We are living in the Anthropocene era, when humans are the leading power influencing the earth’s future. Environmental systems and ecological processes are clearly in action; however, it is hard to understand their expressions apart from human activities.
On his lecture on November 1st at UWM, entitled as “Embattled Earth: Commodities, Conflict and Climate Change in the Indian Ocean”, Amitav Ghosh shared concerns about the most pressing issue of our time, climate change and vulnerable future on earth. He talked about empire, power, capitalism and consumerism as critical contributors to our climate crisis. He discussed how historical conflicts over resources in Asia have become a major driver of climate change in the Indian Ocean. According to Ghosh, imperialism is critical for understanding the “Great Derangement.” After the lecture, I could not stop thinking about why the climate change has not received necessary sympathy and affection. I was thinking about whether academic scholars have overlooked the important role played by empire and military power in creating our current climate-related disasters. How should we deal with the connection between higher inequality and increased environmental damage? How well our disaster management plans work? Are we really deranged?
A day after the Ghosh’s lecture, the Center for 21st Century Studies hosted a roundtable discussion on November 2nd with Amitav Ghosh, Richard Grusin (C21), and four panelists from different UWM departments (Arijit Sen (Architecture), Jasmine Alinder (History), Rina Ghose (Geography), and Anne Bonds (Geography)). In a format of five minutes individual presentations, they discussed how fields such as urban studies, history, critical theory, architecture, and art could offer small-scale responses and strategies of resistance to climate change. After that, Amitav Ghosh responded to each of the panelists’ presentations. The whole discussion was very informative and challenged us to think more about seeing the climate change and derangement in different ways. Jasmine Alinder encouraged us to think about the climate change in visual term, photography of climate change. In The Great Derangement, Amitav Ghosh declares the need for not looking at the climate catastrophes as a problem of individual choices, but as a problem of collective action. Reflecting on this, Alinder highlighted the need for a shared visual ethnography and iconography of the climate change.
Anne Bonds talked about climate change and mass incarceration. She argues that the climate change poses a great threat for the people who are incarcerated in prisons and jails. These people are most vulnerable to environmental catastrophes. As Amitav Ghosh argued in his book, “the distribution of power in the world … lies at the core of the climate crisis.” This discussion reminded me of a piece by sociologist Andrew Jorgenson, talking about the link between higher inequality and increased environmental damage with respect to emissions of heat-trapping gases. As he claimed, “reducing inequality may have the potential to both increase human well-being and enhance climate change mitigation efforts.”
I end this post by talking about Arijit Sen’s presentation on the relationship between architecture, Anthropocene, and the climate change. He also talked about the collective failure to imagine and address the climate change. As Sen argued, scholars of architecture and the built environment are mostly interested in examining the everyday performances of people and the politically charged nature of the mundane in order to find the link between the climate change and the built environment. He discussed the politics of public space in the city of Milwaukee; “the politics of public space is implicated in chorographic acts of governmental and planning agencies that designate boundaries of historic and cultural districts, neighborhoods and tracts, and various forms of vested economic territories.” He critically discussed the tourist map of the city by emphasizing on the deliberate invisibility of an inner city neighborhood, which is home to a vast majority of poor and minority residents.