April 29 - Inequality - Memos

[jamesallenevans]

Leave below as comments your memos that grapple with the topic of Inequality and Conflict (and their interaction with other existential questions) inspired by the readings, movies & novels (at least one per quarter), your research, experiences, and imagination! Also add a thumbs up to the 5 memos you find most awesome, challenging, and discussion-worthy!

Recall the following instructions: Memos: Every week students will post one memo in response to the readings and associated topic. The memo should be 300–500 words + 1 visual element (e.g., figure, image, hand-drawn picture, art, etc. that complements or is suggestive of your argument). The memo should be tagged with one or more of the following:

origin: How did we get here? Reflection on the historical, technological, political and other origins of this existential crisis that help us better understand and place it in context.

risk: Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the risk associated with this challenge. This risk analysis could be locally in a particular place and time, or globally over a much longer period, in isolation or in relation to other existential challenges (e.g., the environmental devastation that follows nuclear fallout).

policy: What individual and collective actions or policies could be (or have been) undertaken to avert the existential risk associated with this challenge? These could include a brief examination and evaluation of a historical context and policy (e.g., quarantining and plague), a comparison of existing policy options (e.g., cost-benefit analysis, ethical contrast), or design of a novel policy solution.

solutions: Suggestions of what (else) might be done. These could be personal, technical, social, artistic, or anything that might reduce existential risk.

framing: What are competing framings of this existential challenge? Are there any novel framings that could allow us to think about the challenge differently; that would make it more salient? How do different ethical, religious, political and other positions frame this challenge and its consequences (e.g., “End of the Times”).

salience: Why is it hard to think and talk about or ultimately mobilize around this existential challenge? Are there agencies in society with an interest in downplaying the risks associated with this challenge? Are there ideologies that are inconsistent with this risk that make it hard to recognize or feel responsible for?

nuclear/#climate/#bio/#cyber/#emerging: Partial list of topics of focus.

Movie/novel memo: Each week there will be a selection of films and novels. For one session over the course of the quarter, at their discretion, students will post a memo that reflects on a film or fictional rendering of an existential challenge. This should be tagged with:

movie / #novel: How did the film/novel represent the existential challenge? What did this highlight; what did it ignore? How realistic was the risk? How salient (or insignificant) did it make the challenge for you? For others (e.g., from reviews, box office/retail receipts, or contemporary commentary)?

[starmz123]

framing #solutions

Chakrabarty draws a distinction between the 'globe' of globalisation and the 'globe' of global warming, taking us away from the political concerns of international justice and to the question of humanity's role on a planet filled with non-humans. However, I am unclear what the implications of Chakrabarty's conclusion are—in particular, Chakrabarty argues that "the conversation [about taking non-humans seriously] will not proceed very far without negotiating the terrain of post-colonial and post-imperial formations of the modern." Is this a claim about the sociopolitical feasibility of seriously considering the moral value of non-humans or of the philosophical tractability of attempting such a conversation without first tackling modernity? The former would be a practical question and hence a debate over empirical evidence, whereas the latter is more a theoretical contention. Either way, I struggle to see the same weightiness that Chakrabarty lends to this issue.

Firstly, there have been movements that advocate for extending moral consideration to non-human actors, such as the animal liberation movement. While such beliefs are still not mainstream, arguably the movement has played an important role in increasing awareness of inhumane farming and demand for animal product alternatives, which has bled into policy worldwide. Ironically, much of that demand is driven by human self-interest—for example, animal agriculture is often cited as a major contributor to climate change. However, the byproduct of moving away from animal agriculture will be improved welfare of non-humans, indicating that there is some feasibility around moving away from anthrocentrism even without tackling this issue of modernity. On the other hand, I concede that it remains to be seen whether we will ever morally value non-humans without first understanding our formations of modern society.

Secondly, there are other scholars who are similarly trying to negotiate these two understandings of humanity without explicitly addressing modernity, suggesting that attempting to do so is philosophically tractable. For example, in The Land of the Open Graves (2015) De León conceptualizes agency as emerging from interactions between human and non-human actors, which he terms the 'hybrid collectif.' De León applies this hybrid collectif to the political issue of immigration and demonstrates how the hybrid collectif illuminates the role of the U.S. government (specifically, border control) in the deaths of people attempting border crossings, which are conventionally attributed to the non-human cause of the desert's harsh condition. To me, this seems like a reasonable argument for taking non-humans seriously in a political environment even though De León does not seem to negotiate post-colonial and post-imperial conceptions of the modern—if anything, the migrants portrayed in The Land of the Open Graves are bound up in the human-centric concept of emancipation (e.g. reaching the U.S. as a form of freedom), and De León does not explicitly touch upon this.

Overall, I remain somewhat dubious of Chakrabarty's claim that humanity is incapable of giving animals political and moral consideration without first negotiating our conceptions of modernity. It seems that there are already efforts underway which do not address the issue Chakrabarty raises—but much of my skepticism may be dispelled once I become clearer on his views.

[dramlochun]

This week’s reading titled Global Warming in an Unequal World brought to light the plight of developing countries trying to modernize while facing pressure from already developed countries not to use fossil fuels to do so like they did a few decades prior. In discussions and in some of the readings this week, solutions such as increased government subsidies were brought up as potential policies that could be implemented. However, a case study of China and its race to build green energy infrastructure reveals many holes in this solution often proposed by developed countries for developing countries.

China has one of the largest new energy vehicle (NEVs) markets in the world. For example, through 2020, cumulative sales topped 5.5 million units in China. To put this into perspective, China accounts for 42% of the world’s plug-in car fleet and 98% of the world’s electric bus deployment. However, not all is good in China. This surge in NEVs was largely fueled by heavy government subsidization of both NEV manufacturing and development and energy production for China’s energy grid. In recent times, this has resulted in blind investment and unauthorized construction of green energy projects resulting in overcapacity. To combat these issues, China began drastically reducing subsidies for the green energy industry starting in 2019, and since, new problems have arisen. Overcapacity without subsidies to buoy the market will heavily weigh investments into green energy projects like solar and wind and NEV car manufacturers. Without sufficient demand at the higher prices of energy generated by renewable sources, these issues are expected to persist for the long run in China’s energy market, presenting a major headwind to the once-booming renewable energy industry.

This provides a valuable lesson for the west and developing countries in facing our climate crisis. Simply investing money and calling for mass subsidization of renewables is not a sufficient solution. If anything, this will increase disparities and setback these developing countries if overcapacity becomes an issue and demand from the public is not enough once subsidies are eliminated. In the west, disposable incomes are enough that creating a renewable energy industry through subsidies can work, but in other countries where people cannot afford more expensive energy, overcapacity is an inevitable outcome.

Instead, the world must work together to focus on the real issues. How do we provide the necessary incentives to encourage people of all different financial circumstances to choose renewable energy? Answering this question will allow us to build a renewable energy industry around the world sustainably. One thing is for sure, if the west continues to blame developing countries for using fossil fuels as they once did without providing real solutions other than blind investment and heavy subsidies, then not only are we not going to solve the climate issue, we are going to be setback even further through inequity.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_energy_vehicles_in_China https://www.paulsoninstitute.org/archives/the-costs-of-chinas-wasted-wind-power/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-energy-policy-is-a-darker-shade-of-green-11594376690 https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2173687-china-to-further-cut-electric-vehicle-subsidies-in-2021

[bdelnegro]

origin #risk

Environmental Conservation: An Extension of Colonialism?

In “Planetary Crises and the Difficulty of Being Modern,” Professor Chakrabarty discusses globalization and global warming in the context of what he calls the ‘post-colonial period’. However, many modern day environmental conservation attempts actively embody colonialism and colonialist practices. Today, more than 100,000 protected areas exist around the world. Together, they make up more than 15% of the Earth’s total surface. Many of these areas are located in the rainforests of Asia, Africa, and Latin America- lands well acquainted with the advances of colonialism and economic exploitation. These biomes are vital to the Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity. They are also often the ancestral territories of indigenous groups. The conservation of these areas is frequently driven by foreign interest and environmental organizations which consider native inhabitants as obstacles to preserving nature. Even though these indigenous groups have centuries old cultural and spiritual relationships with the areas and are best suited to protect it, their forceful removal is seen as a necessary consequence of environmental protection. Indigenous displacement is not only damaging to their traditional lifestyles and the land, but a brutal and at times deadly process. A 2019 expose on the World Wildlife Fund detailed how WWF funded paramilitary forces and ani-poaching units had shot, murdered, sexually assaulted, tortured, and beat indigenous people with bamboo sticks and their own machetes. That same year, Survival International reported that conservation efforts to set up Congo’s Messok Dja National Park had resulted in malnutrition amongst tribal groups and the subsequent deaths of children. From 2017 through 2018, thousands of Maasai people were left homeless and facing arrest after their homes in the Ngorongoro Crater were “burnt to preserve the region’s ecosystem and attract more people”. Unfortunately, similar unfathomable stories of indigenous abuse abound. This might be somewhat unsurprising considering the contentious legacy of the modern conservation movement. The idea of conservation was conceived in the 1800’s as an instrument of genocide during the American Indian Wars. Yellowstone and Yosemite, two of America’s most infamous national parks and vacation destination, were conserved via the violent removal of indigenous tribes which had occupied the are for more than 10,000 years. This was accomplished under the guise of protecting the wilderness for the future “benefit and enjoyment of the people”. Similar ‘styles’ of environmental conservation has continued in the decades since. However, some hope that change is on the horizon. In 2007, the UN adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which enshrined the right of native peoples to own and control “the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.” Since then, many major conservation groups have declared their commitment to “rights-based” conservation- a model of conservation that aims to recognize and include indigenous peoples in the management of protected areas. In Senegal, local Jola fisherman have one more secured stewardship of threatened costal areas. Already, species of fish once considered extinct or nearly extinct are returning to their original habitats. Similarly, in Australia, the state has returned half of the existing reserve lands to indigenous communities. Regardless, this has only happened in a handful of countries. A comprehensive intervention and reversal of historic conservation efforts is imperative.

Works Cited:

Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, “Global Warming in an Unequal World: a case of environmental colonialism.” Centre for Science and Environment, 1991.

Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Planetary Crises and the Difficulty of Being Modern.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2018. 

Johnson, Jennifer. “Conservation without Colonialism.” Resilience, Resilience, 22 Sept. 2020, www.resilience.org/stories/2020-09-22/conservation-without-colonialism/.

Longo, Fio. “Colonial Conservation - a 'Cycle of Impunity'.” The Ecologist, The Ecologist, 4 Mar. 2020, theecologist.org/2020/feb/14/colonial-conservation-cycle-impunity.

VERVE Team. “Is Conservation a New Form of Colonialism?” Medium, Medium, 11 June 2019, medium.com/verve-up/is-conservation-a-new-form-of-colonialism-2e12f697c9b8.

Zaitchik, Alexander. “From Conservation to Colonization.” Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy, 16 July 2018, foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/16/how-conservation-became-colonialism-environment-indigenous-people-ecuador-mining/.

[jatkins21]

policy #solutions

Chakrabarty's article regarding the ethical difficulties of embracing modernity brought to light for me some of the reasons why there may be difficulties in unification when it comes to solving issues on a global scale. First and foremost, I think the international conflicts that exist almost inherently are an obvious barrier to finding mutual success when it comes to issues such as climate change or nuclear threats. It takes mutual compromise and collaboration to solve these issues, yet some of the biggest players within these respective fields clash regarding other issues such as religion or civil rights. From an American perspective, it can be hard to work collaboratively towards solving climate change. While partly due to some internal issues, progress would also require positive relationships with the big players in energy, for instance, like several countries in the Middle East. Given our frequently rocky relationship with countries like Iran and Afghanistan, often fueled by unrelated issues, our ability to collaborate in righting issues like climate change is unnecessarily impeded.

Simultaneously, cooperation at a global scale can also be stifled by some of the hypocrisy and inequality that occurs between larger and smaller countries (both of which are crucial to improvement). The United States, for instance, might be towards the forefront of publicizing our desires to mitigate climate issues, yet there is somewhat of a disconnect between this message and many of our present and previous actions. Presumably, citizens of the smaller countries, which contribute very little to climate change yet feel the greatest effects, may naturally find it difficult to really buy in to the discombobulated message that major countries like the US are somewhat ironically attempting to preach.

Ultimately, it's going to take a lot more compromise, self-awareness, and pushing aside of irrelevant differences at a global scale to minimize this social inequality between different nations. In achieving this, hopefully we can unify and really begin to tackle the prevalent and concerning issues.

