenya's Green Belt Movement). •Guha uses "the environmentalism of the poor" as a "convenient umbrella term" that he uses for the varied forms of social action (struggles against environmental degradation and struggles for environmental renewal) taken by the poor. •It combines a concern for the environment with an often more visible concern for social justice. Because interventions such as commercial forestry, oil drilling, and large dams constitute a threat to rural livelihoods, the opposition to these interventions is as much a defense of livelihood as an 'environmental' movement. •"The fact that environmental degradation often intensifies economic deprivation explains the moral urgency of these movements of protest." •These struggles often begin with letters and petitions to persons of authority, and if this fails, followed by more direct forms of confrontation. Guha identifies 7 distinct forms of social protest. •"These protests, singly and collectively, are sometimes underwritten by a powerful indigenous ideology of social justice." •Striking feature of the environmentalism of the poor: "the significant and sometimes determining part played by women"; Guha argues that this is because of their "closer day-to-day involvement in the use of nature, and additionally from their greater awareness and respect for community cohesion and solidarity."
Third World Developmentalism
•In the early 1950s, leaders of several states (in particular Indonesia, Egypt, Yugoslavia, and India) started a "nonaligned" movement to keep out of the Cold War alliance systems. All of those countries plus Latin American states became lumped together as the "third world," in contrast to the "first world" of the industrialized capitalist world and the "second world" of the communist states. •Although there were many differences among third world states, they shared 3 important issues and problems. 1) Their economies had been controlled either by their colonial masters or a regional hegemon, which had kept them largely rural and suppliers of food and raw materials. Even after gaining political independence, their economies remained "dependent." To break that dependency became a goal of "development." 2) Because little industrial development and in some instances limited urbanization had occurred, third world states were predominantly rural peasant societies. 3) Decolonization and revolution set the stage for the massive post-WWII population explosion in third world countries. (High birthrates (characteristic of rural societies) continued after WWII, but the death rates dropped steeply because the World Health Organization (WHO) made modern drugs available to rural people. Infant mortality rates fell sharply and populations exploded, maintained by increased food supplies. In 1970 the world population was 2.5 billion and by 2010 the world population was over 7 billion; most of those additional billions were born and live in third world countries.) -With growing populations, development meant improving agriculture to increase the food supply. Trying to meet food demands by increasing the land under cultivation created environmental problems caused by deforestation and siltation. So to increase food production largely meant improving agricultural yields through irrigation and synthetic fertilizer (came to be known as "the green revolution" in the 1960s). *But even successfully implementing a green revolution would keep a third world country agricultural and poor; because of population increases and the relative price weakness of agricultural products, most people in the most of the third world got poorer in the second half of the 20th century.* The way out (for some countries) was industrialization. In the 1970s, structural changes in the world economy provided opportunities for industrializing third world countries; improvements in global transportation and communications made it possible for first world manufacturers (driven by consumer demands in the wealthy countries) to relocate plants to third world countries, especially in Asia and Latin America. -Developmentalist sought to alleviate poverty and help poor countries "catch up" with the wealthy industrialized world -Thus, 1945-1962 was an era of "ecological innocence"; of ignorance of the environmental costs of unchecked drive for production, consumption
Chernobyl Disaster: Gov't. Response & Present Status
•The Soviet government, despite the policy of glasnost then in effect, did not announce anything about the incident publicly for three days, While they tried to hide the event, at the same time the government frantically tried to minimize its effects •500,000 workers involved in some aspect of the response over the 29 years since its occurrence •The area around the plant remains closed off, though some scientists, workers, media, officials have been allowed in and others illegally enter the site •Ongoing attempts to seal off the ruins of reactor 4 itself •Interesting way the area is returning to/being reclaimed by nature •Radiation is invisible; quote from visit to site today: "this could be pristine wilderness, but it's not" o Red forest- changing green plants to red •Chernobyl forum: by 2000 about 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer have been diagnosed in exposed children, and continue to rise.
