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Book Preview: ‘Environmental Politics: Scale and Power’
February 1, 2011 // By Shannon O’LearMOREThe cover of my book, Environmental Politics: Scale and Power, shows two cows casually rummaging through piles of garbage on the streets of a city somewhere in India. It’s a colorful, but disturbing, image. Why not show cows in their “natural” setting, say, in a Kansas pasture? Who let them into the street? Why are they eating garbage? The image is symbolic of what the book aims to achieve: to get us out of our comfort zones in thinking about environmental issues and challenge us to reconsider how we think about issues like climate change, energy, food security, garbage, toxins, and resource conflicts.
The book draws from my experience teaching environmental policy, environmental geopolitics, international conflict, and human geography. It starts by asking some fundamental questions: What exactly is “the environment” anyway? Is there any part of the world that is completely untouched by human actions? How do different forms of power selectively shape our understanding of particular environmental issues (while obscuring other issues from our view)?
The book draws on the idea of the “Anthropocene” – a new geologic era characterized by irreversible, human-induced changes to the planet. Because these changes (which in large part have already occurred) are irreversible, Anthropocene-subscribers argue we should focus our efforts on mitigation, adaptation, and coming to terms with the realities of the environment as it is, rather than something that must be returned to some previous or “normal” state.
Our understanding of environmental issues is shaped by various types of power – economic, political, ideological, and military – and therefore tends to be limited in terms of spatial scale. Why do we tend to think of climate change as a global phenomenon instead of something we might experience (and contend with) locally? Is food security something we should be mindful of when we make individual choices about food? We tend not to discuss what happens to our garbage, but everyone knows about recycling, right?
Environmental Politics: Scale and Power offers non-geographers an appreciation of how and why geographers think spatially to solve problems. Commonly accepted views of environmental issues tend to get trapped at particular spatial scales, creating a few dominant narratives. When we combine a spatial perspective with an inquiry into the dynamics of power that have influenced our understanding of environmental issues, we can more clearly appreciate the complexity of human-environment relations and come to terms with adapting to and living in the Anthropocene era.
Today’s environmental challenges can sometimes appear distant and immense, but this book aims to show how decisions we make in our day-to-day lives – from buying bottled water and microwave popcorn to diamond jewelry – have already had an effect on a grand scale.
Shannon O’Lear is a professor of geography at the University of Kansas and the author of Environmental Politics: Scale and Power. She has recently completed a research project examining why we do not see widespread or sustained environmental resource-related conflict in Azerbaijan, as literature on resource conflict would suggest.
Image Credit: Environmental Politics: Scale and Power, courtesy of Justin Riley and Cambridge University Press. -
Connecting the Dots on Natural Interdependence
September 3, 2009 // By Brian KleinMOREA vast symphony of natural processes sustains our life on Earth. Recognizing the complex interdependence of nature’s concert reminds us of a simple fact: the social, economic, and environmental challenges we face are not isolated from one another, and neither are their solutions. Tom Friedman drives this point home in a recent New York Times op-ed, “Connecting Nature’s Dots.”
“We’re trying to deal with a whole array of integrated problems—climate change, energy, biodiversity loss, poverty alleviation and the need to grow enough food to feed the planet—separately,” Friedman argues.
“[W]e need to make sure that our policy solutions are as integrated as nature itself. Today, they are not,” he says.
Take, for example, water scarcity—a looming problem that the increasing global incidence of droughts, floods, melting glaciers, and drying rivers will likely exacerbate.
“Droughts make matters worse, but the real problem isn’t shrinking water levels. It’s population growth,” says Robert Glennon, author of Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It, in a Washington Post op-ed that points out the integrated nature of our environmental problems. “Excessive groundwater pumping has dried up scores of lakes,” many of which—including Lake Superior—can no longer “float fully loaded freighters, dramatically increasing shipping costs.” Companies reliant on rivers to run their factories or discharge their wastewater have furloughed workers as low flows disrupt normal operations. “Water has become so contentious nationwide,” Glennon continues, “that more than 30 states are fighting with their neighbors over water.”
In addition, while “more people will put a huge strain on our water resources…another problem comes in something that sounds relatively benign: renewable energy, at least in some forms, such as biofuels.” Growing enough corn to refine one gallon of ethanol, for example, can take up to 2,500 gallons of water.
“In the United States, we’ve traditionally engineered our way out of water shortages by diverting more from rivers, building dams, or drilling groundwater wells,” Glennon says. “[But] we’re running out of technological fixes.”
Global food security is also affected. We need the oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, and streams to provide habitat for fish and other marine life—a vital source of sustenance for the poorest segments of our population. Furthermore, wetland areas play a critical role in mitigating the consequences of natural disasters, buffering vulnerable coastal communities from storm surges.
Addressing water scarcity thus requires a complex understanding of the hydrological cycle, its relationship to other natural processes, and humanity’s place in that system.
For years, celebrated environmentalist and entrepreneur Paul Hawken has emphasized the interconnectedness of indigenous, environmental, and social justice movements. In his 2007 book Blessed Unrest, Hawken contends that groups as disparate as land rights reformers in the DR Congo and community members fighting to protect the Anacostia Watershed share fundamental values. Grassroots campaigns of a similar bent have sprung up across the globe, all seeking to right humans’ relationships with the Earth, and with each other.
Policymakers in the U.S. and abroad should take a page from Hawken’s book, recognize the natural interdependence of our problems, and design integrated solutions. Otherwise, our strategies to confront the myriad challenges enumerated by Friedman will fall flat.
Photo courtesy Flickr user aloshbennett.
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A vast symphony of natural processes sustains our life on Earth. Recognizing the complex interdependence of nature’s concert reminds us of a simple fact: the social, economic, and environmental challenges we face are not isolated from one another, and neither are their solutions. Tom Friedman drives this point home in a recent New York Times op-ed, “