[TimGranzow7]

salience #solutions #inequality #climate

The ideas that struck me most from this week’s texts were those of competing views of the “globe” and of “humanity” put forth by Professor Chakrabarty and Hannes Bergthaller. In thinking about this, I came to realize that nearly all of the modern discussions of climate change consider the existential threat to be one that affects all residents of planet Earth and has been caused by humanity, and as such is the responsibility of all of humanity to address and mitigate. International cooperation and a global shift towards greener practices, sustainability, and technological innovation are said to be necessary to preserve the environment. It has been clear to me for some time that it is far more complicated than this, as the major producers of greenhouse gasses are also so often those least likely to suffer the consequences, but only now am I realizing how little weight this argument actually holds. I felt that the quote by the United Nations ambassador to the Marshall Islands in Oceania about sea level rise raised many of the major concerns in a succinct way. Sea level rise to the point where an entire nation (or even part of one) is lost is unprecedented, but also seemingly unavoidable. Sea level rise is often touted as a major threat of climate change, but the key point of a “threat to who?” is uncomfortable and under discussed. So long as the developed countries do their parts to combat climate change, all appears to be well, right? Not so, since doing their part means hitting semi-arbitrary quotas and thresholds such as “10% of all new cars will have to rely on electric power”, the effects of which will be negligible as developing countries grow rapidly in population and rely increasingly upon automobiles — the cheapest of which run on gasoline and are incredibly fuel inefficient. The Euro-American-centric approach to mitigating climate change which sees this as “humanity’s problem” severely underestimates the issue; high rise, air-conditioned apartments in New York won’t be the ones underwater as temperatures and sea levels rise. This view hinders mobilization around the issue, as those contributing most to the problem know it won’t affect their daily lives, but how can we champion the growth of a global middle class, and then demand that those countries in which it is expanding most hinder the growth that is finally allowing them to make their homes livable? The climate crisis and its rampant injustice is brutally paradoxical, almost to the point of paralysis, which indicates to me that a massive overhaul of existing societal (but mainly economic) structures is necessary if any meaningful progress is to be made. It cannot be one step forward two steps back; true cooperation, redistribution of wealth, and a willingness for developed nations to truly sacrifice for the sake of developing nations and the planet is necessary if any progress towards justice and equality is ever to be made.

[vtnightingale]

inequality #origins #framing

This is not a memo about a novel, but I will be bringing up two books I have recently read that have really deeply impacted me, and which I think we need to be keeping in mind when discussing topics of inequality and its interrelationship with existential threats. These two books are How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1971), by Walter Rodney, and Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965), by Kwame Nkrumah.

The first of the two traces the sociopolitical development in Africa during the pre-contact, pre-colonial, and colonial periods, and how that affected the development (or rather, the underdevelopment, with respect to the latter two periods) of the African continent. Importantly, Dr. Rodney argues that the development of Western Europe (and later the US) was dependent on the underdevelopment of Africa, by extracting resources without developing indigenous industry, instead selling finished products (made in the metropole) back to the colonized.

The second book is a study of the situation throughout the African continent post-independence. In particular, Prime Minister Dr. Nkrumah outlines how most of the natural extractable resources of Africa were controlled by European and American capital, which effectively resulted in what he calls “neo-colonialism”. The colonizing powers did not need to have political power if they still control the resources and the economy. As a result, these former-colonizing, but still imperial powers continued to extract wealth from the African continent.

These historical phenomenon are, of course, not solely seen in Africa, but also in the formerly colonized countries of West, South, and Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America. I bring it up because any discussion of inequality must start from the fact that the wealth of the Global North is the stolen wealth of the Global South. To bring it home, the wealth of the US, in addition to the former sources, is also a product of the enslavement of Africans and the theft of Indigenous land and the genocide of Indigenous people.

With this kind of framing, the question then is how do we move forward to address this inequality? As the readings show, and I mention in my question, we cannot expect for everyone to attain the same level of “modernity” as those in the Global North. However, it would also be firstly immoral and secondly unsustainable for us to shrug our shoulders and quote “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.”

As we saw in the presentation given by Dr. Sivan Kartha, by really any metric, the US would have to pay the largest share to pay for the damages of climate change given its historical emissions. I would argue that it is imperative that the US and other colonial powers pay reparations for their roles in colonizing the world. But how do we convince these countries, and the citizens of these countries, that there must be this re-balancing of wealth. Also, how do we, in the US, demand the same of the settler-state with respect to giving back the stolen land to Indigenous people and paying reparations to the descendants of African slaves? I don’t know if I have any answers, but any solution that does not address these questions and enact what must be done is no solution.

(Also, I haven’t read it so I can’t speak on it much, but The Red Nation recently released The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth which is a decolonial and Indigenous response to the Green New Deal.)

[louisjlevin]

solutions #framing

I was inspired this week by Agarwal's and Narain's paper on environmental equity. The paper really ruffled my feathers (and perhaps a part of that stems from its age). I'm right there with them that developing countries don't share the blame with developed countries for the drastic impact we've had on our planet. But they do all share the responsibility to act. Not because it's fair or right, but because we all live on this planet, and if it goes down we're going down with it (starting with those that are least advantaged in our world). And that action - despite what Chakrabarty's Difficulty of Being Modern piece might suggest - doesn't need to be arduous or painful in necessarily the way we might expect:

There's a TED COUNTDOWN talk made by Narun Sivaram - an Indian clean energy expert - that I'd like to tell you about. Entitled 'How India Could Pull Off the World's Most Ambitious Energy Transition,' the talk takes us through how India could lead in the renewable energy sector AND develop hugely as a country. Sivaram outlines three steps to getting there:

1. Build renewable energy plants (solar and wind), and replace existing coal fired power plants.
2. Use renewable energy across the economy, especially in sectors that haven't traditionally used electricity.
3. Radically improve energy efficiency.

Now, these are of course not easy steps, but Sivaram posits that India is in a unique position to lead. Because of its planetary location, the whole country could be powered off of solar panels covering just 10% of India's waste lands. And the wind blows harder during monsoon season, when it's less sunny. On top of all this it costs less to build solar panels in India than it does in anywhere else in the world (significantly cheaper than coal).

Sivaram frames this argument in the context of India being a largely clean slate. 70% of India's 2030 infrastructure hasn't even been built yet. And that presents, Sivaram proposes, real opportunity.

I say all this because I think sometimes in talking about equity (which is incredibly important) we lose track of the big picture. In order to address climate change, everyone needs to act, and they need to act now. And yes, maybe that's not fair, but there are ways of viewing that action as a real opportunity. Radical sustainability and rapid development can and must go hand in hand.

[jane-uc21]

solutions #origin #archaeology

Environmental colonialism is rooted in centuries of exploitation and cultural erasure, but requires urgent attention to slow climate change, and to save vulnerable communities from its effects. There is disproportionate pressure placed on developing countries that have undergone anti/postcolonial modernization to reduce emissions. Moreover, many of these countries’ inhabitants are highly vulnerable to climate change effects, in large part due to colonial erasure of indigenous land management practices. Displacement and genocide of indegenous peoples, and conversion of subsistence farmland to cash crop fields, rubbed out cultural knowledge of land management methods that in fact support sustainability and biodiversity according to the IPCC [1].
Archaeology should be pursued as a partial answer to this conundrum. Archaeological study of the material records in vulnerable, previously colonized communities could mitigate climate change and its effects, whilst restoring millenia worth of culture. Specifically, archaeological findings can 1) Recover indegenous socio-environmental strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change and 2) Provide historical climate data to improve assessment and modelling of today’s climate change and its effects on biodiversity, while working to repair the environmental and cultural damage done by colonizers. The image showcases indegenous socio environmental strategies to harness El Nino; the Peruvian canal pictured dates to 1000-1400 CE. It captures El Nino rainfall for irrigation. 1 is exemplified by recent work in the Carribean and Madagascar to mitigate the effects of sea-level rise and drought due to climate change [1]. Archaeologists found that modern desalination of increasing salinity in coastal freshwater aquifers leaves residents vulnerable to rapid, permanent salt water flooding events. In contrast, indegenous peoples once predicted and avoided this flooding at the earliest signs of salinization. Thus attention to drinking water salinity could help modern residents escape flood damage. Similarly, in Madagascar archaeologists suggest that restoration of the raketa plant, eradicated by French colonizers, could increase drought resiliency as it acts as a water source and cattle fodder. 2) is exemplified by work to reconstruct El Nino frequency, intensity, and location by studying remnants of marine species, particularly mollusks and warm water species, in Peru [2]. This data may help us to contextualize and interpret climate-change driven intensification of El Ninos today. Similarly, reconstruction of the Indian Ocean paleoclimate from stalagmites and coral facilitates better understanding of dry periods in the region. While archaeological studies provide communities with tools to address climate change effects, information to improve our understanding of climate change, and lost cultural knowledge, these efforts must respect, include, and engage local peoples. As over 99% of American and British architects are white [3], studies could be disruptive and reanimate a colonizing, “observational,” attitude. Therefore archaeological efforts that include and support locals, or better-yet are run by them- are essential.
Archaeology is a promising avenue that should be pursued to mitigate and to predict the effects of climate change on previously colonized communities. If practiced respectfully and inclusively, it could begin to repair the immense damages of climate change and colonial abuse in developing countries.

References: [1] Douglass, Kristina, and Jago Cooper. 2020. “Archaeology, Environmental Justice, and Climate Change on Islands of the Caribbean and Southwestern Indian Ocean.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117 (15): 8254–62. [2] Sandweiss, Daniel H., and Alice R. Kelley. 2012. “Archaeological Contributions to Climate Change Research: The Archaeological Record as a Paleoclimatic and Paleoenvironmental Archive.” Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (1): 371–91. [3] White, William, and Catherine Draycott. 2020. “Archaeology Diversity - Why It’s a Problem - SAPIENS.” Sapiens.Org. July 7, 2020. https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/archaeology-diversity/. [4] Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2018. “Planetary Crises and the Difficulty of Being Modern.” Millennium Journal of International Studies 46 (3): 259–82. [5] Bergthaller, Hannes. 2020. “Thoughts on Asia and the Anthropocene.” In The Anthropocenic Turn, 77–90. Routledge. [6] Agarwal, Anil, and Sunita Narain. 2019. “Global Warming in an Unequal World: A Case of Environmental Colonialism.” In India in a Warming World, 81–91. Oxford University Press. [7] James, Cary. “Ascope Canal.” in “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 117 (15).” 2020. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117 (15). https://www.pnas.org/content/117/15.

[slrothschild]

policy #inequality #environment #pandemics #solutions

All around the world, individuals are inventing solutions to solve problems at the forefront of what is driving us to our “doom.” Solar and nuclear technology come to the front of my brain as a form of anecdotal evidence, but further advancements have been made elsewhere. However, this technology is not readily available for development or production in all countries. This is especially true in the clean energy and medical fields. The problem diverges at the fork of governmental involvement and technological advancements, where medical technology is protected and clean energy is available to be shared. We haven’t yet encountered pandemics and the medical field as a whole, but seeing as we have all lived through this current pandemic, and given the current situation in India it seems relevant to talk about here. The inequality of vaccinations and the growth of the pandemic in India is partially rooted in a promise to buy from local drug makers. The responsibility of acquiring vaccines has been moved to the states, making this problem far worse as many citizens could not afford to pay for the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines, and the states in India cannot subsidize them. There seems to be a lack of understanding that lives are at risk, and the profits of local drug companies can be put aside for a brief period of time to save people. Governmental policy regarding the acquisition of live saving medicine should be put aside in a situation this serious, and the idea that we need to drive our individual industries should be tossed out the window in a situation like this. Additionally, I think this conversation even moves into the environmental debate, as we see blame fall to countries with higher populations and less clean energy progress. There has to be a better system in place to share the technology and protect some of the profits that companies “need” to see regarding their new technology. It is fairly unfair to blame these countries for their lack of progress when we are not sharing what is necessary.

[AlexandraN1]

Framing #inequality

The articles evidence an overwhelming inequality in how international climate norms are constructed. Disguised as “high-minded internationalism”, the burden of climate risk is unfairly placed on poor states with “survival emissions”, while rich states with “luxury emissions” (Agarwal and Narain, 1991) preach the universality of their unsustainable practices (Bergthaller, 2020).

Inequality in the norms and beliefs surrounding global resource use is not new. Noting the striking comparisons between Western and Chinese development through history, Bergthaller revealed a similar wave of conversation occurring during the 1800s (Bergthaller, 2020).

The readings prompted me to consider the role of capitalism in perpetuating this inequality. A fascinating paper by Ida Danewid highlights how capitalism does not merely worsen pre-existing inequalities, but actually requires the entrenchment of inequalities in order to thrive (Danewid, 2020). This is because unsustainable growth accrued by the capitalist elite, not merely benefits from but actually requires a ‘dispensable class’ whose role is to facilitate exploitation. This applies really powerfully to the imperialist inequalities exposed in Western climate norms. These norms have three distinct elements:

• They unfairly burden the poor
• They deny the historical contributions of the West
• They deceptively preach the universality of unsustainable Western practices

The reason for which the West must perpetuate these norms of inequality is because - as Danewid understands - the process of capitalist accumulation requires inequality. The accumulation of wealth requires the dispossession of wealth from others (See image). This in turn, requires the normative creation of a “group” which can be legitimately and fairly dispossessed.

Accepting Danewid’s point, we can see these Western climate norms as a process of legitimation, by which they validate both their own practices, and the subjugation of a “dispensable” group, as a means to sustain their unsustainable growth.

This need for capitalism to identify and entrench inequalities in order to sustain its elite is a problem which we can expect to arise in other areas of existential risk, not merely the climate crisis. In other words, we can expect powerful entities to protect their power in the face of existential threats, by establishing norms which place the burden of risk mitigation on a “dispensable” group.

