I sent it to a friend whom I have a great deal of respect for. He replied with this below, and kindly gave his permission for it to be used as a guest post.
At this point, being as prepared as possible for emergency states, for other ways of meeting basic needs, to look out for your neighbours, and so on, should be de rigeur. Of course, so many folks are struggling to just make ends meet as things stand, so there’s already millions (billions?) who can’t “prep” in any meaningful way. Seems likely that the countries that will bear the initial brunt of deadly heatwaves are the ones where the weather is already hot, which are also in many cases where there is a lot of population growth, as well as large absolute population numbers. So the idea of hitting 10Bn or whatever numbers the UN is chucking about based on “normal” seems increasingly unlikely to me. We have, I think, somewhat forgotten just how dreadful the “Four Horsemen” can be when they really get going.
I suppose what I find odd about posts like these is the idea that we are certain to see an “end” to “civilisation” and that necessarily means the death of every human being. I’m not trying to play down the horror of what’s already here, and accelerating. Just that if we were to fast-forward 50 years, what would we expect to see? Humans *are* really intelligent, adaptable, and there is an awful lot of us. So if I had to guess, there will be a few million (tens of millions, perhaps) humans who have witnessed “The Fall”, have had human folly indelibly branded into their racial consciousness, and who are living in a world that is more hostile and less fertile than the one that even we grew up in. But not, I don’t think, one that is wholly uninhabitable. Fast forward 50,000-100,000 years, humanity might even learn to live in something like harmony with the “new earth”, if they can last that long.
Or there might be something lurking “out there” that really will do away with every last human (and a great deal of other life as well, more’s the tragedy). In which case, I can’t stop it, and neither can you. In either case, doing our best to carpe as many damn diems as we can in the meantime, trying to help our fellow living things as we go, seems like the best we can do at this point.
Just that claiming anything in the absolute seems more like a human desire for certainty, than anything else.
Of course, all of this thinking is happening in a different partition of my brain than the parent part, because otherwise I’d go mad, and that won’t help me help anyone….
This is not a future I’m cheering for, in some sort of misanthropic fug. It’s just the one that, if I stand outside myself and try to extrapolate forward, seems the most likely. It’s worth reminding ourselves that there are many shades of grey in commonly-used terms like “doomed”, “fucked” and whatever other adjectives you might choose to apply to humanity’s future, and the lighter ones, even if locally, even if not forever, will always be worth fighting for
Just over 50 years ago, one of the most innovative and remarkable syllabuses in modern English education came into being. Its story, how it started, flowered, and then died have lessons for us all today.
There seems to be two points commonly made about teaching environmental/ecological concepts to school students: it’s mostly absent in syllabuses and it hasn’t been done. The former is certainly backed by evidence, but the latter is largely untrue. This story, and what we can learn about it, are the focus here. The great push comes from a determined and unlikely source, but let’s go back a bit.
English education has had an interest in “nature studies” from the earliest times of educational technology. The BBC Natural History Unit was producing radio programmes from the late 1950s onwards. However, this was mostly aimed at primary schools. We would have to wait for the 1960s to see further progress. At this time, curriculum innovation was being strongly supported which led to numerous initiatives of which one was a semi-academic/practical approach to Rural and Environmental Studies ‘O’ level run through the University of London’s Schools Examination Board (ULSEB). An early proponent of this subject, Sean McB Carson (a Hertfordshire local education officer), saw the need for a more academic, higher-level qualification. This turned into a committee which eventually produced the first A level (again to be taken up by ULSEB) called, not un-naturally, the Hertfordshire Syllabus (compare/contrast this with a current version!). From 1972 to 1992, this became, and remains, one of the most innovative syllabuses in secondary science. It’s worth noting that McB Carson went on to refine his ideas in another influential book, Environmental Education.
What was so novel about this syllabus? Looking back, I think it was the confluence of a number of factors:
Sociological – McB Carson as a driving force, ULSEB as a supporter, an innovative Ecologist as Chief Examiner (Dr PD Coker). There was also significant student interest in the senior secondary years;
Geopolitical – the general move towards environmental awareness and concern characterised (earlier) by Silent Spring and later by the Stockholm Conference in 1972;
Educational – a syllabus unlike others that demanded deep knowledge that was integrated into a systems-thinking approach with an exam system that demanded you demonstrate it!
How did it work? There were a few minor changes over the years but this gives an accurate overview:
Topics:
Natural environment and limits of the resource base: solar systems and the transport of energy; atmosphere; hydrosphere; lithosphere; biogeochemistry;
Ecosystems: climatic and soil factors; population and community ecology; population control
Man-Environment Interactions: Human requirements for life, developmental ecology, societal development, domestication of plants and animals, environmental pressures from industrial revolution onwards;
Field Study – environmental conflicts and pressures;
Pedagogy – One of the most daunting (and wonderful) aspects was that there was no set textbook! Students (and staff) really had to know about a wide range of topics from the workings of the solar system to fundamental ecology, to planning law and all topics in between! Standard books of the time include Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology, Ehrlich’s Population, Resources, Environment but there were many others often just covering a particular part (Cullingworth’s early Town and Country Planning was invaluable). The fundamental aim was to make sure that students had a sound background knowledge, both theoretical and applied, that would allow them to analyse a question from any perspective;
Assessment – Leaving aside the internal assessment, the external exam comprised 3 aspects – fieldwork to be assessed internally and sent off for adjudication, paper 1 – 3 hours on basics of the entire syllabus and paper 2 which has two essays requiring integration from all of the syllabus and a planning question. This last, innovative exam gave students an Ordnance Survey map and a planning issue to solve e.g. site a new town. It demanded a knowledge of planning law and practice. Ironically, our local authority planning department gave their planners the task and all failed!
