These trials will determine our own survival
The sun returns to the equator from the Tropic of Cancer. We who live in the northern hemisphere finally bid farewell to the sweltering heat and breathe a sigh of relief in the cool autumn wind. It seems that the ecological crisis is not an imminent problem anymore? The fact is that glaciers are still melting rapidly, more creatures are going extinct, and extreme climates will continue to appear, threatening the living environment of human beings.
For a long time, perhaps in our lifetime, the ecological crisis will be a severe test for all mankind. Therefore, after the editor of the single reading shared “12 small things that ordinary people can do for environmental protection” last month, the single reading continued to focus on environmental issues and invited Xiaowu to introduce 12 books that describe and analyze the ecological crisis from different perspectives. Sharing 6 of them today.
Through these books, we can see the process of climate warming and biological extinction more clearly, and see the suffering that human beings endure as a result. These books also reflect and critique human behavior, discussing this existential crisis brewed by human activities, unable to bypass global monopoly capitalism that robs nature and labor at the same time, nor ignore the more prominent social inequalities in climate change Phenomenon.
Where does the ecological crisis come from?
where to go (top)
Written by: Xiao Wu
#1
Upside down:
Capitalism vs the Climate Crisis
Following the criticism of capitalism’s waste of resources and man-made disasters in “NO LOGO” and “Shockism”, author Naomi Klein explores an important source of the exacerbation of the ecological crisis in this book, that is, the capitalist energy industry and financial operations. The climate crisis, and exposes the ineffectiveness and hypocrisy of all kinds of green middle lines .
Klein argues that instead of inflaming the resolution mechanism that would save most people from disaster, the climate crisis is once again being used to give the elite one percent a reason to pool their wealth and resources. To collect “carbon credits”, public forests in many parts of the world are being purchased by landowners and converted into privatized forest farms and reservations. “Weather futures” became a financial tool for companies and banks to wager on weather changes. Markets for weather-derived financial commodities boomed during disasters, and insurers reaped the benefits of new insurance schemes from hard-hit developing countries. Arms dealers see opportunities in expanded private disaster relief services, and agricultural companies further monopolize seeds and other means of production by developing “climate-ready” crops. Property developers earn huge subsidies by building new buildings in lightly affected areas. At the same time, when new energy as a sunshine industry is expanding wildly under the subsidies of various governments, countries use trade sanctions to restrict each other’s transformation…
And when we face the growing carbon dioxide emissions of the Anthropoccene due to the massive use of fossil fuels, neither the increasingly broken green capitalism under constant compromise, nor the rhetoric of climate philanthropy or climate change adaptation, it fails to challenge market and political power of monopoly capital, so these schemes cannot succeed. The author says: The key is power, not just energy . Large corporations teaming up with some of the big green organizations that have been funded are picking the fruit rather than rooting it out. Who would have thought that the Conservation Society would start drilling its own natural gas wells in a pheasant reserve after receiving an industry donation from ExxonMobil? And green billionaires won’t really save us either. Viking Group boss Branson’s initial claim to spend $3 billion to develop new aircraft energy proved to be nothing more than a commercial expansion gesture. And billionaires such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, who say they are committed to tackling the ecological crisis, hold large stakes in oil giants and play down the prospects of renewable energy.
Another invaluable aspect of this book is its summary of the achievements and experiences of scientists and the front lines of the struggle of the ecological movement over the past two decades. From climate fighters in blockadia to indigenous rights movements everywhere, from defending coral reefs to victories against coal mines, from claiming air-sharing rights to demanding that polluting companies and elites pay their ecological debts, from demanding fossil energy capital Divestment into ecological democracy. What can we learn from these struggle cases?
#2
Disaster Notes:
Humans, Nature and Climate Change
First published in 2006, this book was written by Elizabeth Colbert, an American journalist who has long focused on the ecological crisis. Colbert visited many places around the world where the environment is significantly affected by warming, and interviewed climate scientists and biologists around the world who are doing related research. Scientific research and data on climate change is complex, and Colbert’s mission is to make the facts of climate warming clear, accurate and vivid while minimizing theoretical discussion and describing more.