[fdioum]

policy #solutions #climate

In Portugal, carbon emissions have been decreasing due to a switch from fossil fuels to natural gas and renewable energy sources. Policy makers have taken it upon themselves to levy heavy taxes on carbon and elevate fossil fuel prices and promote energy efficiency. Levying heavy taxes on carbon increases the opportunity cost and reduces the incentive to spill more carbon into the atmosphere. Elevating fossil fuel prices significantly reduces the demand for energy and stimulates energy efficiency through methods such as the adoption of renewable energy sources which results in a reduction in emission. Through the methods listed above among many more, Portugal has managed to be one of the 2 developed countries to stay within their permissible limits for carbon dioxide emissions. In order for other developed countries to be as successful as Portugal has been in staying within permissible limits, it is imperative that policy makers start making strides to implement policies that are in favor of everyone. So far, there has been a lack of action on their part due to the lack of incentive for them to take action. It is all about getting elected and re-elected and when you have companies or people that are heavily contributing to our high carbon emissions sponsoring the political candidates election it is very hard for those same political leaders to make laws against their financiers and sponsors. All other countries need to take a look and implement policies like the ones in Portugal and more specifically, it is crucial to examine how their political system works and what allowed them to incentivize policy makers to make such policies. Taxing carbon not only reduces our carbon footprint, it is also a way to boost our economy and GDP, however, for personal reasons, that is not incentive enough for some policy makers. Researchers that Pew Research Center conducted a survey about a year ago that showed that an overwhelming majority of US adults favor actions such as taxing corporations for their carbon emissions and tougher fuel efficiency standards for cars. Now, the question is what are policy makers waiting for to start taking actions against climate change?

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2020/06/PS_2020.06.23_government-and-climate_00-01.png

[shanekim23]

origin #framing

In “Thoughts on Asia and the Anthropocene”, Hannes Bergthaller discusses the shift from West to East in affecting the development of the Anthropocene. He attributes this development especially to the Asian middle class and expands this idea further in his essay. Then, he goes on to talk about the peculiar stance most Asians have seemed to take: an “indifference toward the concept of Anthropocene.” And especially in East Asia, where there is an emphasis on group harmony, it is difficult not to raise the question: why do they not care? While Bergthaller doesn’t explicitly answer this question, his argument is framed around the idea that the West is “besotted” with the Anthropocene, which in turn implies that the East is not particularly interested in this idea. At first, I thought that East Asians simply prefer having less agency; perhaps they don’t care that “humanity [is]...the agent that propelled Earth into a new geological epoch”; perhaps they don’t want dominance over nature. But after short reconsideration, I have led myself to a new, more plausible conclusion. Primary and secondary education in East Asia (in the form that I know) emphasizes memorization over applicable learning, and this not only causes students to forget faster, but it also doesn’t help students understand the context of any event. Thus, while students may be aware of climate change, and maybe even the exact levels of GHG emissions in Korea, they will not be aware of the cultural shift of the Anthropocene towards their country. As a product of this education system, even in later life, people will generally not be motivated to learn about the background of certain developments like the Anthropocene. If people were to read more about this cultural shift to Asia, then certainly they would care. I know they would care because most of the beliefs of these East Asian countries are grounded in Confucianism. Ren is the ideal relationship between two (or more) people, and Confucianism is centered around this because ren emphasizes group harmony over individuality. Thus, if these beliefs hold true vis-à-vis the Anthropocene, then these East Asian people will try to help stunt the growth of environmental crises.

[jasonshepp6]

In this discussion of inequality, other existential threats come to the forefront and are revealed to be more complex. For example, in "Global Warming in an Unequal World" by Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, the authors explore the asynchronous effects of climate change across the globe. In effect, as the authors point out, wealthy countries like the United States are responsible for the vast majority of historical emissions, yet the repercussions of climate change (i.e. flooding, earthquakes, air pollution) fall disproportionally on poorer countries. Because of the distance from the severely impacted countries, people in the United States feel less of an urgency; if, however, the impacts were felt closer to home, there might be a far larger cry for justice. From speaking with friends of mine from Tulane in New Orleans, I have found that there is a general agreement of climate change's risk partially due to the many fatalities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005.

From this analysis, there comes a perspective that urgency is in many ways tied to direct impact. When we extend this, we can as a result show the inequality in nuclear fallout response. While the ultra-rich and the politically powerful have high class fallout shelters to protect them in the case of global war, the common person has little recourse from an incoming nuclear weapon. In the Cold War for example, drills for students involved hiding under desks with the famous call for "duck and cover" while the Senate practiced retreating to their bunkers. If a nuclear war were to occur, people in bunkers are far more likely to survive. As a result of this inequality in nuclear response, it helps indicate potential ambivalence on the part of our government.

Just like how the United States does not treat climate change with the same urgency it would if the effects were felt at home, inequality in nuclear fallout might suggest how those in power do not place the same level of urgency on nuclear as an existential threat given their bunkers.

Source: CNN – https://www.cnn.com/style/article/doomsday-luxury-bunkers/index.html

Additional Pictures: "Duck and Cover"

[Junker24]

Framing #Origin

One of the more interesting ideas that came up in the reading this week was one that Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty mentioned in his article about Planetary Crises and the Difficulty of Being Modern. He discussed that this idea of "Global Warming" (Which i think is an outdated term) has/will exist on every single Planet in our Solar System. This Global Warming, with or without humans will continue to rise. Although I disagree with this quotation that i am about to provide, it is something interesting to think about as we move forward in the process of combatting Climate Change. The science is not even specific to this planet – it is part of what is called ‘planetary science’.11 It does not belong to an earth-bound imagination. Our current warming is an instance of what is called ‘planetary warming’ that has happened both on this planet and on other planets, humans or no humans, and with different consequences. I think this quote is interesting because it is something that i have never really even thought about before. Professor Chakrabarty explains that Global Warming is present in every single planetary object in the Solar System, but the main point that Chakrabarty wants to make, is that the Global Warming we are experiencing on Earth, as humans, is caused by Humans and Humans alone, no other outside factors. This is a great point to make because it contradicts the "Global Warming isn't real crowd", by providing information as well as logic to understand the crisis that is going on today. He connects these ideas of Planetary Warming to the research and science behind the Planetary Warming of many planets in our Solar System, comparing the differences between those planets to our Earth. I think this article was personally a great read as well as had great information for a non-informed reader on the topic. I also wanted to comment on the idea of the "Difficulty of Being Modern". I feel as though in the near future, many people are going to have to get together and fight Global Warming/Climate Change together. As the name states, The Globe is warming and that is not something that can continue to do so. The Difficulty of Being Modern is something that hurts us as a collective group, because there are many things in our current world that must change in order for our Earth to be the best possible. It will be difficult, but i think us Humans will be able to prevail.

[Samcorey1234]

solutions

Inequality is baked into our global systems. This is particularly pernicious as countries around the world face the global threat of climate change. Solving this problem could become even more burdensome, as Agarwal and Narain note in “Global Warming in an Unequal World,” because the carbon emitted by the developing world is often vastly overestimated by the developed world. As the two scholars note, one international report estimates that methane emissions are vastly over-counted in developing countries like Brazil and China, as opposed to carbon emissions, which are under-counted and disproportionately emitted in the Global North, including places like the U.S. and Russia.

In order to tackle climate change, a proportional response based on country capacity (i.e., financial resources) will be needed. But the problem of global inequality is impacting the world today. It’s happening in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic.

India is currently enduring the worst surge in the short history of the Covid-19 crisis. Currently, thousands of Indians are dying, and hundreds of thousands are getting sick as the parliamentary government is offering little in the way of halting the problem by refusing to issue shut-downs and mask mandates. But making the matters worse, the international system is not moving fast enough to save Indian lives and distribute vaccines to the country, preferring to prioritize their own country members.

This is happening because the deals that helped rich countries rapidly produce and manufacture vaccines are now broadly making the pandemic worse in low-income countries (like India). Rather than distributing the vaccines purchased by high-income countries to countries that can’t afford them, low-income countries are left without the necessary resources to save lives and stymie a worsening crisis.

The main problem here comes down to bilateral agreements. Rich countries made deals with vaccine manufacturers to produce a vaccine and hedged their bets against those vaccines not coming to fruition by buying up millions of future vaccine doses when they came to the market. The problem is that low-income countries couldn’t make those same bets because they don’t have similarly high GDPs. Thus, high-income countries have disproportionate power in protecting their people. The problem here is that it’s not only low-income countries that lose: richer countries have lesser control over the virus as it continues to spread and create new variants because there is not an equal amount of the vaccine in all parts of the globe to stop it.

The only way to solve this problem is by issuing multilateral agreements, which pools money and risk placed in manufacturing vaccines from rich and poor countries alike (based on what they can pay), and then equally distributes those vaccines once they come to the market. To be fair, this is occurring right now via Covax, a multilateral agreement sponsored by international organizations like the World Health Organization. Unfortunately, bilateral agreements from rich countries are ruining programs like Covax by undercutting them and helping them acquire a disproportionate number of vaccines.

Sadly, things likely won’t get better until rich countries give up their privileged positions and buy completely into Covax, or donate a significant portion of vaccines they bought and distribute them to low-income countries. Those countries, like India, need a functioning multilateral system to ameliorate the flow of the dying.

[janet-clare]

In reading Agarwal and Narain’s "Global Warming in an Unequal World, a case of environmental colonialism", I was struck by the inset, "Methane: Problems in estimating a lot of hot air,” as I had just recently read a report on promising advances being made on reducing agricultural methane with bovine nutritional supplements, or in other words, cow burps with seaweed feed. Not only is this new development in bovine nutrition encouraging in providing a quickly realized mitigation in the rapidly rising level of methane emissions but it could also help in bridging inequalities experienced by the developing countries who are also our global partners in fighting the threat of climate change. Many developing countries are dependent upon cattle for subsistence, and are increasingly under pressure to contribute beyond their means towards climate mitigation. Methane reduction, as well as food sustainability and more favorable agricultural strategies, are all potential positive outcomes of this innovation in livestock feed.

CO2 may be global enemy number one in our fight against climate change, but we are also under threat from CH4, its evil accomplice. While carbon dioxide “plays a key role in global warming"1, as of 2017 global emissions of methane had risen to their highest recorded level and “…among all the greenhouse gases, methane deserves special attention because of its larger global warming potential.” Methane traps 28 times more heat in the atmosphere, than carbon dioxide over 100 years,2 3 and is estimated to be accountable for at least 25% of today’s warming. And although the effects of carbon emissions are longer term, methane with “more than 80 times the warming power … over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. ...sets the pace for warming in the near term.”4 Methane emissions are up by around 9% since the early 2000’s, with about 50% attributable to anthropogenic activity, at least half of which is related to agriculture.5 6 According to the World Resources Institute, “ruminant livestock were responsible for around half of all agricultural emissions in 2010”, primarily “enteric methane”, the aforementioned cow burps. 7

A UCDavis study experimenting with red seaweed (Asparagopsis taxiformis specifically) has found that cattle given supplements mixed with their feed had a sustained reduction in enteric methane of 58 percent. These results proved consistent over time, (the effects of the seaweed don’t wear off), there was no detectable change in flavor or quality in dairy or meat products, and cattle were overall healthier.8 This reduction in methane may also positively impact manure management, another factor in anthropogenic methane. While transportation of the seaweed and the prospect of over farming our oceans for the vast amounts that would be required for global scale supply may pose obstacles, various aquaculture as well as processing strategies are also being investigated. Potentially, these advances in cultivation will come with the benefit of providing opportunities to “create new economies in impoverished regions”.9

Thus, what’s good for the cows is good for the climate and good for society. Seaweed in cattle feed can provide affordable solutions to developing countries for sustainable food, commercial opportunities, and in meeting GHG mitigation regulations in the necessarily near future.

risk #climate #solutions #opportunity #sustainability #agriculture #GHG

https://www.sciencealert.com/adding-seaweed-to-cattle-feed-could-reduce-methane-production-by

Agarwal, Anil and Narain, Sunita. Global Warming in an Unequal World, a case of environmental colonialism. New Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment, 1991.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Planetary Crises and the Difficulty of Being Modern. Millennium Journal of International Studies 46. 2018 (3): 259–82.

Global methane emissions soar to record high. Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences July 15, 2020. Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-global-methane-emissions-soar-high.html

Methane: Emissions increase and it's not good news. Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change. . August 27, 2020. https://phys.org/news/2020-8-methane-emissions-good-news.html

Hamburg, Steve. Methane. A crucial opportunity in the climate fight. Environmental Defense Fund. edf.org. 2021. https://www.edf.org/climate/methane-crucial-oportunity-climate-fight

Ranganathan,Janet, Waite,R, Searchinger,T, and Hanson,C. How to Sustainably Feed 10 Billion People by 2050, in 21 Charts. World Resources Institute. December 5, 2018. Wri.org. https://wri.org/insights/how-sustainably-feed-10-billion-people-2050-21-charts.

Lewis Mernit, Judith. How Eating Seaweed Can Help Cows to Belch Less Methane. YaleEnvironment360. Updated July 2, 2012. e360.yale.edu https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-eating-seaweed-can-help-cows

[madisonchoi]

The readings for this week explore environmental colonialism, climate justice issues, and uneven development when it comes to the discussion of climate change and rapidly developing nations. In “Global Warming in an Unequal World” Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain argue that blaming rapidly developing nations such as India and China for the rising temperature of our earth is wrong; it is actually developed nations like the United States, which are consumption-oriented economies, that contribute to the carbon dioxide and methane accumulation in the atmosphere the most. In another class I am taking on political philosophy, we are currently studying the origins of imperialism and the colossal impacts it had on native economies, people, and the trajectory of development going into the future. Environmental colonialism is the effect that imperialists had on the environments of the colonies they imposed themselves upon and disrupted. Fundamental to the degree of wealth and “success” that colonists were able to extract from the country they infiltrated was their ability to extrude natural resources, which inevitably disrupted the land and natural landscape drastically. (The photo I’ve included depicts the height of environmental colonialism and the impact on the environment.)