So much for the technical side. What of the impact it had? As an educator and student, it demanded (and the exams tested) both core knowledge and its application. It was taught in the novel ideas of systems thinking and connectedness. Students were (in my college at least) fiercely proud of the subject and considered themselves environmentalists. Many went on to take degrees in ecology, environment, and related topics. Some became planners, others academics. We have some who have risen to prominence in the global conservation community, an international prize-winning photographer as well as those who went on to others field of endeavour. As a subject it rose in importance as a result of Stockholm in 1972 and was, alongside companion ‘O’ level seen as a vital subject to study. Sadly, the following years of warfare, oil price shocks (the first but not the last) and the rise of Thatcher meant that the subject was stumbling just as it started to take off (environmentalism, then as now, didn’t trump oil and commerce – or Thatcher’s dislike!). It’s interesting to speculate where it might have been were that not the case. Personally, I taught the course for almost all of its years and was a ULSEB subject panel member, question writer, examiner and part of the team developing interest in the course. I was also, sadly, the last person standing as exam board politics saw it dispatched in favour of topics with more political support.
If you’ve read this far, thanks! What message would I like you to take away from this? That it existed, that it demonstrated that you could have a meaningful and very rigorous subject and exam that could allow students to debate with knowledge and care for the planet. It opened up students’ eyes to the possibilities of doing things differently. Perhaps if this subject had developed as it should, we wouldn’t be needing school strikes today, 50 years after the subject started to debate the same thing I taught in 1975!
As everyone with a hint of scientific training knows by now, the world is facing a troublesome present and uncertain future due to the changes in the global climate caused by man-made activity, and specifically the greenhouse effect. It is an interesting – and important – question to ask what warnings were made by scientists over the past few decades. This brief investigation sheds some light by looking at the articles on climate change issues published in a Welsh-language scientific journal.
The Welsh scientific journal Y Gwyddonydd (‘The Scientist’) was launched in 1963, and its genesis reflects the challenges that faced the Welsh language at that time. The percentage recorded as speaking Welsh in the 1961 census had fallen to 26%, which acted as a spur to the campaign to secure official rights for the language and to increase its use in education. Establishing a journal to present scientific matters through the medium of Welsh was a statement that the language should be part of the modern world, and not ghettoised as a medium only suitable for literary, antiquarian or theological discussions.
The journal sought to introduce current scientific developments and arguments to the Welsh-speaking audience and so it is a fair assumption that it was responsible for the first discussions in Welsh of topics that are now all too familiar. Thus in 1985 there are two sizeable articles investigating ‘glaw asid’ (acid rain), whereas the first reference to the ‘haenen osôn’ (ozone layer) can be found the following year.
The phrase ‘effaith tŷ gwydr’ (greenhouse effect) appears for the first time in Y Gwyddonydd in the edition of December 1972, in a report which considered the possible effects upon the climate from man-made pollution.
Would the increased level of CO2 in the atmosphere due to human activity lead to a rise in the world’s temperature, or would the increased number of particles in the atmosphere reflect the sun’s rays back into space, leading to global cooling? At the time the answer was unclear, and the ‘effaith tŷ gwydr’ is referred to as a theory. One unknown variable to be thrown into the equation was the expected rise in supersonic aircraft, pouring SO2 and water vapour into the upper atmosphere, the effect of which could not be predicted.
It appears that the next treatment of this topic in Y Gwyddonydd was in December 1981, where John Gribbin’s recent article in the New Scientist was discussed.
He had postulated that the enhanced greenhouse effect due to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere would lead to a rise of 2 to 3 °C by 2025, according to the best available computer models. The report goes on to consider the effects of this upon the world’s food production, and hints at the geo-political turmoil that would follow. The conclusion is that time is against us.
The text of a speech by Eirwen Gwynn is printed in the next issue, in which she warns of the possible dire effect upon the climate of continuing to burn fossil fuels. (Interestingly, having been keen on nuclear power back in the first issue of Y Gwyddonydd back in 1963, by 1982 she declared that atomic energy was not the answer).
The next instance of a discussion of the greenhouse effect appears in late 1988, in an article which has in its title the phrase ‘Hinsawdd Newydd’ (‘A New Climate’) – the phrase used today, ‘Newid Hinsawdd’ (Climate Change) is not one that appears in the discussions at that time. The first evidence I have found of a break-through into the Welsh broadcast media happened at the same time, with a Radio Cymru programme focussing upon the ramifications of the greenhouse effect in November 1988.
