MARINA ZURKOW
CLIMATE LENS PLAYBOOK (LINK) Practice literalism. End the tradition of turning everything into a symbol for human life. Occupy science. Befriend facts and factoids. Enrich theatre with the bristly nomenclatures of the natural sciences. Yes to vastness, and yes also to the infinitesimal. Toggle between the Big Picture and Reality-at-Hand, however tiny. Also between Deep…
Responses to “Bringing in the Work of Nature: From Natural Capital to Hybrid Labor” Alyssa Battistoni In her abstract, Battistoni describes moving away from what is known as natural capital (ecosystem services) to a feminist approach to what she calls “hybrid labor”, through which she articulates …an expanded idea of hybrid labor that understands the…
Biden climate plan Biden’s clean energy futures “Build Back Better plan”NYTimes, Biden’s Climate Plan Support the Green New Deal (though not explicitly how) Ensure the U.S. achieves a 100% clean energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions no later than 2050. Build resilient infrastructure Model and lead internationally on climate change issues Address environmental justice issues…
The late Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers (now part of the Steelworkers) coined the term: “a just transition” away from fossil fuels wouldn’t pit workers against the planet. Those displaced should be able to count on decent new green jobs and retraining.“There’s a Superfund for dirt,” Mazzocchi used to say. “There ought…
The BlueGreen Alliance (BGA) conjoins labor unions and environmental groups. Founded in 2006 by the United Steelworkers labor union and the Sierra Club. Influence Watch states that the alliance is made up of nine labor unions and five environmentalist groups. Notable member organizations include the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the United Association of Plumbers…
In his essay Empire for the extensive website Feral Atlas, Ghosh opens with a statement that in Asia “the themes of Empire and power, rivalry and violence, are, implicitly or explicitly, central to the discussion of climate change.” This statement, he goes on to describe, is in contrast to the ways climate change principally operates…
Bayo Akomolafe‘s statement goes both ways. I have been reading twitter responses to DJT, in response to his claims that he has won the election; the number of good-seeming people who pray for him, find him to be a great leader who is watching over them is astounding. Instead of deriding them as idiotic (they’re…
Acid rain is still a major problem in China, India. Does acid rain have global effects? Now that regulations have eased on the US, is acid rain on the rise? Is there any discussion of global governance around climate change and environmental degradation, pollution? Do conventions have adequate (or any) effect? What is the incentive…
Astra Taylor’s magnificent 2019 text, Out of Time, for Laphams’ climate issue talks about all the temporalities the earth operates on, and how humans manage to or willfully experience so few. We are surrounded by chemical, geophysical, and biological clocks, yet Capitalism’s clock ticks loudest in our ear I’d add: the time of a coal…
EPA Announced Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for Power Plants December 21, 2011: EPA press release announced standards to limit mercury, acid gases and other toxic pollution from power plants.Until now there have been no federal standards that require power plants to limit their emissions of toxic air pollutants like mercury, arsenic and metals…
A new video, produced by the RCA architecture group called Metabolic Selves, in conjunction with the Serpentine Gallery in London, offers the view that we should not look at toxins and pollutants as external entities, as things/effects/assemblages outside of ourselves. Our insides and outsides are subject to the same “chemical influxes that we have exerted…
Responses to John Hultgren’s essay “Those Who Bring From the Earth: Anti-Environmentalism and the Trope of the White Male Worker” (2018) We are the party of America’s growers, producers, farmers, ranchers, foresters, miners, commercial fishermen, and all those who bring from the earth the crops, minerals, energy, and the bounties of our seas that are the…
There has been a plethora of studies, scholarly research articles and popular essays connecting masculinity, homophobia, and an aversion to environmental concerns, which emotionally skew as feminine (sissy, frankly). I would argue that women who identify as living contentedly inside a patriarchal societal structure are also party to this attitude. Is it the same group…
I love glossaries like this, as formal things. In this case (from the BCA document linked above), a powerful anthropocene poem (SISNOSE!)–
Cost Benefit Analysis Federal Regulation: Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a tool used by regulatory decision makers to identify the costs and benefits, in financial terms, of a regulation to society as a whole. Persons preparing a CBA attempt to assign a monetary value (also know as monetizing) to all the predicted costs and benefits of a regulation. Because this is such a long post, and was a process…
David Byars’ 2018 documentary No Mans Land is an account of occupation of Oregon’s Malheur Wildlife Refuge in 2016. It is the story of those on the inside of this movement, attempting to uncover what draws Americans — the ideologues, the disenfranchised, and the dangerously quixotic — to the edge of revolution. Coarse observations: –…
EPA NAPAP page USGS reports page To answer question 2:Just for fun: Sabine Hossenfelder’s piss take “follow the science” How can science play a greater role without participating in politics? Also discuss: * Cost benefit analysis shortcomings in breadth, timescale, inputs I think scientists need to be HIRED in gov’t agencies (not fired or muzzled)….
James McCarthy demonstrates, through a case study of theWise Use movement, that the insights and tools of political ecology have much to offer in the study of First World resource conflicts. He uses theories and methods drawn from the literature concerning political ecology and moral economies to argue that many assumptions regarding state capacity, individual…
Responses to the eponymous McCarthy and Hague text, Race, Nation, and Nature: The Cultural Politics of “Celtic” Identification in the AmericanWest Author(s): James McCarthy and Euan HagueSource: Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Jun., 2004) An examination of the claims of Celtic identity by Wise Use activists in NM…