In Hannah Arendt’s book “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” she explores the sociopolitical and economic ramifications that imperialism had on the environments and economies of currently developing nations. Arendt identifies the origin of imperialism as the moment when the capitalist mode of production meets its limitations on further economic expansion within the domestic boundaries of nation, and the ruling class develops the desire to expand their economic power past the bounds of their nation. Arendt explains that while economic structures can easily be expanded because the productivity of humans is unlimited, political structures and policy do not function in the same way and cannot be expanded indefinitely. Thus, law was never extended to the colonized and/or enslaved people but rather limited to the mother nation. This allowed exploitation of people, land, and resources to run rampant. Colonists exploited resources for their personal benefit, and in doing so, severely disrupted the land and natural resources of native areas.

Part of the consideration that policymakers and leaders face is whether or not developing nations should have quotas on the amount of emissions they are allowed to produce, and if so, at what amount. Agarwal and Narain explain that developing nations are disproportionately affected by climate change and are actually not to be held accountable as the main cause of climate change because the majority of the damage is actually the result of the consumption-based developed nations. Ultimately, “blaming the victim” is neither a productive nor fair way to go about handling climate change. Rather, when we take a step back and take into account several hundreds of years of history of how colonization impacted the environment and economies of developing nations, we can begin to uncover truths about how nations have been shaped to this day and who is contributing the most to climate change.

[ishaanpatel2022]

risk #climate #inequality

In Global Warming in an Unequal World, the authors introduce the reader to the idea of environmental colonialism: how, because of political motivations, developed countries (like the United States) blame developing countries for the state of climate change evidenced in the world today. The first flaw in this argument is that developed countries like the United States and EU countries are just as responsible as developing countries (like India and China) for the high levels of global emissions documented today. This is an important point as, therefore, the argument can be made that the burden to cut emissions should actually fall on developed countries as high emissions from these countries coupled with forcing developing countries to cut theirs could exacerbate inequality on a global scale.

The first reason that the burden to cut Greenhouse Gas emissions should fall on developed countries is because the argument can be made that developing countries need these emissions to keep pace economically and socially with the rest of the world. Countries like India and China are going through phases of rapid economic expansion, phases that developed countries (like the U.S. and countries in the EU) have already completed. With this type of economic expansion comes the need for vastly increased levels of construction as cities are expanded and technological capabilities are increased. Moreover, a prevailing strategy for economic expansion in these countries is to increase manufacturing processes and promote urban life over an agricultural lifestyle. As a result, cheap sources of energy are needed to power said construction, manufacturing processes, the heating needed for these buildings, the increased need for transportation from urbanization etc. For example, China manufactures half the world’s steel and it potentially accounts for over 10% of its CO2 emissions. Manufacturing/Construction, energy and heat, and transportation as a whole also supply over half of the world’s Greenhouse Gas emissions, so it should be no surprise that countries like China and India are culprits for high emissions. However, countries like the U.S. are not experiencing such a transformative period in their growth, yet still yield emission levels on par with developed countries. Therefore, it makes the most sense to focus the curbing of emissions to developed countries: this would help slow climate change while allowing developing countries to grow their economies, thus reducing global inequality as well.

It has also been proven many times that global warming increases global inequality: that is, studies show that not only do poorer countries benefit less from fossil fuel use when compared with wealthier nations, but many of these countries have been harmed significantly by warming associated with the energy consumption of richer countries. Therefore, in order to alleviate the existential threat of climate change and the humanitarian crisis of rising global inequality, wealthier countries should be the focus of emission cutting efforts: this would help slow climate change and allow poorer countries to continue their economic development whilst not being negatively affected by the emissions of richer nations.

Image Sources: https://www.wri.org/insights/4-charts-explain-greenhouse-gas-emissions-countries-and-sectors https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data

Other Sources: https://www.wri.org/insights/4-charts-explain-greenhouse-gas-emissions-countries-and-sectors https://www.pnas.org/content/116/20/9808 https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-chinas-co2-emissions-grew-4-during-first-half-of-2019

[sosuna22]

movie #problem #salience

Inequality is often highlighted very dramatically in media, but it also can be used as a metaphor for the inequalities we face in our world today. Fiction has long been used to critique governments and overruling institutions. It can give us a different perspective, even if dramatized, on the problems we face today. For this week, I watched the Hunger Games and Battle Royale. I had previously read the book version of them, during the 2012-2014ish era of dystopian novels. When I saw them on the movie list for this week, I felt that they would be able to tie very well with the inequality we read about in both similar and different ways.

Both of these share plots that are very often compared with one another. This is because they both involve placing teenagers in arenas to fight for their lives. This programming is run by the government in order to keep citizens in check. It is used as both a fear mechanism and one to give hope for the winner. At first glance, the inequality that relates to this course is not very obvious because the plot sounds a tad ridiculous. However, there are ample ties to this class.

In Battle Royale, the participants are a randomly selected class. One instance of extreme inequality is when they are handed their "weapons" because some students receive useful things such a knife or gun, meanwhile other students get useless items. In the end, they are all expected to compete, whether they have a useful weapon or not. This is an inequality that decides the fate of some of the students. It can be compared to our world today, when we expect every country to fend for themselves with the current pandemic. How is a country that doesn't have resources supposed to fight a disease no one is immune to with no resources? Or it can also be applied to CO2 levels. With climate change, some countries have access to technology that allows for CO2 level reduction or is more environmentally efficient. But the rising CO2 levels is a global problem, not a country specific one (although some countries may pollute more than others). How is a country that is suffering extreme poverty and trying to keep its citizens alive, also supposed to fight to save the environment?

In the Hunger Games, the participants are chosen from each of the 12 districts (two from each district for a total of 24). However, the districts have extremely different ways of living. In the districts closer to the capital, teenagers will train for the Hunger Games and volunteer to go. It is seen as a badge of honor to win, and their chances are usually very high. In the districts further from the capital, teenagers are selected and have no previous history of training. In fact, the welfare system offered by the capital allows for a food-stamp-like program that actually places teen's names in the running multiple times. This directly harms children from families of lower income by increasing their chances of going to the Hunger Games and is only really relevant for those in the underprivileged districts. This is a really good example of why such stratified wealth inequality can be harmful to a population. The series builds up to a rebellion against the capitol and some of the districts because people were dying of starvation, lack of medical care and more. This could have all been avoided if there was no hunger games (unrealistic part) but also if the capital actually ensured basic rights and quality of life for all its citizens. Instead, it chose stratified wealth and violence.

Overall, I think that these two movies do a great job of highlighting inequality in various ways that can be applied to the readings for this class.

Hunger Games Movie: https://www.amazon.com/Hunger-Games-Jennifer-Lawrence/dp/B008Y7N7JW/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3VBXOT31ALEOT&dchild=1&keywords=hunger+games&qid=1619650818&s=instant-video&sprefix=hunger+games%2Caps%2C192&sr=1-2

Battle Royale Movie: https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Royale-Tatsuya-Fujiwara/dp/B07WCXQSYJ/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=battle+royale&qid=1619650849&s=instant-video&sr=1-2

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2014/11/21/opinion/jones-hunger-games/index.html

[nicholas-rose]

framing

Capital and Optimism

What does a UChicago student’s ideal relationship look like? Positive and linear, preferably log scaled. Jokes aside, it’s important to talk about the successes of capital in the 20th and 21st century (pic related), and present a limited defense of capital ability to address equality effectively. First, capital has strong incentives to look beyond nationalistic furor and arbitrary borders for cheaper labor. It’s precisely these incentives that explain the graph below:

The colossal material improvements throughout Asia can be attributed, in large part, to foreign manufacturing demand and the international infrastructure that made such foreign demand accessible. In this sense, capital has played a central role in lifting billions out of poverty in Asia alone. Ironically, it has done so at the cost of millions of manufacturing jobs in the west, which led to a rather notable (and very orange) immune response from the working classes of developed nations. Indeed, by understanding the driving factors which are rapidly deconstructing global inequality, we can clearly see the ways in which those very same factors may be exacerbating local inequality. But it would be naive and counterfactual to dismiss the past half century of capital as entirely divisive.

Furthermore, capital seeks stability. Local and geopolitical turmoil are antithetical to profit. It is prescient to critique this reality as presenting a paradoxical dilemma to undeveloped nations (How do we achieve stability without investment? How do we entice investment without stability?), however in every recent case where local political powers have managed to overcome the activation energy required to achieve some modicum of stability, the subsequent catalyzed reaction is exceptionally potent. Consequently (and contradictory to the claims of many critics), capital generally incentivizes geopolitical stability.

Capital causes a great deal of pain, the world over. Exploitation is just that, and imagining a future rid of those pains is certainly a productive enterprise. But for the time being, it may just be the best method we have for building that future.

[seankoons]

For my memo this week, I watched the movie Elysium which presents Earth and Elysium as two opposite societies, highlighting the inequality between the two. Elysium, like most Blomkamp films I believe, is derived from apartheid South Africa. Like myself, director Neill Blomkamp comes from Johannesburg, South Africa and has directed many movies that take place in South Africa and use inequality as a central theme such as Chappie and District 9. In Elysium, Max DeCosta (played by Matt Damon) is working on Earth in a facility where he one day has a life-threatening accident. In an attempt to save his life and bring down the unequal society that the ultrarich create, called Elysium, Max is faced with the difficulty of acquiring a way to travel to the utopia. The movie highlights the constant struggle that people on Earth face. They live in poverty, on a scorched planet, unable to access medicine without servitude as a payment, and in constant war and divide.

South Africa’s apartheid connects to a lot of themes of inequality within the movie. Racial divide in a majority of twenty-first century South Africa split the nation into two, just like Earth and Elysium. This “paradise” of being white in South Africa is highlighted through Elysium: a place where you don’t need to worry about your health, injuries from working, police and law enforcement, and poverty. During the 1940s-1990s, people of any race that wasn’t white were targeted and treated as lesser. Just like the movie depicts the people on Earth, people who weren’t white lived without any medical treatment for injuries, under unsafe living standards, and were hunted if they ever tried to escape the systematic racism of South Africa at the time.

Parallel to Elysium, District 9 also presents two populations of people unequally. In District 9, aliens come to Earth and are throw into shanty towns and treated inhumanly (I guess they aren’t human though). They are shot without cause by the authorities, as we see a lot of in our society today, and are forced to never leave their lesser position. During apartheid, the black African communities that lived in cities such as Johannesburg were forced to live in separate shanty towns such as Khayelitsha and were constantly patrolled by police who could essentially do anything they wanted to them including murder, rape, and theft.

After watching Elysium, I noticed that the way the movie was structured reminded me a lot of apartheid in South Africa. Through all of the inequalities present in the movie, its similarities to apartheid were obvious.

[laszler]

framing #policy #salience

Reading Agarwal and Narain’s Global Warming in an Unequal World, and its discussion of how over-polluting nations have framed the discussion of reducing emissions as an issue to be borne by developing countries reminded me of a similar topic that I believe closely aligns with this issue.

Commercial aviation causes approximately 2.5% of annual global carbon dioxide emissions (though we’ll ignore 2020 for now, since the pandemic made that year’s figures somewhat of an anomaly). For starters, only about 20% of the global population is estimated to be able to afford to fly, and in 2018, only 11% of the global population took a flight at all. More interestingly, it is estimated that 50% of total global aviation emissions are caused by frequent flyers who make up only 1% of the world’s population.

If my math is correct, this means that remarkably, 1% of the global population is contributing to 1.25% of annual carbon dioxide emissions — and this is solely through their flights, meaning they surely contribute a vast amount more when other aspects of their life are factored.

In addition, flying business class is estimated to generate three-times more emissions per person than flying in economy, meaning that the wealthy are still causing more emissions than is their fair share, even when they are on the same plane as other flyers. Private jets and private aviation are similarly climate-inefficient. And while some airlines (such as the Hungarian budget airline Wizz Air) have made advertisements advocating for the elimination of business class for climate-related reasons, these ignore the fact that flying is inherently bad for the environment, akin to using a band-aid as a solution for a broken pipe.

My question here becomes one of policy. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, have floated the idea of progressive taxes that increase the amount of tax a person has to pay as they take more flights. To me, this feels similar to Agarwal and Narain’s mention of over-emitting countries paying under-emitting countries to make up for pollution. Though a good idea in principle, would it be feasible? That is, in the United States at least, frequent flyers are more likely to be wealthy, which in turn means they are more likely to have political connections or incentives. Additionally, airlines—which rely on people flying to make money—would be strongly inclined to oppose any flying disincentive. With this in mind, is there a way to reduce aviation emissions that are exacerbated by global inequality?