In 1990, Y Gwyddonydd published an in-depth explanation of the phenomenon by a physicist from Aberystwyth University.
From then on there is a stream of articles in the journal considering the likely effects of global warming upon the planet, and which are explicit in their warning of the dangers.
In late 1991, for example, the headline of an article adapted the words from an ancient Welsh poem to warn ‘Truan o Dynged a Dyngwyd i Ddynoliaeth’ – ‘Wretched is the fate that will befall mankind’.
One can also find more Welsh-language radio and television programmes that seek to explain the dangers.
Thus the evidence here is unambiguous. In the Welsh public sphere, the dangers of global warming were understood and discussed by the early 1990s at the latest. The scientific predictions made were broadly accurate. As we approach 2025 we can see that the prediction made in 1981 of a rise of 2-3 °C was overly pessimistic, but that the disruption that even 1.5 °C will cause will be enormous. The warning was made about 42 years ago that time was running out to stop the catastrophe, and it was widely disseminated. The follow-up question of why warnings by scientists were not taken seriously by decision-makers is beyond the scope of this brief article, but is one that needs to be asked.
Dr Gethin Matthewsis a senior lecturer in the Department of History, Heritage and Classics at Swansea University. His PhD research was in the history of the Welsh in the Gold Rushes, but for a decade and more he has been researching the impact of the First World War upon Wales. He is currently working on a book for the University of Wales Press, Visions of War, which will examine how WW1 was seen and imagined in Wales.When he manages to escape the trenches, he intends to investigate how climate change discourse has developed in Wales over the past sixty years.
Here is a great guest post from Jennie Kermode, on what we knew, and how long ago….
The child who knew too much
When I was a kid I really, really wanted a silvery blue Porsche Turbo. not the most eco-friendly choice, I know, but I was far too young to have driven it – I just wanted to look at it, stroke it, sit inside it and watch other kids turn green with envy. Of course I never got it (though the local owner of a Ferrari did very nicely out of my brother by offering to sell that to him, piece by piece, at inflated rates), but it sat at the top of my birthday and Christmas lists for years. Next to that list, however, was another list, and what really used to upset me was how often that one was ignored. It was the list of things that I definitely did not want people to buy me.
There was some stuff on there about gendered toys. No Barbies, please, and nothing frilly. But most of it was devoted to products which I knew were doing harm to the world. Body sprays – a precursor to deodorants – were unpleasant enough in themselves, but I knew that they were destroying the ozone layer. I didn’t want things with lots of plastic packaging because I knew it was polluting the seas. I was uncomfortable about mass consumption in general because I knew about climate change.
This was the late ‘seventies and early ‘eighties – an era when mass consumption was all the rage. Michael Douglas delivered a satirical line about greed being good and billions of people took it seriously. There was an actor in the White House and the promises of Thatcherism made themselves felt even where I was living, in Yorkshire, where all the lights went out at planned intervals because of the miners’ strike. My friends, and many of my relatives, thought that my concerns were hilarious. When related topics came up at school, teachers would join them in laughing at me. My chemistry teacher told me that plastic bag pollution was trivial because, basically, the world was big. I pointed out that there were a lot of us on it, but nobody took me seriously.
Why did I know what others did not? It wasn’t that I was some kind of savant – just that my father was a physicist. I was a curious child and kept asking questions. I talked to his colleagues. I talked to his brothers, a haematologist and an engineer, who had insights of their own. My mother, a teacher, taught me to read when I was two and I consumed every book I could get. With this background, I noticed what was happening in the wider world around me in a way that most other people did not. Consequently, few of the symptoms of climate change that we saw then or that we have seen since have surprised me. Sometimes I feel as if I have been screaming for half a century and a very small proportion of people have noticed or cared.
In the face of that, it can be hard to hold onto hope. I was thirteen or so when, in a biology lesson, one of my teachers talked about bacterial cultures and the common pattern of their growth in a contained space: lag phase, log phase, death phase. Immediately, I associated it with the human population and recognised where we were on that journey.
I also read a lot of history. I knew fine well that people in almost every age have believed that they were living in the last days. Could we be just as wrong? I hope so. Humanity keeps surprising me; keeps pushing past its limits in unexpected ways. But I know better than to rely on it. So I put my talents to use where I can: in media, seeking to broaden conversations and bring in different kinds of expertise, seeking to encourage my readers to use their brains, and deliver bitter pills of understanding wrapped up in entertainment which helps them to go down more easily. Always I am aware of the ticking of the clock.
I am aware, too, of the absences. I used to do a lot of tape recording as a child. I know that, even in similar environments, the birds don’t sing as loudly as they did. I used to go berry picking. Now the berries come earlier every year. I used to sit outside in my grandmother’s garden and listen to the bees buzzing around the flowerbeds. They, too, have grown much quieter. But there are winners. More jellyfish in the sea. Vineyards spreading across the South of England. Scottish home-grown tea. Earth abides. When parts of it become too hot for human habitation year-round, what strange new forms will grow up there, free from our interference? Perhaps that is too optimistic; perhaps we will assault them with robotic vehicles, as we have the deep sea.
