Systemic Crises of Global Climate Change

Intersections of race, class and gender

Phoebe Godfrey, Denise Torres, Phoebe Godfrey, Denise Torres

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317570103
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Volkswirtschaftslehre
• Subtopic: Nachhaltige Entwicklung

Sociological literature tends to view the social categories of race, class and gender as distinct and has avoided discussing how multiple intersections inform and contribute to experiences of injustice and inequity. This limited focus is clearly inadequate.

Systemic Crises of Global Climate Change is an edited volume of 49 international, interdisciplinary contributions addressing global climate change (GCC) by intentionally engaging with the issues of race, gender, and class through an intersectional lens. The volume challenges and inspires readers to foster new theoretical and practical linkages and think beyond the traditional, and oftentimes reductionist, environmental science frame by examining issues within their turbulent political, cultural, and personal landscapes. Varied media and writing styles invite students and educators to reflexively engage different, yet complementary, approaches to GCC analysis and interpretation, mirroring the disparate voices and viewpoints within the field. The second volume, Emergent Possibilities for Sustainability will take a similar approach but will examine the possibilities for solutions, as in the quest for global sustainability.

This book is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and both undergraduate and post-graduate students in the areas of Environmental Studies, Climate Change, Gender Studies and International studies as well as those seeking a more intersectional analysis of GCC.

Part I Chaos

Figure I.1 Chaos by Tina Shirshac.

1 Worlds turning; worlds colliding?

Phoebe Godfrey and Denise Torres

DOI: 10.4324/9781315737454-3

In Greek mythology, Chaos is the formless, primal void from which was born all existence, including Gaia, the personification of Earth, and the other primordial deities. Meaning ‘yawning’ or ‘gap,’ Chaos is thought to have referred to the original separation between Heaven and Earth, whereas our modern use of the word – to connote confusion and disorder – derives from the Elizabethan era. We play on both the Greek and English meanings in Part I, delivering our first selections birthed from the confusion and disorder of global climate change (GCC) and emerging from the perceived ‘gap’ between Heaven (the realm of society, hence ideology) and Earth (the realm of the physical and natural world).

Having developed as a means to analyze the matrixes of domination and privilege, intersectionality provides ample opportunity to examine gaps and intersections across the micro, meso, or macro levels. Thus, we explore the ways in which not all identities are internally or externally harmonious or integrated, and in fact can and do create conflicts and discords in relation to “within-group differences and inequalities” as well as “between-group power asymmetries” (May, 2015, p. 4). In fact, we see GCC as a perfect example of how these can collide in ways that are potentially extreme, disruptive, and destructive. The question as to whether or not ‘chaos’ is interpreted as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ of course depends on how it is being interpreted and in relation to whom and what.

To illustrate the complexity and temporal quality of an intersectional analysis, David Jackson’s ‘Pulled from all angles … with strings attached’ places a pregnant young woman of color in motion amid the chaos of the social and natural worlds. Jackson’s dynamic image may be said to epitomize what the Anthropocene looks like: an age of human dominion even as most struggle with a multiplicity of simultaneous demands. In Jane Caputi’s piece, ‘Mother Earth meets the Anthropocene: an intersectional ecofeminist analysis,’ she wittingly applies cutting feminist critical analysis to explore and unpack how terms such as ‘the Anthropocene,’ ‘Mother Earth,’ and GCC are used and abused, by whom, and for what purposes. Spoken word poet Devin Samuels spins an imaginative dialogue between ‘Mother Earth’ and her male child who, as the architect of the Anthropocene, boastingly declares his independence from and domination of the Earth. This satirical hubris gains empirical validity in Julie Bacon’s piece, ‘The Rush Limbaugh Show and the expanding the culture war: whiteness, masculinity, and conservative media denials of climate change and sexism,’ as she applies an intersectional analysis to climate change denial in the conservative media. Phoebe Godfrey reflects on recent events to highlight the concept of hegemonic masculinity and offers a provocative visual interpretation. Coco Gordon’s poem, ‘Supersky Woman,’ invites critical reflection as to what exactly we are doing and why, with a still from Steve Cutts’ animated work, MAN, capturing the maniacal delight in the cacophony and chaos of his actions. Jade Sasser’s ‘Population, climate change, and the embodiment of environmental crisis’ takes on the popular racist and sexist – hence, colonial – view that overpopulation, in particular on the part of those in the underdeveloped world, is responsible for GCC, and calls for an embodied and intersectional engagement with reproductive rights. Finally, to close the section and fill the ‘gap’ between Heaven and Earth is Antonia Darder’s poem and contextualizing thoughts in ‘The Great Mother Wails.’

Reference

• May, V., 2015. Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries. New York: Routledge.

2 Pulled from all angles … with strings attached

David C. Jackson

DOI: 10.4324/9781315737454-4

Figure 2.1 Pulled from all angles by David Jackson, oil and acrylic on canvas, 4' × 5'. This is a literal, mixed-media painting examining the dualities of humans, how we're labeled in our environments, and the consequences in occupying space in these environments. It's an exploration on how we build and destroy; physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

3 Mother Earth meets the Anthropocene An intersectional ecofeminist analysis

Jane Caputi

DOI: 10.4324/9781315737454-5

Enter the Anthropocene – Age of Man. It’s a new name for a new geologic epoch – one defined by our own massive impact on the planet.