Works cited:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/climate/airplane-pollution-global-warming.html https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a23298/make-flying-greener/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/31/elite-minority-frequent-flyers-aviation-climate-damage-flights-environmental https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/17/people-cause-global-aviation-emissions-study-covid-19 https://thepointsguy.com/news/frequent-flyer-tax-uk-proposal/ https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation

[brettriegler]

[a-bosko]

origin #climate

Social inequality is a very prevalent and important topic in today’s society. As Dipesh Chakrabarty mentions in his Keynote “Planetary Crises and the Difficulty of Being Modern”, there are certain “ethical difficulties of being modern at a time where collective human aspirations carry planetary implications.

After reading “Global Warming in an Unequal World: a case of environmental colonialism” by Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, I wanted to learn more about the environmental colonialism and the impact that it has today. According to Agarwal and Narain, the main intention of environmental colonialism is to blame developing countries for global warming while perpetuating the current global inequality in the use of the planet’s resources. The authors also discuss a report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) that pushes for developing countries to share the responsibility for global warming. A consequence of this report is that developing countries might be forced to put brakes on their development through restrictions on coal usage and animal care programs. Therefore, there is a push for Western countries to understand the perspectives of others.

To understand the perspectives of others, we must understand the origin of the impact that developed countries have had on our planet. In today’s era, the leading cause of air pollution in the United States comes from motor vehicles. Motor vehicles were first mass-produced in the early 20th century by Henry Ford. These auto emissions have led to an increase in greenhouse gases, which in turn contributes towards global warming. In the Industrial Revolution, the use of coal vastly increased from the years prior, which was used to create new machines and transformed the industry. The consequences of the Industrial Revolution include smog and soot, as well as the release of sulfur and nitrogen into the atmosphere. The pollution affected plants, fish, soil, humans, etc.

By understanding the history of developing countries, it is easy to see the lasting impacts of pollution on Earth. Therefore, developing countries should not be blamed for this previous damage to the planet. Despite this, all countries should help as much as they possibly can towards making sure we have a planet to live on for the foreseeable future. This share of responsibility should not be equal, but rather equitable. Those countries who have more resources to supply towards reducing global warming and have contributed more towards prior pollution should have more responsibility. By promoting equity, society can push for change not only for the environment, but also push for societal change towards social equality.

The image below shows how much pollution comes from motor vehicles and aircrafts, which are considered to be luxuries today.

Works Cited:

https://www.history.com/topics/natural-disasters-and-environment/water-and-air-pollution#:~:text=The%20Industrial%20Revolution,-In%20the%20latter&text=The%20resulting%20smog%20and%20soot,residents%20of%20growing%20urban%20centers.&text=A%20few%20years%20earlier%2C%20in,and%20made%207%2C000%20more%20sick.

https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2020/01/21/environmental-colonialism/#:~:text=Environmental%20colonialism%20refers%20to%20the,able%20to%20alter%20native%20ecosystems

[aj-wu]

policy #inequality

Agarwal and Narain's paper critiquing the World Resources Institute's report as ecological colonialism brings up a lot of interesting questions that are central to the issue of climate change. The authors begin by calling the WRI's methodology into question, pointing out, for example, that its estimates of deforestation in developing countries are outdated and that it does not adequately recognize how emissions come from different sources (subsistence vs. luxury emissions) and take different forms (methane, carbon dioxide, and CFCs) in developing vs. wealthy nations. They argue, then, that the WRI report does not place enough blame on the developed world. Some of their conclusions are a bit extreme—for example, "It is the production fo carbondioxide [sic] and methane by countries like USA and Japan ... which is entirely responsible for the accumulation of unabsorbed carbondioxide and methane in the atmosphere." I agree with the spirit of their thesis: that calling on nations to bear the burden for emissions reductions in proportion with their current consumption, as opposed to historical consumption or current means, "amount[s] to blaming the victim." But I don't think an emphasis on blame is the appropriate focus.

The environmental justice problems endemic to sustainable development are especially difficult given geopolitical dynamics and a tragedy of the commons problem on a global scale. Agarwal and Narain are in good company to assert that wealthy nations are responsible for the vast majority of cumulative carbon emissions, as well as most of the climate change we observe today. But the interest of developing countries in curbing their emissions and moving toward sustainable development arises not solely out of wealthy nations passing on the blame to them. As Bergthaller's comments on China show, developing countries have the most at stake from climate change. China's experience with ecologically intensive agricultural development giving rise to population boom, poverty, and famine bears this out. Now, China's rapid economic development is coupled with serious attention to ecological governance.

A second motivation that Bergthaller alludes to for China to focus on environmental issues is its political legitimacy. I think this is a sort of flip side to the ecological colonialism coin. As Bergthaller notes, China's political system does not conform to Western ideals. But the ability of the CCP to take action on environmental issues that is both swifter and more decisive than is possible in a democratically governed state commands respect. This is economically and politically consequential in an arena where wealthy nations have technology and financial investment to offer developing countries. With an issue like climate change, all the world is watching, which means developing countries have a particular opportunity to demonstrate their strength.

[cjcampo]

policy #solutions

(Apologies in advance for the inclusion of numerous graphics, but I feel that it's necessary.)

Alright: I Am Once Again Asking For A Response To My Questions About The United States' Failure To Lead By Example On A Global Scale By Ratifying Treaties And Accords Corresponding To Progressive Ideals On An International Level.

I've seen something like four tweets in the last month, and a countless number on historical aggregate, that say something like "every world map looks the same." Here is what this notion refers to:

I bring this up for this class because of Agarwal and Narain's piece on global warming in an unequal world. Not surprisingly, the article spends most of its time running through historical data, featuring new per-capita calculations meant to express the fallacy behind the accusations that the U.S. has levied against China, India, and other developing nations. In terms of responding to these assertions, the paper does an incredibly good job of shooting them all down and showing the extent to which the U.S. is at fault.

But what the article doesn't do, and what the international community isn't doing, is making targeted statements at the United States calling us to lead the action and drastically reduce waste in every aspect of our lives. I'm honestly quite tired of the diplomacy--of the global calls to action whereby everyone must have a stake in immediate change. I'd really like to know the outcome of if the international policy community approached this game-theoretically, like they were entering into a one-on-one negotiation or haggle over the price of a product. In these situations, you should almost always ask for more than you want with the goal of receiving your target amount. In reality, the climate accords that we've talked about set the bare minimum as targets for EVERY participating country, and the U.S. rarely even ratifies these. Honestly, it's time for a targeted approach against the United States.

Even if you ignore everything I just said, I'm truly curious about the near future. At what point do countries form alliances and begin to impose sanctions on the United States specifically? We are the biggest domino that refuses to fall. And honestly, it's embarrassing. I would like to know about the possibility of this going forward. With true collective action from a number of countries specifically targeting the United States, what is the worst that can happen? Is it any worse than impending doom, which is the trajectory we are on?

[cdrovetsky]

movie

“Planet of the Apes” is an American sci-fi film that revolves around an astronaut crew that crashes on an unknown planet in the year 3978. The crew estimate that they are on a planet 320 light years away from Earth and have to face the fact that time has wiped away everything they once knew. It is not long until the crew stumbles upon the society inhabiting this planet in which apes have evolved to be the ruling species and humans are the inferior, animal class. This human vs. ape allegory has largely been taken to represent a “liberal thought experiment” in race -- what if the white man were oppressed? Although the message was meant to make viewers reflect and empathize with the way minorities are treated in real life, it was also met with backlash in its execution. In his review of the 2011 “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” Ed Gonzalez says of the original, “That sly allegory was hatefully perverted by white supremacists, even deemed derogatory by some in the Black Power movement, but its provocation is unmistakable as one directed against the forces of institutionalized racism.”

Released in 1968, the themes of the film strongly echoe a society dealing with race conflicts, the civil rights movement being in full swing by that point. On the one hand, one could argue that Taylor, the main astronaut’s, enslavement portrayed the fear that older generations, who grew up with the conservatism of the 50’s, felt in the face of a new eagerness to uproot “traditional ways.” In this sense, the casting of Charlton Heston as Taylor is particularly interesting. Heston had already established himself a career as a traditional, macho, alpha male hero in his previous roles, and was even presented with a “damsel in distress” in this one (Nova). However, it is the twist ending that makes all the difference. Throughout the movie, the apes play a clear antagonist role to humans, but when it is revealed that the planet Taylor and his crew crashed on really is a futuristic Earth, it becomes clear that humans had in fact led to their own downfall, which puts their value as the “hero” of the movie into question. Are the apes truly villains, or have they created a social order that protects them from man and the inevitable destruction man brings? The film closes with a now famous scene of Taylor coming upon a decrepit Statue of Liberty, realizing, “Oh my God. I’m back. I’m home. All the time it was – We finally really did it! You maniacs! You blew it up! Oh, damn you! God damn you to hell!”

sources:

https://theconversation.com/thought-youd-sussed-out-planet-of-the-apes-think-again-29352 https://lwlies.com/articles/planet-apes-of-the-apes-1960s-counterculture/

[blakekushner]

This week's readings about the inequality surrounding climate change, particularly the "Global Warming in an Unequal World: a case of environmental colonialism", provided a lot along the lines of globalization and inequality. I thought, however, that this particular article did not really discuss the other ways that first world countries are contributing to this inequality. The article highlights how these countries wish to stop, or reduce, the emissions from the full-blown industrialization within developing countries without looking to really minimize their own first. The article does not mention, however, how many of these countries are used as trash sites for the garbage coming from the first world. The boom of technical innovation has left 50 million tons of e-waste (last year alone), that can seriously pollute the environment, contaminating the water, land, and air. Many developing countries are used as dump sites for this e-waste as developed countries send over this garbage under the false pretense of "used goods" and "recycling", even though this waste is unusable (https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/toxic-e-waste-dumped-in-poor-nations-says-united-nations). Another example of this is the oil industry asking the US to pressure Kenya into changing its stance against plastic waste, which is what the country was praised for in their efforts to stop the manufacturing and import of plastic bags to limit a major source of plastic waste (https://apnews.com/article/africa-global-trade-international-news-us-news-20d8d72a8e32a2f136ef7ca3d2bcaec3). The dumping of other countries' waste into poorer countries just continues to worsen the cycle since then these countries will have to expend even more energy to manage this waste that is not even their own, thus increasing carbon emissions and environmental pollutants. If these richer countries were to lessen their own waste and recycle it through the proper means rather than dumping it in other countries, then this would do a lot more in the long-run for climate change instead of blaming it on the poorer countries becoming more industrialized. It seems that to really address the problem of climate change, both inequality within countries and among the globe needs to be examined and remedied in order for the efforts to combat climate change to be effective. As it stands, it just seems like countries are blaming others and pushing their problems and waste to other places to take care of.

[WinstonHartnett]

framing

This response is related to my question here.

One of the primary roles of governments is to regulate socioeconomic pressures that harm social mobility, human rights, or threaten the continued stability of a country (some governments are particularly egregious on the last one). Wealth redistribution, in that way, is a very clear responsibility a government has for its people. But what about the world? How does a government reconcile its duty to its citizens' interests---the people who, generally speaking, elect their leaders---and to the dignity of mankind---people not within the governments' constituencies.

Market globalization is frequently cited as a major contributor to climate emissions and to wealth inequality. Well-endowed nations can exploit cheap markets and poor citizens to manufacture goods at low prices, which are shipped and consumed by those who can afford them. However, globalization has fostered a rennaissance in connectivity and technology. Continents lifted out of poverty. Billions of people whose parents only a few generations before could only dream of having college graduates in their families. Yet, the increasing connections between peoples and countries makes the challenges associated with wealth inequality doubly difficult as increasing resource production increases emissions.

The nature of governance is that someone has to "lose out" for things to move forward. It's the same with climate change and wealth inequality as it is in economics' "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." In that veign, it's not enough to believe that enlightened self-interest and the moral compunction "the West" feels towards the developing world is enough to adress fundamental problems responsible for its own wealth, responsible particularly for the wealth of its voters and citizens. It would be a logical conclusion to the ills of the century, given our trajectory towards globalization, to develop binding international institutions---a sort of world government with the mandate to alleviate inequality and address the international fallout from climate change.

Because wealth inequality is systematic, its effects permeate every aspect of modern life: politics, culture, language, and especially economics. As it stands now, global issues cannot be resolved through dialogue and finger-wagging. I don't see any alternatives based in our current international order of national sovereignty, "dialogue," and finger-wagging. Issues that involve all governments cannot be solved by competition and antagonism.

[EmaanMohsin]

framing #policy

Why Developing Countries Need To Be Present in Combating Climate Change

Agarwal and Narain's argument on the irresponsibility in blaming developing countries for global warming devastations is certainly essential to recognize. I think we can all agree that there is significant inequality in the world that is underscored when discussing global warming. However, I do not believe the approach of mainly relying on developed nations to take the first steps to resolve climate change will result in a positive change. The authors emphasized that they disagreed with the IEA when it made stated, "[t]he levels of coal use predicted for India and China could have been a very dramatic environmental impact indeed. If developing countries keep to the sort of forecasts of coal consumption now being bandied about, they would negate any effort by Western countries to control emissions of greenhouse gases." They deemed this language as irresponsible, yet throughout the paper, they have made similarly bold claims as in "[a]s their [China's] consumption is bound to increase, the dream of every Chinese to own a refrigerator, is being described as a global curse" [1] Statements like these perpetuate blame of global warming in an exaggerated fashion (the very thing the authors believe should not happen). They create a me vs. them attitude that will not help solve a problem that impacts the entire planet.