One thing I am sure of: the next fifty years will look very different from the last. Kids will no doubt continue to dream of shiny, unaffordable machines, but more and more of them will prioritise simply getting enough to eat.
Jennie Kermode is an author, journalist and human rights campaigner, inclusivity coordinator at the Bylines Network and content director at Eye For Film.
Calum McFarlane reflects on half a decade of climate promises…
Five years ago I wrote this, nominally as an interview for Marc about how I viewed activism (climate and otherwise) but also as a release valve for all the Big Feelings I was having at that time1.
To quote myself:
“…an abiding sense of unease that things were Not Right (more so than usual) was affirmed by the IPCC 1.5 report – I knew that the uncertain future I was concerned about was much closer than I had feared.”
I have not to this day read the full report – I think I did struggle through the summary at one point. But the gruesome details are not really the point, being as we are five years down the track, and however many increments worse on however many metrics you care to mention.
(There is of course a counterfactual here – how much worse things might have been if that report had not been published. But given how bad things are now, and how much faster they are getting worse than was expected even five years ago (at least in mainstream IPCC communications, which we know to be ‘conservative’), this is small comfort).
Did this report, and the wave of ‘climate awareness’ that came with it drag more people into the category of being outright worried / scared by climate change, than merely “concerned”, as the pollsters have it? Maybe. But it clearly didn’t have any impact where it matters, where the power to change things is. Again, as I wrote five years ago:
‘Matthew Bolton writes that the first principle of making change is that ‘you only get the justice that you have the power to make happen’, the justice that you have ‘the power to compel’. The point of campaigning is to make a difference. It’s not to live in an activist bubble where we can comfort ourselves that we have the right ideas and everyone else has the wrong ideas.’”
We (where “we” = people who would prefer not to have seen our planet get the shit kicked out of it, to use the vernacular) still have no power. Without it, we have compelled no justice. Much ink has been spilled about the reasons for this – after all, it is probably the ultimate “Wicked Problem”. But none of it changes where we are now.
We2 have already unleashed horrors that the writers of the goriest bits of the Old Testament would shrink from. And that is to say nothing of what is now known to be inevitable, or what is waiting for us in the lucky dip I mentally refer to as “sooner and / or worse than expected” in the years and decades to come.
Is there anything else to say? The closing paragraph of part of my interview five years ago “Activist Vuvuzela” covers it all, I think:
“Anything else you’d like to say?
All of the previous answers notwithstanding, I find myself increasingly afraid that humanity will bequeath the current and next generations not only a degraded world, but a lack of hope that anything can ever be better, that there is any point to trying. I hope to find the courage in myself to do the best I can, for as long as I can, for my family, my community, and our planet.
(Sounds trite as I read it back, but there it is).”
Footnotes
The Big Feelings are different now, but they haven’t gone anywhere.
On this day, 11th May, in 1971 the UN Secretary General U Thant met a group of distinguished scientists who presented him with “A message to our 3.5 billion neighbours on planet earth” – a strong environmental statement raising concerns about environmental deterioration, resource depletion, hunger, and war – which together presented an unprecedented common danger to all of humanity.
During 1970 a small conference had been organised in Menton on the French Riviera. Probably the first “Environmental Conference” in Europe it involved a meeting between the organizer Alfred Hassler of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Buddhist peace activists Thich Nhat Hanh and Sister Chan Khong, and six other distinguished scientists.
Chan Khong, remembering the event in 2016, said “We met to address the damage that was being done to the Earth through human misuse of technology, the penetration into food-chains of poisonous substances and the mounting exploitation of natural resources.”
Together, through their discussions, they crafted the an open letter. Known as “The Menton Message” or “The Menton Statement” this was widely circulated amongst biologists and environmental scientists. It rapidly attracted over over 2000 signatures, including four Nobel prizewinners and numerous very distinguished and respected scientists of the day.
The following year, on May 11th 1971, in New York a copy of the statement was presented to UN Secretary General U Thant by six of the authors. It was then published as the lead item in the UNESCO Journal “Courier” in the July 1971 issue and reached a wider audience within the UN organisation and beyond.
U Thant responded to the delegation:
“I believe that mankind is at last aware of the fact that there is a delicate equilibrium of physical and biological phenomena on and around the earth which cannot be thoughtlessly disturbed as we race along the road of technological development…
This global concern in the face of a grave common danger, which carries the seeds of extinction for the human species, may well prove to be the elusive force which can bind men together.
The battle for human survival can only be won by all nations joining together in a concerted drive to preserve life on this planet.”
Why it Matters
The Statement concludes with four urgent action points “not as panaceas, but as holding actions to keep our situation from deteriorating past the point of no return”
In summary they called for a moratorium on new technological developments, widespread application of existing pollution control technology, a decrease in consumption by privileged classes, and abolition and destruction of nuclear arsenals and chemical and biological weapons.
So right at the beginning of the modern environmental movement there was seen a strong linkage between ecological issues and peace and disarmament, together with a focus on social issues of equality and rights.
What Happened Next
The message, strongly endorsed by the scientific elite, played a key role in preparing the ground for the UN Summit on the Human Environment which took place in Stockholm the following year in June 1972.
