Responsibility for Nature

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  • Created by: sikemi__
  • Created on: 27-05-21 13:35

The 'End of Nature'?

  • Published by McKibben in 1990, regarded as perhaps the first mainstream text on global warming/climate change
  • Characterised nature as a force once previously independent on human beings but not so much anymore
  • 'Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways no human has ever seen. We've created, in very short order, a new planet, still recognisable but fundamentall different' (McKibben, 2010)
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Environmentalism

  • We are now frequently seeing movements against the odds e.g. anti-fracking movement which led to the end of fracking in 2019
  • However, it is infrequent that single events, actions or protests stop environmentally degrading activities that are long ingrained and entangled with social and political systems
  • Environmentalsm has a history
    • 1860's: 'man is everywhere a dsturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords' (Perkins Marsh, 1869)
    • 1960's: 'man;s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature' (Carson, 1962)
    • 2000's: 'suddenly we are not just billions of individuals and millions of collectivities but a single species alongside other speces, one whose survval is threatened by our own behavious' (Gibson-Graham & Roelvink, 2009)
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Nature as resource

  • Nature is central in terms of livelhood and seen as something which is needed for commodification and consumption
  • Imperialism: nature as a resource for commerce and the empire
  • 17th century: new knowledge from colonies catalysed intellectual enquiry and stimulated imperial ambition for new colonies and resources
  • The doctrine of improvement: reclaim wastelands, civilise barbarous peoples e.g. through plantations
  • Science in the service of exploitation
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Nature as vulnerable

  • The rapacious use of natural resources in Europe in the 17th and 18th century led to it being seen as vulnerable
  • New critical concern for control and management of nature and worry of disappearance around nature and fear for eventual resource famine and degradation loss
  • Key texts:
    • Evelyn (1662) - articulated a need for landowners to plant trees for English Navy that the king saw as unduly populated throughout England due to a hunger for fuel for its glassworks and ironworks
    • Linnaeus (1735) - saw nature as ordered and set in harmony and can therefore be unbalanced with interference
    • Malthus (1796) - argued that population growth with abundance is inevitably going to lead to growth that is too large for the environment, leading to overcunsumption and degradation of the environment and therefore famine and disease
  • Marsh 'Man and Nature' (1864)
    • Wrote the book in line with the view that human life in action is a transformative phenomenon, especially in relation to nature and due to personal economic interests.
    • Marsh intended it to show that whereas others think that the Earth made man, man in fact made Earth. He warned that as a result, man could destroy himself and the earth, if we don't restore and sustain global resources and raise awareness about our actions
    • During the US Progressive Era between 1890 and 1910, his ideas gained greater traction as the US had experienced widespread social activism and political reform seeking to address problems caused by industrialisation, urbanisation, immigration and political corruption.
    • Idea of 'wise use'
      • Conservation ethic - policy of planned use and renewal of forest, scientific forestry and profitable use of forests and other natural resources so they would be of maximum benefit to mankind and top utalitarian conservation
      • Reclamation Act of 1902 set aside money from sales of semi arid public lands for the construction and maintenance on irrigation projects
    • Wise use began to clash with preservation ethic
      • Sustainable utlization - idea that nature is to be used but in the right kind of way that humans will benefit most from it, not just today but in generations to come
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Limits to Nature

  • Propelled with the idea of empire and colonial expansion, beyond the search for new natures and new forms of resources for capture
  • Loss of nature that was central for livelihoods and demands of European states became concerning. Concerns were compounded by European observations in new island colonies that they had visited to find new resources
  • Island colonies were important as through expanding them, they had radically changed the environment and some species that were endemic were lost e.g. dodos
  • Islands, being isolated and relatively small, demonstrated the mechanisms and processes of ecological change brought about by European penetration, generating theoretical enquiry about matters and impacting upon resource and environmental policy and management, bringing European ideas of management to these sites e.g. Canary Islaands, Madeira, Barbados, Jamaica
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Nature as sublime