(National Geographic, Kolbert, 2011)

[T]he old people laugh when they hear talk about the ‘desecration’ of the Earth. Because humankind, they know, is nothing in comparison to the earth. Blast it open, dig it up, or cook it with nuclear explosions: the Earth remains. Human desecrate only themselves. The Earth is inviolate.

(Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna), 1989, p. 124)

At the People’s Climate March, on September 21, 2014 in New York City, the iconic figure of Mother Earth, probably humanity’s oldest religious (Roach, 2005, p. 1107) – and scientific and philosophical – idea was everywhere. One poster, created for the event by Favianna Rodriguez, depicted a brown-skinned, child-carrying woman, her face superimposed over a radiant Earth. “Defienda Nuestra Madre,” its words demanded – Defend Our Mother. Marchers carried signs emblazoned with a blue-green, black-haired woman, the Earth at her womb level, and issuing this warning: “Don’t Mess with Our Mama: Defend Gaia.” One group carried a large puppet, a dark-skinned grandmother in traditional peasant dress, with accompanying signs reiterating the call: “Defienda a nuestra Madre Tierra” (Defend our Mother Earth).

This defense is particularly imperative, as the Earth, according to prominent European and US spokespersons, has entered into a new geological era, the Anthropocene. This term has been proposed since the 1980s as the most accurate designation of an unprecedented time when “human activity” has become a “globally potent biogeophysical force” (Revkin, 2011, n.p.) and “humans” have become capable of “overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature” (Steffen et al., 2007, p. 614).

My interest here is in the meeting of these two gendered, racialized, sexualized, and classed terms, one ancient and vernacular, the other new and issued from on high. But is the Anthropocene really so new? I think not. Rather, it extends a centuries-long Western paradigm, one structured, to put it crudely, along the lines of ‘The White Man fucks the Dark Mother.’ ‘The White Man’ does not mean all white men or even only men, but is a metonymy for what is known as ‘civilization’ and ‘rationality,’ with the ‘Dark Mother’ standing as and for what is excluded and devalued: “the emotions, the body, the passions, animality, necessity” (Plumwood, 1993, p. 19), and for what is said to be matter without spirit. Matter thus becomes an object, something inferior to be mastered, exploited, made to serve, and manipulated. Nature, thus defined, includes not only dis-spirited matter and the entire non-human world, but all those humans deemed inferior (sexually, racially, bodily) because they are supposedly closer to an inferiorized ‘nature’ (Griffin, 1989).

This civilization’s objectification of Mother Earth/Nature makes possible the devastation of the Anthropocene. My plan here is to critique this and related assumptions undergirding the Anthropocene, while also arguing for that defense of Mother Earth. The name Mother Earth, according to the Preamble to the International Declaration of Mother Earth Rights (Rights of Mother Earth, 2010, n.p.), means an “indivisible, living community of interrelated and interdependent beings with a common destiny.” The name Mother Earth further signifies the Earth/Nature as a force including humans, but as Silko (1989) attests, ultimately inviolate and upon which humankind utterly depends. Defense of Mother Earth then is not only defense of the planet; it is defense of ourselves.

The ‘age of humans'?

The designation of the Anthropocene may seem helpful in countering ongoing denial that human activities have led to climate change. Still, the designation is also problematic, as it implies that all humans are doing this and, moreover, that this kind of behavior is intrinsic to human nature. But the ‘humans’ behind global warming and concomitant environmental damages are more or less privileged individuals (e.g., those commanding the world’s most wealthy and powerful militaries, governments, families, classes, and corporations), and the affluent, who benefit in the short term from the devastation, while able to distance themselves from the damage (a privilege unavailable, for example, to climate refugees in the Arctic and the South Pacific and to poor people living in contaminated neighborhoods). Those living in affluence contribute through everyday acts simply contingent upon living in a consumer culture (e.g., driving, shopping, investing, eating industrial grains, vegetables, and meat, or flipping a switch).

Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen is the scientist most responsible for promoting adoption of the Anthropocene. He writes with journalist Christian Schwägerl (2011) of the need for a “new global ethos,” which includes some necessary social changes: an end to hyper-consumption, factory farming of animals, and the use of private vehicles. However, they do not simultaneously demand equal access to food, health, space, air, and water. They do not call for international human rights, including women’s rights. Nor do they recognize the need for what a global, indigenous-led movement calls The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. This document was adopted in 2010 at the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia (Rights of Mother Earth, 2010). Its principles, based in an older, indigenous, and still vital ecological ethos, abjure mastery of the Earth, recognizing that: the Earth is alive and purposeful; all life, including human life, is dependent on the Earth; all humans are equal; humans are not exceptional or superior, but one life form among many intrinsically interrelated ones that form a community. Moreover, this ecological ethos affirms that human rights cannot be achieved without a simultaneous attainment of Mother Earth Rights. For those holding to Mother Earth Rights, Crutzen and Sch...