The Stockholm summit lead to the creation of “Environment” ministries in many governments and the establishment of the UN Environmental Program. These lead to 50 years of talking about “the environment” and little real action to address the fundamental issues the scientists were raising.
The scientific community published ever more mountains of papers attracting ever more research funding to describe in increasing detail the complexity of the interlocking environmental problems.
The plain people of the world seeing all this activity assumed that “they” would solve the problems and merrily kept calm and carried on consuming.
Successive generations of environmental activists kept on marching and protesting at this and that and thus many became burnt-out and retired to cultivate their gardens.
Whilst “the environment” became the prime focus of “environmentalism”, the related issues identified in the Menton Message of the problems inherent in technological solutions, the need for peaceful coexistence rather than conflict, and the need for more equal distribution of of societal goods were somewhat sidelined.
Last year (2022) the UN held a Stockholm+50 Intergovernmental Conference hosted jointly by the Swedish and Kenyan Governments. The original Menton Message was updated and reissued as “A Letter to Fellow Citizens of Planet Earth”.
Which gets us to where we are today.
Rinse and Repeat.
(On a personal note U Thant was the only global leader who my teenage self through the 60s regarded as worth anything. Being a dedicated peace activist in a position of power, he was far from the normal self-serving politicians. It is interesting to consider whether the authors of Blueprint for Survival were aware of the Menton Message – it certainly seems likely.
This is a guest post by Sakshi Aravind (full bio at end of post).
Dr Sakshi Aravind
Where should we look if we must begin to believe adjudication is one of the ways to achieve climate justice? Investing hope in courts may appear unrealistic if, for instance, one were to look at UK courts. This February, the Inner Crown Court sentenced an activist with Insulate Britain to prison for contempt of court.
From what has appeared in the press, the presiding judge had asked the defendant not to refer to climate change as motivation for their actions (where the defendant, along with three others, had blocked a busy junction in the City of London on the 25th October 2021 as a part of Insulate Britain climate campaign). The defendant appears to have referred to climate change in his closing speech, thereby earning the absurd wrath of the Court.
Now, on the face of it, the outcome appears preposterous. This was, after all, a case where people were being prosecuted for protesting on climate change grounds. Surely, they can argue on an accurately reasoned ground that explains why they were blockading the junction in the first place? Was this an instance of misreporting, or did the judge relinquish the need for reasoning, let alone legal reasoning? I can only find out if someone is willing to fill in a wordy form to obtain the transcript from the Court and pay the fees, just like the Digital Support Officer from the registry tells me I should do.
One can imagine why the question of courts, justice and accessibility remain narrowly interpreted and do not extend to interrogating the aftermaths of litigation, including holding the judges accountable in a way that makes more than legal sense.
Should I bother with this little absurdity when the higher courts in the UK have consistently thrown out most of the climate-related strategic litigation in the last few years, even as most other jurisdictions are turning to innovation and curiosity?
On 16th February, it appeared that the Wolverhampton Magistrate Court assumed a different approach to the Just Stop Oil protestors, who were before the Court for blocking the distribution of oil from the Esso Fuel Terminal in Birmingham in April 2022. While the defendants were given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay costs, the presiding judge was also sympathetic towards their motivation. The judge was alert to the realities of climate change and termed the defendants’ actions one with an “admirable aim”. However, the Court believed that the necessities of consistency and legitimacy—those that characterise the rule of law in the UK—had to be upheld and the defendants convicted. To quote from the sentencing remark:
“Trust in the rule of law is an essential ingredient of society, and it will erode swiftly if judges make politically or morally motivated decisions that do not accord with established legal principles. Indeed I would become the self-appointed sheriff if I acted in such a way.
…
if good people with the right motivation do the wrong thing it can never make that wrong thing right, it can only ever act as substantial mitigation.”
We only have access to this sentencing remark because the Judicial Office contacted the media to clarify after Just Stop Oil went on a gloating spree misquoting the judge. Not unusual for predominantly white activist groups in the UK to do something cringe-worthy now and then.
Why do the first and the second instance feel equally absurd? Should one look for hope in environmental movements in the wrong place and lie to themselves and others until the very thing they are hoping for materialises miraculously? Is strategic litigation successful only when a judge pats you on the head and provides a cinematic twist in adjudication?
Whatever the answer to these questions, investing hope in courts must be clear about two things.
First, adjudication is a refined strategy, which may or may not always provide the best possible outcome. But when it does, it is going to be significant and lasting.
Second, where the legal cultures are restrained, one must have realistic expectations about the kinds of environmental litigation that goes to courts.
While self-proclaimed environmental activists are prosecuted, not all cases can be considered environmental litigation, despite how damning such cases may turn out for the domestic criminal justice system. So, there is no need to be disingenuous about the judicial outcome. If we desire indulgence from legal systems and teary-eyed judges, we distract ourselves from the real problem—that of an impenetrable legal system and absurd procedural apparatus that can sweep you away from the system for the most inconsequential of faults.
If we use adjudication for our ends, we must focus on the content and strategy and less on the actors. Unlike the BIPOC fighting for environmental rights elsewhere against murderous regimes that do it lucidly, those in privileged spaces might require some practice. But it is entirely worth the effort.