  • The sublimation of nature as a site of power and intense effective greatness emerged with the 18th century romantics.
  • This intellectual movement permeated art, poetry, music and literature, reacting against the scientific rationalisation of the Enlightenment, which had concurrently exploited and degraded nature. It had much more of a concern for society, economy and industry, and had forgotten and abused nature in doing so.
  • This reverence for the civil liberty of nature was powerful in shaping the emergence of conservation as a particular idea.
  • In the UK, Wicken Fen was the first reserved cared for by the National Trust. They began a demand for the right to the countryside for enjoyment and also for health.
  • In the US, National Parks began to emerge in Yellowstone (1872), Yosemite (1890) and the Sierra Club (1892). These were important in terms of guiding our thinking and understanding of what sort of natures should be valued and who belongs there.
  • Since 1960's, there was a vast global growth in protected areas, with them doubling in each decade
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Nature as system: ecology and ecosystem

  • Highlights the importance of transfers of materials and energy between organisms and their environment
  • An important part of this was the idea that there is a hierarchy of systems, with certain systems deemed more important than others.
  • Everything was connected through networks and systems and could be affected through changes. No longer was a particular extinction event of a loss of a particular kind of species or population in one area not affecting other areas or species in other areas, they were all interconnected in some way, shape or form.
  • 1960s: The 'new ecology' - systems ecology
    • Focuses on interactions and transactions within and between biological and ecological systems, and thus especially concerned with the way the functioning of the ecosystem can be influenced by human interventions.
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Nature as home: the Age of Environmentalism

  • Another key idea that was emerging around this particular time where we see the age of environmentalism really start to grow was the idea of seeing Earth as isolated, solitary and self-contained as a spaceship (Spaceship Earth - term coined by Ward, 1966 and Fuller, 1968)
  • This draws our attention to not only the finite resources and the importance of conserving them, but also our concern for a growing population and growing capitalist production and the pollution that produces.
  • Carson (1962) wrote the prominence of DDT and synthetic chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticide use which had been normalised and used quite conspicuiously, with huge costs
    • Some say this ushered in the birth of the modern, govt. policy orientated environmentalist movement
    • DDT was eventually banned in 1972
    • Environmentalism grew following this e.g. Friends of the Earth founded in 1969 and 1971in the UK
    • It also entered the normal, everyday market and economy, promoting the idea of consumption based environmentalism
  • Another key catalyst was far greater attention to certain environmental disasters. These began to be seen as critical in terms of burgeoning and cumulating cost to the environment.
    • The Love Canal in Niagara Falls was a key one. It generated immense amounts of attention, particularly in terms of rising urban toxicity and accumulative toxicity, bringing issues of pollution in the urban environment into immediate focus
    • We see this blossoming into what might be characterised as the environmental justice movement, looking at environmentalism in the urban space, particularly amongst marginal communities
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Pollution and innovation

  • Pollution becomes a key aspect of attention, specifically with regard to the modernist preoccupation with innovation and technological development, stating that this has gone hand in hand. We see the production of novel pollutions and toxins (e.g. DDT, pesticides) occurring at the same time as new technologies of production and consumption.
  • 1980's: Acid Rain - discovered in 1853 but termed in 1972. Of interest due to transboundary nature
  • 1990's: ozone - of concern in southern hemisphere as it is being eroded quickly here by CFCs. Slowly healing because of Montreal Protocol introduced in 1999 in Australia
  • 2000's lead in petrol - added to improve performance of engines which created far greater pollution and had health impacts on children. Eventually banned in UK in 2000.
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Varieties of environmentalism

  • Environmentalism of the rich
    • Notions of health and beauty
    • Idea of permanence and conservation of particular environments
    • Idea of purity of environment and preservation e.g. idealisation of certain tropical environments and rich, pure biodiversity
  • Environmentalism of the poor
    • Concerned with risk, particularly health risks, survival and livelihoods
    • Idea of environmental sustainability and sustaining livelihoods
  • Both change over time and space
  • Both are scientific and political, biocentric and Anthropocentric
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