Unlike wealthy nations, developing countries are certainly not contributing as much to global warming. However, if we continue to assign blame in terms of wealth, we will not be closer to achieving a solution to the devastating effects of global warming. We are no longer at a point in human civilization at which nations have the luxury to use unlimited resources in order to develop further. What will be the state of Earth if we continue to say that developing nations should not have to worry about climate change initiatives since they are not "responsible for it?" At the end of the day, every part of the Earth will be impacted by climate change. Therefore, instead of removing developing nations from these conversations, we need to include them. In fact, since these very nations will suffer the most from the effects of climate change, they should be focused on creating greener initiatives. The goal should be that every country, whether they have contributed to climate change or not, is implementing sustainable practices to succeed in a world in which the environment is being destroyed. In fact, many developing countries are already taking this initiative. Morocco, for instance, houses the world's largest solar power plant. The returns on investment are significant because it has created a cleaner environment, new industries, and jobs [2]. Therefore, although seemingly counterintuitive, we need to encourage developing countries to take greener initiatives.

From the view of space, we cannot see wealthy and developing nations. We cannot see America vs. the rest of the world. We can only see a dot-the Earth. Regardless of who contributed the most to the mess of the environment, we all live on this planet. It is this planet, in its entirety, that will survive from the effects of climate change or fall from it.

*Image of Earth (small dot in the picture) as seen from the surface of Mars.

[1] Agarwal, Anil and Narain, Sunita. "Global Warming In An Unequal World." Centre for Science and Environment. 1996. [2] Mearian, Lucas. "World's largest solar plant goes live, will provide power for 1.1M people." Computer World. 2016.

[chasedenholm]

socialinequality #policy #environment

In all of the readings for this week, we were given insight into the prevalence of inequality in proposed climate change solutions, specifically with regards to developing countries. The concept of environmental colonialism is ever-present in today's society with the blame on increased emissions targeting countries like India and China. The question this then raises is why should one country be punished for simply wanting to achieve modernization that seemingly most of the world already has?

Developing countries are in dire need of energy infrastructure as a crucial first step in developing their societies and countries. Why should they be prevented from pursuing that? Although fossil fuels are incredibly harmful to our planet, they are extremely cheap in comparison to alternative energy options. If we are to cut down carbon emissions, restrictions have to come on a per capita basis. Agarwal and Narain discuss this idea in their paper, and they further express that the notion of penalizing those developing countries attempting to achieve modernization to catch up to the rest of the world is simply unfair. They are completely right, global warming is a global problem and needs to be tackled as such. If we prevent developing countries from attempting to advance their country, then the effects of climate change will only become harder and harder for those countries to overcome. Even more so than us. If you slap on all these restrictions, they have no way of achieving a better way of life.

In the meantime, we still drive our cars to work, leave the lights on, and take our whole electrical grid for granted. Why is it that we are emitting so much, and our livelihood doesn’t change? Well, we certainly need to find solutions around our climate change crisis that not only links in a global solution but doesn’t undermine certain countries that may already be at a disadvantage. How can this be done? Well, I think the determining factor right now is the cost of alternative energy options. It is a lot easier to build an energy infrastructure off of fossil fuels than it is with renewables or nuclear. Renewables are constantly hitting record lows in terms of costs, but it needs to continue that trend a lot faster.

We are in a race and the solutions we have now are not adequate to save us, they certainly will help, but they will not be the end solution, at least in their current state. What hurts right now in renewables is the upfront costs of implementing and installing the technology. Right now it seems as if the only way to allow developing countries to modernize without increasing carbon emissions is to circumvent the fossil fuel infrastructure base and build an energy infrastructure off of alternative options. The costs for utility-scale solar photovoltaic projects have decreased 82% since 2010. While a remarkable achievement, we need more. This can be done through scaling, increased government subsidies, and stronger government regulations on harmful options. If investment in this sector is increased dramatically, it will be a lot easier to propose it as competition to fossil fuels in developing countries. But until we get there, we really cannot place blame on a country that simply wants to achieve a similar way of life that we experience. In today’s society, we are heavily reliant on global relationships and global solutions. One country cannot solve our climate problems. It is now the time to put the interests of our earth ahead of the interests of our individual nations.

References:

Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, “Global Warming in an Unequal World: a case of environmental colonialism.” Centre for Science and Environment, 1991.

Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Planetary Crises and the Difficulty of Being Modern.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2018. 

Pictures: https://www.google.com/search?q=india+fossil+fuel+usage&sxsrf=ALeKk03PtaU3txtGhZaEy6NeeDA1tlwBYw:1619287351967&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-rpy7u5fwAhUbXM0KHTb8AusQ_AUoAnoECAEQBA&biw=1119&bih=718#imgrc=CujTOr8UfEQbgM http://www.physics.utah.edu/~mostafa/courses/PHYS3150/latest/

[stellaslorer]

climate #social

I find it intriguing to explore the reciprocal relationship between social inequalities and environmental devastation. It no longer is a little-known fact that the most affluent households are the greatest polluters of our planet. This is even more applicable to countries with widespread income inequality. According to an Oxfam study, Americans in the top 10% of the income bracket emit, on average, 50 tons of carbon dioxide per year. This group is then followed by Canada’s top 10%. In contrast, in nations that are considered to be more equitable like South Korea, Japan, France, Germany and Italy, the rich pollute, on average, much less. Average pollution generally in these countries is also lower. The graphic image I have included at the moment of this memo further highlights the correlation between income inequality and pollution. We can see in this chart that the countries that are more unequal produce much more waste. Comparing Japan with the United States underscores the fact that people in the US buy and throw out twice as much as people in Japan. Thus, we must confront the many ways we are––seemingly indirectly––harming the planet, and in this case, that would be through upholding a capitalist system that feeds on widespread purchasing and disposing of goods. So perhaps we must reimagine what economies of the future look like. We must adopt systems that are more equitable and fair if we hope to fundamentally save our planet and stop waste from consuming it. This can come from a number of angles whether that is combatting fast fashion or adjusting to a more circular economy. What is so exciting about these prospects is the good that they can do both for our communities as we reduce social inequalities and for the planet as we adjust to a future that cannot sustain the actions of our past.

[omarh4]

Salience #SocialInequality

I was really interested by the idea presented by Dipresh Chakrabarty’s paper “Planetary Crises and the Difficulty of Being Modern”, which posits that the way we define the globe has very different meanings when it comes to globalization and global warming. Like globalization, global warming is implied to involve the entire global community, but instead end up being centered around the most industrialized countries that have the resources that the majority of the world does not. For this reason is that global takes on a new meaning when we consider the effect of climate change. While it is a global problem, the solution is for the countries who have done the most unnecessary damage to the environment. A problem arises when considering these definitions of globe and what happens when we try to consolidate them. If we take the approach implied by globalization and attempt to modernize the entire globe, then we will reach a point where all countries are as developed as our current industrialized nations, as a result will produce similar amounts of pollution, as explained in Hannes Bergthallers paper “Thoughts on Asia and the Anthropocene”. The reading of this week highlights the importance of recognizing this distinction in definition inorder to determine where the brunt of the responsibility should be placed, but we should also keep in mind that this difference in meaning is what has been holding back major global warming in the past. While the world has seen starvation and poverty, we have never experienced a true case of global scarcity of resources, which would become the case if a globalized world of highly industrialized nations were all drawing resources at the rate that European and North American countries do. If the anthropocene can be defined by the introduction of industrial and modern technology to the biosphere, then the rapid modernization of the remnants of the globe will mean that the effects of the anthropocene have yet to be truly realized

[abertodano]

movie #salience

No visible mark remains of the Rajōmon (羅城門) today. The magnificent city gate of Kyoto, constructed in the Heian period, was once a symbol of imperial splendor, artistic majesty, and cultural blossoming.

(A miniature reconstruction of the Rajōmon, credit to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Miniature_Model_of_Rajomon.jpg)

900 years ago, it had already begun to fall into disrepair. The ruins gradually became a place for thieves to congregate, for builders to collect stones, and for desperate parents to abandon their babies.

Akira Kurosawa's Rashōmon takes place in these ruins. Three men, hiding from the rain under the gate's barely intact roof, talk about a heinous crime committed recently in the nearby woods. A samurai was killed, and as all testimonies agree, a bandit raped his wife in front of his eyes. These testimonies, one by the wife, one by the bandit, one by the dead samurai (through a medium) seem to have nothing else in common. Did the bandit murder the samurai, did he best him in a duel, or did the samurai commit suicide? Did his wife submit to her aggressor without shame, or did she wish to kill herself because she felt disgraced? The truth is unclear, and the three men are disturbed by the lack of resolution. How can man's soul be so dishonest, so fickle, so weak, they ask themselves.

One of the three men under the gate knows the truth behind the distorted testimonies. He saw the crime occur, but he has held his tongue until now, hoping not to involve himself. He finally reveals his knowledge, and every party comes out guilty. The bandit retains his guilt for rape, but not for murder. The samurai comes out looking worse than the bandit. He blamed his wife for the "impurity" the bandit forced on her, refused to fight the bandit for her honor, and told her to kill herself. Not even the wife, the real victim, is fully clean. Desperate at being abandoned by both the bandit and the samurai, the wife finally scolded them into fighting to the death for her like "real men", partially causing the bandit to kill her husband.

This storyline speaks harshly against gender inequality in traditional Japanese culture. Entrenched purity morals allow the samurai to justify treating his wife with far less mercy than her rapist. She has no choice in the matter; she will have to deal with trauma and social disgrace for the rest of her life.

[ghost]

framing #salience

One of the things I was thinking about while completing the readings for this week was how often we think of social inequality as something that affects people within a country’s borders. We do not often think about how inequality can transcend borders or how the international response to a problem such as climate change can be unequal. I think that in thinking about climate change and social inequality together, as some of the readings do, we have to think about it on an international level rather than a domestic one.

For example, one of President Biden’s focuses in his first 100 days was action on climate change, but his action on this issue is something that affects the entire world – not just Americans. Although he has softened the rhetoric he used on the campaign trail, turning away from ending fracking and other such practices, his shift towards renewable energy has been met with backlash by those invested in the continued reliance on fossil fuels. Whether these individuals be those who work in the industry or executives who make a lot of money on these fuel sources, there has been pushback. However, we must think beyond just those in the United States who may not like the idea of renewable energy despite President Biden’s promises that new jobs will be created to replace those lost in this transition. The United States’ continued reliance on fossil fuels will not just affect us – it will affect communities around the world, and we must find a way to take that into consideration when figuring out how best to tackle this problem. We must tackle it in a way that promotes global social equality and not just domestic social equality. I would say we also have to end the reliance on fossil fuels to ensure social equality by providing jobs.

What also struck me when reading about trying to approach climate change in a way that is socially equal was how we can’t even do that when the solution is clear and defined. We are seeing this now where India is struggling with a massive surge in COVID-19 cases. The United States finally committed to sending aid to India and is in the process of doing so. [1] However, prior to this we knew the United States was sitting on tens of millions of vaccine and refused to give or sell doses to countries begging for them. [2] If we cannot coordinate a global and equal response to a pandemic that has ravaged the planet for over a year now and that we have all seen the consequences of, what does that say about our ability to be able to do the same for climate change? I especially question it given that the consequences of climate change can seem far off and abstract, whereas the effects of the pandemic are clear and present and still has not prompted global problem-solving in a holistic and equal manner.

1: https://time.com/5958430/us-sends-vaccine-supplies-india/ 2: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/politics/coronavirus-astrazeneca-united-states.html

[ghost]

novel #movie

The Hunger Games series was one of my favorites to read when I was in middle school, so it was very interesting to revisit the first book with a focus on social inequality rather than just to enjoy the storyline. This is a book steeped in themes of social inequality that seem to be forgotten in favor of focusing on the love story and the dazzling dystopia of the world Suzanne Collins created. Even though the themes of social inequality are quite stark, what stuck out in my brain the most when I picked this book up again was the story of a strong girl trying to resist a corrupt government and finding love along the way (however cheesy that last bit sounds). Looking at the novel again after almost a decade and with the intent of picking out these themes really made clear how much I missed when I read it the first time.

The world Collins created for the Hunger Games is both disturbing and dazzling. The readers are introduced to the stark differences between the twelve districts of Panem and the lives of the individuals in those districts, but then are whisked away to the Capitol where everyone lives an easy life and knows nothing of the worries and stressors that those in districts like district twelve, where the protagonist Katniss is from. While Katniss comes from a district where she struggles to feed her family and people work in coal mines, the characters from the Capitol dress in extravagant clothes and have constant access to food. The tone shift feels rather like a slap in the face to the reader, who has been experiencing those hardships along with Katniss and has been brought to the Capitol for the first time along with that character.

Although I generally despise book-to-movie adaptations, I will admit that the Hunger Games movie does a very good job addressing the social inequalities present in the universe Collins created. It is present in the characters’ mannerisms, clothing, and reactions to external stimulants. One image that stuck out to me was the shot when Effie Trinket and Katniss are standing together on the stage after Katniss has just volunteered for the Hunger Games. The costumes beautifully demonstrate the economic differences between the two women, but their mannerisms and reactions speak volumes as well. For Effie, this is a game that has no effect on her life as she will never be forced into the arena. Her face is quirked up in this half-smile and she looks completely unbothered by what just transpired. For Katniss, she has literally just entered a life-or-death situation and has a one in twenty-four chance of surviving. You can see her resignation to what’s about to happen, as she always knew there was a chance, she would be participating in the Hunger Games.