While hope and optimism are a matter of individual and collective responsibility to some extent, when there comes the point where we must say “F*** hope!” like Australian academic Chelsea Watego tells us, we must understand and wholeheartedly endorse that moment.
Bio:
Sakshi is a Lecturer in Law and Social Justice at the Newcastle Law School, where she teaches environmental law, land law, constitutional law and jurisprudence. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge and her BCL at the University of Oxford. She works on comparative environmental law, legal theory, political economy, and climate justice.
You can read her previous guest post on All Our Yesterdays (on environmental racism in NGOs) here, and an interview “Indigenous resistance to extractivism and academic allyship” FULL of insights and also links to post-colonial and indigenous thinkers here, on the Environmental Politics website.
Dr Dani Shanley writes a guest post about responsible innovation.
“Technology: Hero or Villain?” So reads the title of an article published in the LA Times in 1967. It states: where once “America had been a land of boundless optimism,” by the late 1960s, increasing pessimism seemed to reflect a “sour assessment of ‘progress’”. Concerns about emerging technologies were contributing to the “depressing feeling” that “technological ‘progress’ was creating new problems as fast, or faster, than it solved old ones”. At the same time, across much of Western Europe too, science and technology were the subject of increasing public ambivalence. For while modern technology may not have been producing the utopia it once promised, it was clear that its absence wouldn’t either.
It is almost impossible to avoid the hype surrounding AI, autonomous vehicles, cryptocurrency, or virtual reality.
Hero or villain; utopian or dystopian; good or bad… If you think for a minute about what we see in the media today, the landscape is full of similarly opposing claims, from public figures and tech journalists, CEOs and politicians; It is almost impossible to avoid the hype surrounding AI, autonomous vehicles, cryptocurrency, or virtual reality.
Depending on where you get your news, you might think that these technologies are going to make life easier for us all, making us happier and healthier in the process, or, that their benefits are sensationalized, that their risks are largely unknown, and that those involved in their development are unethical, immoral, and solely interested in turning a profit.
There is often a subtext to the hero or villain discussion, one which has been made increasingly explicit in recent years, which concerns what it means to develop technologies responsibly andhow technological change may trigger us to reevaluate what responsibility means.
Though thinking about what responsibility means in the context of scientific research and technological development is far from new, around the turn of the millennium, responsibility became an increasingly important concept in relation to research and innovation.
For example, we might think about how responsibility matters with regards to either the processes or societal impacts of technological change. Within the research system, codes of conduct and ethics committees have become commonplace. So too have a number of research funding criteria: for example, researchers are regularly required to include multiple perspectives in their research ; to think about the possible impacts of their research; and to attain some form of ethical clearance before starting their research. Research funding is also often organized around particular themes or focus areas, such as the UN’s sustainable development goals. Today, all of these efforts are broadly captured under the banner of responsibleinnovation.
Over the last decade or so, responsible innovation has become a popular way of thinking about whether or not we can define the right outcomes and impacts of research and innovation and subsequently, if we can agree upon these outcomes, whether we can be successful in directing innovation towards them.
it is clearly quite difficult to be against—as some have rightly asked, who could possibly be for irresponsible innovation
Internationally, this way of talking about responsibility-related concerns gained considerable traction particularly in the Netherlands, the UK,
Norway, and parts of the U.S. As a result, a variety of meetings, research groups, projects and networks have been involved in defining and institutionalizing the idea of responsible innovation.
In that responsible innovation broadly reflects valuable and worthy ambitions it is clearly quite difficult to be against—as some have rightly asked, who could possibly be for irresponsible innovation? Yet at the same time, the ambitions of responsible innovation do reflect a very particular set of concerns, over and above or perhaps even at the expense, of others.
It is important to recognize that as a way of envisioning responsibility and putting responsibility into practice, responsible innovation was not always already a matter of concern for academics and policymakers. Rather, responsible innovation came into being in a historically specific process that was shaped by previous approaches and methods which were also historically rooted in visions of how science and society (ought to) relate.
As such, it is important to consider how the web of evolving influence that shapes our understanding of responsible innovation today extends back into the distant past. Making sense of why responsible innovation reflects the concerns that it does therefore requires a critical examination of its history.
First of all, the way we talk about history often suggests that the wheels move only in one direction. For example, within the literature on responsible innovation, history is often used to support its objectives, providing a neat frame of reference for how things came to be in the present, essentially presenting the emergence of responsible innovation as the logical outcome of prior developments. From this point of view, responsible innovation is seen as an inevitable product of the past. Drawing upon less linear narratives helps to demonstrate the extent to which people have found visions of responsibility unconvincing—or at least only temporarily convincing at various times over the years.
Second, in policy making and innovation, the emphasis is often on looking towards the future. Though it is undoubtedly positive that we widely encourage anticipation of the future, it means that we often tend to overlook the lessons of history. In the case of responsible innovation, critical historical reflection not only adds nuance and depth when thinking about the imagined trajectories of technoscientific developments, but also provides important insights for thinking about the possible future(s) of the responsible innovation movement itself. In this sense, history may potentially offer us some guidance in the present. For while the present is never the same as the past, we can still learn important lessons from how things went before; or, as the old adage goes, history doesn’t repeat, but it does sometimes rhyme. Understanding the successes and failures of earlier movements could potentially inform and shape how we talk about and practice responsible innovation today.