Scientific "Prehistory" of Global Warming
•These documents show that scientists have noted, and sought to understand, climate change for almost 200 years. •But, if we overestimate how they are "ahead of their time", we risk falling into the presentist trap. That is, we fail to appreciate fully how they are products of a particular place and time. In that way, we might ignore important aspects of their work and not see their nuances. •*Joseph Fourier* (1824): French mathematician, physicist; Theorized about climate change; Famous for being first to use the "greenhouse" metaphor (but it was not a major concern to him). •*John Tyndall*, "The Bakerian Lecture" (1861): Irish physicist, Conducted experiments that measured opacity of gases (CO2 & water vapor); Suggested that changes in their concentration may be responsible for climate change; But Tyndall was less concerned with climate change than he was with understanding the nature of heat. *(Heat, not climate, was a central concern of physicists in the 19th century.)* •*Svante Arrhenius* (1896): Swedish scientist; confirmed connection between CO2 concentrations and average global temperatures; tried to determine the mechanisms behind ice ages; wanted to explain global cooling rather than global warming •*G. S. Callendar* (1938): British steam engineer; Among first major studies to treat climate as a global system; modern theories of carbon dioxide and its link to climate change are based off of Callendar's findings (Callendar effect); Marginalized by the scientific establishment; People doubted whether human beings could affect the climate; He looked to the future, more than his predecessors had, to the question of predicting change *Historical evolution of the term and concept "climate"*:Used and discussed by ancient Greeks; Until very recently, it was mainly considered in local terms; "New orthodoxy": Climate change now widely accepted to exist and have anthropogenic causes; -1970s: Idea emerged (Report by the National Academy of Sciences in the US) -1988: Founding of IPCC, subsequent reports confirming this conclusion •Like those who came before them, people in the 19th century and much of the 20th tended to think of climate as determining human societies in local/regional terms, rather than in global terms.
Socialism and Environmentalism (Guha, CH 7)
•Weak environmentalist movements in Communist nations •Leon Trotsky's "conquest of nature"; view that socialism will bring about domination of nature, remaking it in service of man •Any small environmentalist movement seen as enemy of revolution in Soviet Union or China •"The ideology of state socialism is antithetical to environmentalism": in its worship of technology; in its desire to conquer nature; through its system of central planning in which pollution control comes in the way of production targets; and by throttling democracy
Anatoly Shimanskiy
•journalist: •"[H]asn't the old notion of the enemy been destroyed? The enemy is invisible, and he is everywhere. This is evil in a new guise." (p. 128) •"The most popular fable in the Zone is that Stolichnaya Vodka is the best protection against strontium and cesium" (p. 129) Overheard conversation: o"Oh, good people, there are so many mushrooms this year." "They're poisoned." o"Oh, strange person. No one's forcing you to eat them. Buy them, dry them up, and take them to the market in Minsk. You'll become a millionaire." (pp. 130-131) •Rumors: - "The Chernobylites are giving birth to children who have an unknown yellow fluid instead of blood. There are scientists who insist that monkeys became intelligent because they lived near radiation.
Lyudmilla Ignatenko
•wife of deceased fireman Vasily Ignatenko (5-23) •Husband called to reactors for "fire", not given protective gear •Doctors and Nurses attending exposed firemen later got sick and died from exposure •Attempted bone marrow operation, not successful •Was no longer treated like a person but a radioactive object with a strong density of poisoning (16) •Had to be buried in a special cemetery with protective casing •Daughter born with cirrhosis of the liver, congenital heart disease, lived only 4 hours
Rachel Carson
-American marine biologist, author, and conservationist whose book, Silent Spring, is credited with advancing the Global Environmental Movement (Guha claims it was the beginning of popular environmentalism) -Generated great controversy within governments, business community, centers of education and science -Led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides -Inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the US EPA and other environmental pieces of legislation (Clean Air, Clean Water, NEPA, ESA) -Posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter -Influential for the rise of ecofeminism and for many female scientists -"The book had a dramatic and simultaneous impact on public opinion, scientific reason, and research policy"
German Greens
-Germany's Green Party ("alternative political alliance") founded in 1979 (won representation at the national level in 1983); most successful Green Party -The Green Party transformed the political landscape of Germany. The Green's ideas that used to be considered non-conventional or marginal, are now discussed and even demanded by political parties elsewhere in the world. -Most European nations have their own Green Party -US Green Party is small with little success due to robust NGOs and 2 Party System -It is this party (and its success) that led to the identification of the color green with environmentalists.
Deep Ecology
-Originated in 1972 by the Norwegian Arné Naess -Biospheric egalitarianism: Humans exist on the same level as other living things-challenge to anthropocentrism -The worth of nonhuman beings is independent of their usefulness for human purposes (interests of nature are as important as the interests of humans) -Part of the Radical Environmentalist Movement in the 1970s (example: Earth First!)
Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro (1992)
172 gov'ts. were represented which led to the Climate Change Convention and then the Kyoto Protocol Bring emissions to 1990 levels Peace, sustainable development, and environmental protection are interdependent; warfare is inherently destructive of sustainable development Role of indigenous people, women, and youth