[nobro011235]

framing

One of the most salient points in the readings, and especially in Global Warming in an Unequal World, is that the burden of climate change is not being taken seriously by the countries that most caused it. This perpetuates global inequality as curtails will be placed upon developing countries to keep them from developing in the future, exacerbating the global wealth gap between developed and developing countries. A topic that is near and dear to my heart as a pre-medical student, and increasingly important nowadays for obvious reasons, is the question of how much aid America should give to foreign countries in vaccines. In other words, what role do developed countries in minimizing the global health inequalities regarding the Covid-19 vaccine. On one hand, it is relatively simple to see why foreign aid shouldn’t be our Covid-19 priority. Americans were hit particularly hard with Covid-19 for a myriad of political and social reasons, and had one of the highest mortality rates from Covid-19 throughout the pandemic. Furthermore, there is intense political pressure from both sides of the aisle to distribute vaccines to the American people as fast as possible. While this in and of itself is not a very good reason to forgo potential ethical problems with an American-centric rollout, it is easy to see that going back on campaign promises may not be the most honest move from the Biden administration. After all, our democracy is built on the implicit assumption that the politicians will abide by their campaign promises; how else can a voter rationalize voting for any candidate over the other? Finally, and what I see as the most convincing point, is that if the world vaccinated everyone in the world at an equal rate, the virus would likely mutate at a much faster rate. No country would be able to be fully vaccinated in the near future, and the virus would thus be able to mutate at a rate potentially faster than the vaccine would spread. Vaccinating everyone in U.S.A would ensure no new strains are born here. However, people are dying at alarming rate in other countries that don’t have the resources to effectively combat the virus or make vaccines. After all, USA was able to innovate vaccine technology in large part due to the massive amount of wealth we had going into the pandemic that we were able to invest in vaccine research. The people in other countries do not “deserve” to not have the vaccine, no less than any person in the USA does. However, despite having the economic resources to more effectively social distance, spread effective public health messaging, and survive an economic recession, USA has chosen to vaccinate itself while people in India are dying in hordes. It simply doesn’t add up. It represents one of the most deadly cases of global health inequality at the present time, and one with a relatively easy solution – invest in the health of the entire globe instead of just your own country. This is also a case of selfish enlightenment, just as we have discussed in class regarding climate change – for the more people vaccinated on a global scale, the quicker travel can open up and the less likely Covid will come back to the USA. I believe the solution lies somewhere in the middle of these two stances, but I do believe the USA should take a much more global stance on its response to Covid-19, and choose to some extent to help our neighbors before ourselves.

[blakemoss]

framing #salience

When reading Professor Chakrabarty's article, I was struck by his attention to language. He points out the distinction between uses of words like 'global' and 'planetary' in different contexts. This discussion got me thinking about language and the way that the use of certain terms affects public perception of an issue, and even the way that public perception affects the actual terms being used. Anecdotally, it seems like those denying the issue of climate change tend to use the phrase 'global warming' almost incredulously, as if the term itself acts as evidence for its nonexistence. It seems like they have clung to the term 'global warming' because it simply sounds more unlikely-- the term 'global' is so encompassing that it places the scale of the issue at a level that many are not willing to accept as feasible. The term 'climate change' however, seems like an attempt to rephrase the issue to be less vulnerable to such assumptions.

A similar thing seems to apply to our discourse over the AI revolution or the nuclear holocaust. Both of those seem like such dramatic terms, and seem easily mock-able or undermined, simply because they sound so Hollywood-y in public perception. But the problem we’re all faced with is that these are in fact threats that the whole world faces. These are potential civilization ending events. So how do you not use ‘dramatic language’ when talking about them? It does seem that the words we use to discuss these potential apocalypses plays a highly important role in our collective communication and resolution of them. Is it simply that we're unable to process events of this magnitude? It seems like the weight and scope of the apocalypse might be too big for our languages to properly communicate.

[cdrovetsky]

origin #solutions

Anil Agarwal and Sunita Nerain’s “Global Warming in an Unequal World: a case of environmental colonialism” brings attention to the way political agenda and colonial practices can affect discussion and negotiation surrounding working towards a solution to climate change. To me, it is interesting that we are discussing colonialism getting in the way of our collaborating to fix a problem whose origins are deeply rooted in colonialism itself. Generally speaking, one of the most key pursuits of colonialism is accessing and owning new land and resources. From mining, to deforestation to accommodate roads and railways, colonialism’s history can be traced through the lens of the impact it has had on nature. Colonized territories were seen as blank slates whose natural resources were open to be commodified and profited from, or sacrificed to make way for new systems of living. One such destructive example is the deforestation that resulted from imposed sugar production in the Canary and Cape Verde islands. Woodlands were completely stripped in order to accommodate the creation of plantations that would in turn require an influx of livestock to the area. Moreover, thousands of kilometers of man made canals were dug in order to provide irrigation for these new sugar plantations. Are there ways we can work towards solving the problems we are currently facing in having diplomatic collaboration aimed at bettering climate change by addressing the inherent politics associated with how we got to this point in the first place?

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/to-fix-climate-crisis-we-must-acknowledge-our-imperial-past/

[mesber1]

risk #solutions #salience

Despite the inherent injustice in asking developing countries to curb their minimal (compared to developing countries) carbon dioxide emissions, we must consider the fact that the planet cannot sustain more North-American levels of development without catastrophic climatic side effects. The risk of climate change weighs heavier on developing nations in the first place, and is more likely to result in their succumbing to chaos. Take, for example, the Syrian Civil War, which began in part as a result of a great anthropogenic drought which led to wide-scale migration and an increase in social and economic tensions due to food scarcity and price inflation. My family and I immigrated from Syria in 2012, and I still remember walking through Damascus’ Tishreen Park and seeing the multitudes of displaced families with their mattresses and belongings laid out on the grass (2 million Syrians were forced to migrate as a result of the drought alone). As shown by the Syrian example, Third World countries, what with their socio-economic and political instability, have the most to lose when climate change strikes; therefore, I feel that it is necessary to understand that, regardless of the injustice of asking developing nations to decrease their emissions in order to accommodate the massive consumption of developed nations, this step may be required. Nevertheless, collaboration is also required, that is, developed countries must offer as much aid as possible in order to allow poorer countries to develop in a manner that mitigates the issue of climate change. Each individual has the right to a better quality of life, but does not the impending threat of climate change transcend this? We are faced with a doomsday-level threat, and sacrifices, though unjust, must be made in order to alleviate it. Nations, both developed and developing, with great emphasis on the former, must be willing to collaborate for the benefit of individuals as well as for the benefit of the planet as a whole.

[apolissky]

This week’s readings consistently reminded me of science fiction. Specifically, in Chakrabarty, Planetary Crises and the Difficulty of Being Modern he puts forth two ideas. The first is that when we think of crises like climate change, we think of how it will affect “us”, but that “us” does not include the planet, or the animals that live on it, rather it simply includes humans, and even then at times that vision is limited to a select few. The second is the idea that we have birthed a version of modernism that is inaccessible to everyone, essentially designed for a select few. Yet the terrible irony is that this vision of modernity has become prized by many, and many seek it.

In multiple science fiction novels that I have read, from Ian M. Banks novels to Ursula K. Le Guin, a line can be drawn to distinguish different societies in those books. Some choose to embrace the planets they live on, and rather than work against the planet's ecosystem. Chakrabarty clearly places humanity in the latter. I think the most fascinating aspect is our blindpsot to our very own behavior. Perhaps it’s just selection bias, but when I read stories of societies who jump from planet to planet harvesting the energy or resources I hardly view them in a positive light. I can’t really think of anyone that would read about societies that resemble bloodsuckers and view them in a positive light, so it is astounding to me that we ignore our very own mindset.

Furthermore, in films like Interstellar or any number of science fiction stories, we see a trope. Either a future or “advanced” society returns to warn of the dangers of the developmental path they chose. The US and various European Nations holding China and India to the same standards for climate change feels almost the same. It’s intuitive and maybe even justified that the US and Europe would want China and India to help work towards keeping our planet from spinning violently out of control. Yet at the same time, it is unfair to expect that China and India would not follow the easy path to the very version of modernity that the US and Europe have purveyed and benefited from. I do not have solution to these problems, but thought it was interesting to juxtapose these problems to those we see in the stories we tell ourselves.

[BuffDawg]

origin #risk #solutions

Social inequalities are often the most pressing political issues, regardless of era or climate. Inequity has been the cause of war, and has been a topic broached by many philosophers, including those who predicted it would end the world order. One such man, Karl Marx, predicted that capitalism, the predominant economic system theorized by Adam Smith, would cause chaos as the lower class (proletariat) would inevitably be forced to rise against the land-owners (bourgeoisie). Marx once said that communism would be “the solution to the riddle of history and knows itself as this solution”. This strong argument is one centered around policy (which we will turn towards next week) but shows just how vexing the balance of welfare has been throughout human civilization. Since the very beginnings of agriculture, the ownership of land has caused quite a lot of conflict. Even in feudal times, extreme social inequities were unsustainable. The first English rebellion, known as the Peasant’s Revolt (or Wat Tyler’s Rebellion) stemmed from the nobility institution “maximum wages” following the depletion of labor supply because of the Great Plague. From Bergthaller’s “Thoughts on Asia and the Anthropocene” he gives further evidence of these uprisings, but also ties them to environmental degradation. China’s Grand Canal, constructed in the 6th century AD, was one such that devastated the local ecosystems where water supply was harmed. In modern times, despite an era of unprecedented wealth, these disparities threaten the fabric of society, especially given the fact that those in poverty have the highest fertility rates compared to any other group. If we are to confront the possibility that hostile class consciousness could threaten global political and social stability, we must first understand ways to fix the system just as much as the opportunity cost of these individuals who could rebel against governments, which is no small task.

The biggest problem mentioned in my previous paragraph remains to be the environmental collapse that will have disproportionate impacts on the global south, and the global poor. In the reading from Agarwal, they stress the importance of global coordination in solving these existential threats. Given the weakness of the United Nations as a whole, it seems unlikely that global government is something we can hope to achieve in the near future. If these equatorial regions become uninhabitable in the near future thanks to global warming, then we might be faced with this reality sooner than expected. The United States already has a migrant crisis at its southern border from refugees transiting thousands of miles to find cooler weather and a better lifestyle. Perhaps open borders can be a way to transition civilization into a new era where countries can compete for citizen’s with higher minimum wages, where everyone benefits. If civilization is bound by tribalist nation-states, then perhaps global revolt against the wealthy is inevitable.

[brandonhuang1]

framing

Many of the readings for this week tackled how environmental activism can intertwine with neo-colonialism. As the globe has become more interconnected, multi-national conglomerates (primarily western conglomerates) have emerged as both the clear beneficiaries of "dirty" energy and the ones who are most adamantly opposed to change. While we can discuss the rampant inequality in consumption on a class basis, the consumption of these conglomerates is at a scale that we just cannot comprehend as individuals.

Economically, we can view these companies as not paying all their costs of doing business, i.e. they aren't paying the full cost of pollution of CO2 emissions. Here different credits, taxes, and permits can alleviate some of these costs. However, as we have already witnessed, these companies have no issue exporting these negative externalities to countries where their bank accounts are even more influential than in the U.S. Without drastic shifts, these companies will continue to exploit the environment and the global south. This is where economic and moral thinking intersect. While economic policies can alleviate malpractice, how long will we attempt to reform these bad actors until we realize that they just cost more than they provide? If a companies entire business model relies on exploitation what reforms could be adequate?

No business would ever admit that it is inherently unsustainable so how can we tell? How do we compare the subsistence CO2 emissions of farmers and that of institutions? In "Sharing a crucial global common," Narain and Agarwal suggest that the "vital global common (the earth's yearly CO2 bank) should be shared equally on a per capita basis." Here we can begin to compare the additional CO2 emissions from Amazon's decision to set the default from 2 days shipping to 1 day, from the methane produced by cattle farmers. One stems from overconsumption, the other from necessary consumption.

[chakrabortya]

origin

solutions

I am fascinated by Bergthaller’s discussion of the effect of Asian customs on modernity and the Anthropocene in Asia. Bergthaller’s combining the ideas of green consumerism and traditionalism made me think about how these topics have manifested in the religious spheres of India. Outdated religious customs create unforeseen strains on India’s 290 million people below the international poverty line and the global climate.

Indian religions have a strange relationship with rivers. Mosques, Gurudwaras, and Temples use and worship rivers in contradictory ways. A simple example of this contradiction is the act of offering flowers to deities. Floral offerings are taken from home to the religious hubs and then returned to individual shrines at home. As instructed by the various religions, people dispose of these flowers in rivers. There are 23,000 temples in New Delhi alone that create 20,000 kg of waste from floral offerings. 80% of this waste ends up rotting in the nearby, religiously significant Yamuna river (pictured below).

Indian rivers play a critical role for the 290 million people in poverty. Amid the COVID pandemic, more than 50% of people in India lack access to potable water. In addition, these rivers siphon off much-needed government funds in the form of river cleaning projects. The Indian government supposedly spent USD 27 billion on river cleaning projects in Delhi alone.