Third, it is important that we consider who gets a say in constructing the historical narrative of an idea, a movement, or a field. We need to ask who it is who is doing the remembering. Historical reflection on responsible innovation, when it has taken place, has tended to come from insiders speaking from their own first-hand experiences. Such accounts are valuable and informative, yet, it is important to distinguish between practical pasts, which are largely based on individual experience and used as a means for people to make sense of their own lived experience in order to convey it to others; and historical pasts, which are the result of “critical enquiry”. Opening up the history of responsible innovation beyond existing insider accounts allows alternative accounts to come into view, potentially problematizing or at least providing context to the ways in which responsibility is being mobilized.
Finally, one of the problems with responsible innovation is that it focuses our attention on “innovation” – on the next big, shiny thing which promises to disrupt, transform or otherwise alter the way we live our lives, for better or worse. Responsible innovation itself was also presented as being new and transformative, with regards to the organization and functioning of the research system. Of course there has always been hype around what is new, but the problem is that this hype often clouds some of the real problems that we have, and perhaps should be spending our resources on solving. It may be far less exciting to think about infrastructures, or maintenance, for example, about the kinds of things that are essential to keeping things running – but if we are truly going to think about responsibility, and about what enables anything resembling the good life, then we also have to think about the systems, processes, and people that keep all the shiny, new things running once they become a part of our daily lives.
What histories of responsible innovation show us is that while some ideas about responsibility may have eroded and faded away, others have merely changed shape, poised to reemerge under the right conditions—say when proactive groups mobilize around alternative ideas about the future or when technological change catalyzes public concern. At a time when our world is confronted by numerous inescapable societal and environmental challenges, many of which are seen as the indirect consequences of scientific and technological developments, we must continue thinking about the different ways in which responsibility matters be that under the guise of responsible innovation, or, by any other name.
Dani Shanley is currently a post-doctoral researcher at Maastricht University working on the GuestXR project (www.guestxr.eu), which is about the construction of intelligent virtual environments. Her expertise is mainly within science and technology studies (STS) and the philosophy of technology, with a particular focus on reflexive, participatory design methodologies (or, responsible innovation), such as social labs and value sensitive design (VSD). She is primarily interested in questions concerning the ethics and politics of emerging technologies.
Dani recently defended her PhD, entitled ‘Making Responsibility Matter: The Emergence of Responsible Innovation as an Intellectual Movement’ – full text available here: http://doi.org/10.26481/dis.20221208ds
Australian activist Jonathan Moylan recalls the non-violent climate action that could have sent him to jail
Ten years ago today, at the age of 22, I hit send on a media release before brewing a pot of coffee. I didn’t realise it at the time, but that spoof release, which was intended to paint a picture of a better world, ended up causing ripple effects that reverberated around the world.
At stake was the Leard State Forest, the largest intact area of native vegetation in the heavily-cleared Liverpool Plains, the centre of a critical biodiversity corridor that was part of the Nandewar-Brigalow bioregion, providing connectivity for species between the Kaputar ranges to the north and the Pilliga to the south. Habitat for koalas, regent honeyeaters and an incredible array of bats and microbats, the forest was being targeted by three large open-cut mines that would rip the forest apart.
I hadn’t heard of the Leard Forest or the neighbouring community of Maules Creek until the previous year, but for years the community had been working together to protect their region from open-cut mining. They were not opposed to mining per se, and would have tolerated an underground mine, but were worried about losing road access to Maules Creek during floods due to the planned closure of Leard Forest Road, as well as the threat of ten metres of aquifer draw-down, property devaluation, noise and dust.
Yet despite their reasonable proposals, thousands of dollars spent on independent consultant reports and some political support across the spectrum, the mine was approved by the NSW Government in late 2012 – all that remained was a determination from the federal government.
At the time, Whitehaven’s Maules Creek project was the largest new coal mine being considered in NSW and would increase coal tonnages through the world’s largest coal port in my hometown of Newcastle by ten percent. Yet despite the contention around the mine and its enormous contribution to climate change, the mine also secured a $1.2 billion loan facility from ANZ bank.
While it was rare at the time, in the ten years following 2013 we’ve seen a growing number of banks worldwide rule out finance for new coal projects following pressure from communities, shareholders and regulators given heightened awareness that climate change poses acute, chronic and systemic risks to the financial sector and the economy as a whole. Cracking down on companies making misleading claims about their climate credentials is now a priority for ASIC, the corporate regulator.
That would have been unimaginable in 2013, when the press release I sent out on ANZ’s letterhead – which was quickly revealed to be a hoax – announced that ANZ was withdrawing its loan to Whitehaven on ethical grounds. I only realised how serious things would get after a call from a journalist at the Washington Post who told me that Whitehaven’s share price had dropped by 9% – before recovering some twenty minutes later. Soon what start as a small protest camp in the forest with a handful of people became a two-year-long effort bringing thousands of people from all walks of life – doctors, lawyers, a former mining engineer and even former Wallabies flanker turned senator David Pocock – to take action in an effort to prevent the damage the mine would bring. More extraordinary was the incredible alliance of Gomeroi traditional owners, farmers and environmental groups who found common cause in a way that has probably permanently transformed the social fabric of the region.