I believe that religion is partly responsible for India’s water and air pollution crises. This week’s reading forced me to think about the inequity in the battle against climate change. Thinking deeply about the case study of India made me sceptical of the value of global solutions that are to be applied to every country regardless of their background. There needs to be more of a global conversation about more heterogenous, tailored solutions, such as the altering of the aforementioned practices in India that are exacerbating inequality and undeniably impacting the Anthropocene.

Sources: Thoughts on Asia and the Anthropocene - Hannes Bergthaller https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/27/india/india-water-crisis-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.dw.com/en/eco-friendly-religion-in-india/g-17354079 (image)

[isabelmw]

solutions #salience

Leaving the Earth?

I feel that beyond all the topics we discuss in class (cyber security, nuclear threat etc.) the threat of environmental peril and the destruction of global warming is what I find to be the most inevitable – it’s the threat that makes me most assuredly and depressingly say we are doomed. And there is a wide range of articles that stipulate different reasons as to why we will one day have to leave Earth and vacate to some other planet. Some present this possibility as more of a pure hypothetical imaginary, others as an imperative or inevitability. Other articles argue we will never live on an exoplanet and never leave earth, at least not all of humanity. Nobel laureate Michel Mayor, astrophysicist who co-received the award in 2019, said even if we eventually sent people to Mars within the next 50 years, he’d be “very surprised if humanity made it to the orbit of Jupiter within the next few centuries”. He felt the need to “kill all statements that say ‘OK we will go to a livable planet if one day life is not possible on Earth’. And I agree that the enduring discourse that we can casually abandon our home planet for some other one if we mess it up so thoroughly it’s no longer sustainable is folly as well as dangerous (it can encourage complacency). However, I wanted to engage with this idea of us leaving the Earth and colonizing an exoplanet through the lens of inequality. Much like we’ve found in the readings this week, global warming is a problem that has been contributed to at varying levels by nation. Furthermore, the ensuing fight to stop climate change and reduce emissions is not one that should be divvied up without consideration for each planet’s contribution to the problem. Developing countries have contributed subsequently more and there is something deeply unfair and seriously egregious in forcing developing countries to engage in equal clean up. While the speculation that we could one day evacuate to an exoplanet has been deemed as wishful thinking, it has also been posited by so many as imperative, inevitable, and necessary for humanity’s survival. This made me consider, if we left to go to space how would inequality manifest? Well, firstly, would it be a global evacuation where all countries combine their out of space resources to evacuate? Or would it be national? Because if only developed countries have the space industry and infrastructure to send people to outerspace, perhaps it is only those countries that will escape Earth. Much of sci-fi media depicts future inequality in relation to socio-economic status (i.e. the wealthy get to leave while the poor are left), but what about considering the entire international body? Are exoplanets only the homes of developed countries? Who can actually make it to space and is there a future where entire countries are left out of space colonization? It’s definitely interesting to consider the ways that space colonization as a solution to climate change, however unlikely it may be, would manifest various inequitable outcomes.

Sources: https://www.livescience.com/will-we-ever-live-exoplanet.html https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-02/after-earth-why-where-how-and-when-we-might-leave-our-home-planet/

[Brunofireflame]

origins #framing

This is a topic that really scares me. From Leopold II's hand harvest to Nestle sterilizing women through their products to Coca Cola purchasing municipal water rights then selling the citizens water for a higher cost than Coke, we have a long and terrible history with the things we will do for the "free market." The actions that companies take are not only wide-ranging in terms of effects, but are also relatively unknown. Combine this with the powerful ability of corporations to influence politicians through lobbying, as well as a corporate tv news media that has it in its best interests to not tell the people about these things, and you've got a powerful ruling class of corporations that can do what they want, consequences be damned. Looking at oil companies now, the exxon report on climate in the 90's is a pretty clear indicator that they do not care about the environment, regardless of what corporations are saying on twitter now. And when the people fight back, seen with lawyer Steven Donziger, whose treatment by both Chevron and the government has been downright criminal. The "star witness" admitted to lying on the stand, and his inhumane punishment of house arrest for 600 days is absolutely unprecedented. LINKhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/28/chevron-lawyer-steven-donziger-ecuador-house-arrest Every week I vote for societal transformation as our solution, because I really don't think that anything short of a societal re-evaluation of who we prioritize and what we let these companies get away with will get us out of our issues.

[ZeyangPan]

I had a strong feeling about this week's reading by Agarwal's and Narain's book on environmental equity. When people normally would think developing countries are likely to share more blame for global warming due to excessive carbon emissions and outdated environmental awareness. This book supports the idea that developing countries don't share the blame for environmental degradation based on science. I totally agree with the author on this point. As someone who comes from a developing country(China), developing countries also make their own effect to protect our Earth. For example, China has been establishing strict environmental protection policies in recent years. I have seen many small factories closed due to excessive carbon emissions. Moreover, according to the Paris agreement(a legally binding international treaty on climate change) in 2015, China promised that its emissions will reach a maximum around 2030. Surprisingly, China also promised that China will reach "carbon neutrality" by 2060 which means that China's net carbon emissions will reach zero by then. The Paris agreement gives us a great example of dealing with climate change issues in between countries. Earth's environment should be taken care of by all countries, no matter you are a developing or developed country. I have taken a planet science course, and I had some background knowledge about carbon distribution and emission data. The earth's air contains less than 0.03% carbon dioxide, and the content has remained basically constant for a long period of time in the past. 80% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from the respiration of people, animals, and plants, and 20% comes from the combustion of fuel. So It is reasonable to say, human activities have a huge impact on carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. I think there are some ways to reduce the emission of carbon in theory. The first method is to use clean fossil energy with low carbon content. However, the use of natural gas, shale gas, etc. to replace coal also has many problems. Firstly, fossil energy is used, which has the problem of exhaustion; secondly, although the proportion of carbon content has declined, there are still half of the emissions. Globally, new renewable energy sources, namely wind, and solar energy, still account for less than 5% of the world's main energy supply. The use of low-carbon energy and renewable energy is obviously the way out, but the energy structure of a country involves too many factors that cannot be solved overnight. The second possible method is improving energy use efficiency. We can encourage the whole society to advocate energy conservation and emission reduction and calls on everyone to realize a low-carbon life by changing energy usage habits and participate in the action of saving the environment and saving mankind. Another way to reduce carbon emission could be developing basic theories of energy utilization. Now the theoretical circles are studying new theories and new energy sources, but no one has reconsidered and studied the basic theories of traditional energy and energy applications. At present, about 70% of China's electric energy is provided by thermal power, but the working principle of thermal power generation is still based on the Rankine cycle, which was born more than 100 years ago, and there is almost no development! Cars and airplanes also use the "Kano cycle", and there has been no breakthrough. Even today, the Rankine Cycle still generates 90% of the world's electricity, including almost all solar thermal, biomass, coal, and nuclear power plants.

The image below shows the carbon emission percentage in different countries:

[nobro011235]

movie

I wrote a memo in Week 3 based solely off of a movie, so I wrote two memos this week to make up for it at the guidance of my TAs.

Snowpiercer was an indelible look at not only the dangers of social inequality, but also global climate change, both of which are issues heavily discussed this week in the readings. Snowpiercer begins with a haunting warning regarding geoengineering - politicians are heard desperately searching for an answer to rising global temperatures (without mentioning limiting carbon emissions) and settle on releasing a new chemical into the atmosphere that evidently had devestating effects on the climate - cooling the globe to a temperature below what people could survive on, which led to the Snowpiercer - a train that carries some of the last remnants of humanity. This raises an important point about geoengineering; namely, there is no way to run an experiment on a geoengineering invention before "testing" it on our own planet. The train comes to represent the divide between different classes of society, with the lower class left to fend for themselves without food until they literally had to eat one another. Meanwhile, the engineer of the train was able to have steak dinners and drinks all to himself. The lower class passengers were not allowed to see how the other classes lived, they were deprived of space, and afforded none of the frivolous amenities that higher classes were afforded. The most striking contrasts of the movie took place when the militant lower class revolutionaries were seeing the upper class cars for the first time. The movie set went from the gloom of the lower class to bright, exciting colors and drugs/alcohol galore. The lower class revolutionaries were shocked as they walked through cars with incredible space, furnished rooms, and party rooms designated specifically for the unnecessary frivolities that they craved. Perhaps most shockingly, the upper classes took children from the lower class to use as slaves to work the train. This detail, no doubt, is an ugly metaphor for the manner with which the West takes advantage of children in developing countries to make the products we crave. We as westerners turn a blind eye while slave labor is churned out in other countries so that we don’t have to give up any facet of our lifestyles.

[smichel11]

framing #policy #inequality #climate

 Throughout the readings, I was considering different theories on inequality. I had also seen Snowpiercer and The Hunger Games, thinking about dystopian societies that may arise as a result of the path we are currently on.  I think that is something incredibly important that we often fail to consider or discuss enough, especially when we consider Climate Change. We act as if it will hit everyone the same--but it won't. We are all facing the same storm, but everyone has a different boat: some are nicer than others. One of the theories that came to mind was that of Social Ecology.
Social Ecology understands the bounds that are forced onto society and attempts to resolve it, not by placing responsibility on the individual, but effecting change on the society as a whole. The entire philosophy rests on the notion that “present ecological problems cannot be clearly understood, much less resolved, without resolutely dealing with problems within society” (Bookchin, 34). As noted previously, helping the environment does not come without a price tag. Climate Change tends to strike low-income families the hardest, as they cannot afford the resources to lessen the effects of the warming temperatures and increased natural disasters. The Green New Deal addresses the expensive costs of a more environmentally friendly lifestyle as it “creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hires local workers, offers training and advancement opportunities, and guarantees wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition” (Ocasio-Cortez, 12). This way, people would be happier like McKibben so often expresses and they would actually be able to afford it because of the social ecological pursuit found in the resolution.
 Both the social ecologists and the Green New Deal see technological advancement as an instrumental player in manipulating the environment. Traditionally, “nearly every modern technology has grave faults, which appear not as a failure to accomplish its designed purpose but as a serious impact on the environment” (Commoner, 14). It is not the fault of the product, but of the creator. We are good at inventing things that work, but they often harm the environment in completing their respective task due to our negligence or unwillingness to find a better solution. But it might be necessary to invest more in “eco-technologies” to reverse the effects of climate change (Bookchin, 370). Creative minds have proven that it is possible to lessen a carbon footprint and be more environmentally sustainable in the production and utilization of goods. The Green New Deal repeats the desire to “remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions…as much as is technologically feasible” (Ocasio-Cortez, 8). The resolution does not fear technology but welcomes and promotes it to help achieve its goals. The effect on climate would be considered in the creation of new technologies.    
 Rather than argue over the different ideologies to combat Climate Change, we should focus our energy on “not so much a battle cry for one side or the other, as a design for negotiating an end to this suicidal war—for making peace with the planet” (Commoner, 18). The Green New Deal was what I hope can only be the first in many attempts to fix what our ancestors started and what we are still contributing to. The resolution aims to “provid[e] all people of the United States with high-quality health care; affordable, safe, and adequate housing; economic security; and clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and access to nature” (Ocasio-Cortez, 13). In focusing on placing the social ecology concerns of frontline communities at the forefront, the Green New Deal is an ambitious first (at least when only considering recent years) major attempt in the United States at fixing a problem we so desperately need to solve.

Sources: Ocasio-Cortez. 2019. “Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal” https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/08/heres-the-full-text-of-congress-green-new-deal-resolution-introduced-by-rep-alexandra-ocasio-cortez/

     Barry Commoner, “At War with the Planet,” pp. 1-18 and “What Can Be Done?” pp. 191-210 in Making Peace with the Planet  

     Murray Bookchin, “What is Social Ecology?” pp. 354-373 in Zimmerman, ed., Environmental Philosophy:  From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology 

[ChivLiu]

origin #salience

This week we read about inequality on climate change and industrial developments. It has always been discussed through international panels while the developed countries criticizing the developing countries for dismissing a huge amount of greenhouse gases. Nowadays, information and data are easier to access and display. Therefore, people love contents that could bring straight visual impacts such as comparison plots and shocking pictures. However, while people insist on their rational thinking about the current facts, they ignored the history that objectively happened. The developed countries used over 100 years to achieve their modern lifestyle, and during this progress, London was the City of Fog, Hudson River was a grey line. If we had PM2.5 sensors in the 1900s, I assume the annual average PM2.5 concentration in London would have been way higher than in Beijing or Shanghai in the 2010s. As Chakrabarty mentioned, the developed world was intangibly creating consensus inequality for developing countries to modernize themselves. They argued that the world has been suffering climate change and global warming but disregard their "contributions".

On the other hand, governments of western countries such as which of the United States are very good at setting double standards for countries that they treated as potential rivals. Recently, Japan said that it would start discharging treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean within two years. While the neighbor of Japan such as China and Korea called the decision "extremely irresponsible”, the US government supported the Japanese government to dump the radioactive water. Greenpeace nuclear specialist Shaun Burnie said that "Deliberately discharging and contaminating the Pacific Ocean after decades of contamination already from the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons testing is just not acceptable". Fifteen countries and regions are still restricting Japanese agricultural and fishery products due to the nuclear crisis including the United States, but at the same time, they left the consequences of dump alone.