Cracking down on companies making misleading claims about their climate credentials is now a priority for ASIC, the corporate regulator. That would have been unimaginable in 2013,
As I quickly learnt, any misleading statement that could impact on the sharemarket carried severe consequences. Officers from the securities regulator ASIC flew up to camp to seize my phone and computer and ordered me to appear for compulsory questioning – with no right to silence. Four months later I was charged with an offence that carried a maximum penalty of 10 years jail or $750 000 in fines. They were entitled to do this – although nobody had previously been charged under that false and misleading provision of the Corporations Act – it was a strict liability offence, which meant that the fact that I didn’t expect or intend an impact on the share price or wasn’t a participant in the sharemarket was irrelevant to the charge.
Suddenly I found myself in the middle of an incredibly high-pitched and polarising debate that played out in the media and in parliament for weeks. In some minds, I had deliberately set out to cause damage to the market. The bigger issue of the irreversible harm that would be caused to the world’s life support systems – on which we all depend – was at risk of being lost. For many others though, the notion of jailing a young man for drawing attention to a destructive new coal project galvanised support.
For its part, Whitehaven is no stranger to being on the wrong side of the law, having been penalised for illegal mining, illegal dumping, water theft, failure to declare political donations and illegal land-clearing. Yet the penalties meted out in those cases have never come close to meeting their gravity.
The broad-based campaign did more than delay the mine for several years. Public opinion has finally started to turn amidst a realisation that global coal demand has already peaked and renewables will win the race – the only question is when. The community continues to hold out against proposed coal expansions and coal seam gas threats in North-West NSW.
Throughout the ensuing court case, I was told by lawyers that the most likely outcome was a prison sentence of around a year. I was willing to accept the consequences, even though it was virtually unheard of for anybody to face prison time for a protest action in NSW. Ultimately I was sanctioned with a suspended sentence.
Throughout the ensuing court case, I was told by lawyers that the most likely outcome was a prison sentence of around a year
What’s harder to accept is the notion that with everything we know about the consequences of mining and burning fossil fuels, some companies are still entertaining significant new coal, oil or gas expansions. Yet as a United Nations panel determined last November, any bank that continues to claim it is committed to net zero emissions while lending to companies pursuing fossil fuel expansions is misleading the public.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge in ten years. But there is still much more to do.
All Our Yesterdays exists to inform people about the long histories of climate change – the science, the politics, the technology, the protest movements. It hopes to spark discussions among citizens’ groups about what we need to do differently to make the radical rapid changes required,…If you are someone, or know someone who should be writing a guest post/giving an interview, please say so in the comments below…
On this day, July 18, 2012, a video of the poem “Tell Them” by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner was uploaded, as part of the London 2012 Poetry Parnassus
Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner is a poet from the Marshall Islands. She is known for her poetry about climate change and its effects on her home islands in the Pacific, and has spoken at high level events such as the UN Climate Summit in 2014.
Jetnil-Kijiner doesn’t talk about climate change as a new phenomenon, but as another part of a history of violence in the Pacific. She weaves justice arguments that connect 20th century nuclear testing; militarism; rising sea levels, and forced migration.
In her poem ‘Tell Them’, recorded for Studio Revolt, she talks with love about the Marshall Islands, addressing a friend who lives elsewhere, asking them to pass on her message about the country people might not have heard of:
Show them where it is on a map Tell them we are a proud people toasted dark brown as the carved ribs of a tree stump
Tell them we are descendants of the finest navigators in the world
This message is not only one of pride and love for home, but also a warning and a call to action. Because the Marshall Islands are known outside of the Pacific. But they are known as an example, along with Tuvalu and Kiribati, of the ‘sinking islands’.
What Jetnil-Kijiner’s poetry does that is so important, is speak on behalf of islands that are so often written off as ‘doomed’, or a ‘sacrifice zone’ for a capitalist global economy, and islanders that so easily get framed as climate refugees, as if the uninhabitability of their islands is now inevitable; unpreventable.
What I argue in my own research, is that this doomed ‘extinction narrative’ tells the story as if it is already over. Like Jetnil-Kijiner, I trace a history of violence and ‘accumulation of injustices’ where the lives of islanders are considered disposable in the pursuit of colonial expansion and capitalist extraction. At the same time, this loss of life is naturalised as inevitable, due to the ‘vulnerability’ of islands and islanders, as weak and fragile peoples and unnatural places to live.
The reason that islander poets such as Jetnil-Kijiner, Yuki Kihara, and Terisa Tinei Siagatonu, and Craig Santos Perez are such important voices in climate change politics, is because they are refusing the foregone conclusion of the sinking islands extinction narrative. They offer a different way to talk about climate change politics, where the fight for mitigation is continuing, and must continue:
But most importantly you tell them we don’t want to leave we’ve never wanted to leave and that we