In Dead Horse, the thawing of permafrost releases carbon dioxide and methane, accelerating further temperature increases. Scientists are monitoring an accelerated reduction in Arctic sea ice thickness and coverage—which causes more solar energy to be absorbed directly by the exposed water surface, heating the ocean. They also estimate that the perennial sea ice in the Arctic will disappear by 2080, which would not only lead to sea level rise, but also tip the balance of Earth’s climate system. In Greenland and Iceland, shrinking glaciers have been observed. The ice melts into water, which flows through the crevices into the bottom of the glacier to form a cushion of water that acts as a lubricant to accelerate the movement of the glacier, which in turn accelerates the melting of the glacier.
Documentary “Before the Flood”
Climate change also affects the distribution and survival of species. In the UK, the range boundary for most butterflies has moved north. North American syringae have even evolved shorter critical photoperiods as a result of a warming climate, allowing them to migrate further north and at higher altitudes. These creatures, which are invasive to the local area, can have unexpected results. In Costa Rica’s Monteverde fog forest, the golden toad, which used to rely on wet puddles as a breeding ground, went extinct due to the continuous rise of cloud heights in the tropical fog forest. And in the Netherlands, future sea level rise is putting ever-increasing pressure on past seawalls to collapse. This has forced the local water ministry to launch a plan to relocate lowland farmers and remove part of the seawall to protect the denser city. And some Dutch construction companies have already started building houses that float on the water. Because they thought it was impossible to stop the water from rising.
At the same time, while scientists demonstrate the phenomena and consequences of climate change through field research, climate modelling and climate projections, many politicians and big capital seem to be ignoring these warnings. The Bush administration has opposed the Kyoto Protocol since it ratified it in 2005. And traditional energy and gasoline vehicle giants like ExxonMobil and General Motors have allied themselves into lobbying and advocacy groups, influencing government policy and discrediting scientists by telling the public that climate change is a conspiracy theory. Another key point is how to make developing countries such as China and India with rapidly increasing energy consumption actively participate in the transition. After all, at the time of the author’s writing, China’s unit energy consumption has reached 2.5 times that of the United States and 9 times that of Japan. For humans entering the Anthropocene, these trials will determine our own survival.
#3
The era of mass extinction:
an anomalous natural history
This book, Elizabeth Colbert’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner, is another masterpiece of Elizabeth Colbert’s account of the catastrophic consequences of climate change. In the past 5 billion years, the Earth has experienced five mass extinctions, and the diversity of life on Earth has suddenly and dramatically contracted. Combining the views of scientists from all over the world, the author believes that the earth is in the midst of the sixth man-made mass extinction. It would be the most devastating extinction event since an asteroid struck Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. The book not only documents past mass extinction events, comparing them to the accelerating and spreading extinction events of our time, but also describes the specific species that have been wiped out by humans and the ecological environment in which prehistoric and recent extinctions occurred. .
Panama’s golden frogs are threatened with death due to human-borne chytrid fungi, and American bats are killed by psychrophilic fungi, illustrating that global trade has created a fictional “Pandora” when in fact the species invasion it causes is a extinction mechanism . The large auk was hunted for its meat, fuel and feathers, leading to its extinction in 1844. Ocean acidification, caused by the dramatic increase in carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial age, is killing most marine life, such as corals and other creatures that depend on them. These are examples of human exploitation of natural resources leading to the extinction of organisms. In the endangered event of the Sumatran rhino, it was found that habitat fragmentation caused by deforestation was the cause of their mass mortality. After examining the mainstream of peer-reviewed science, Colbert estimates that by the end of the 21st century, the loss of plants and animals will amount to “20 to 50 percent of all living species on Earth.” The loss of species will exacerbate the fragmentation of habitats and lead to “dryland islands” separated from each other, making it more difficult to rebuild species diversity and restore ecological balance. This will trigger a violent domino effect.
#4
Imperial River:
Water, Drought and the Growth of the American West
In 1862, Thoreau wrote in “Walking”: “Going east, I am helpless; but going west, I am free.” He longed to find a space in the west that was more free of personality and despised material desires. In 1896, American historian Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his book: “The problem of the West is the problem of the development of the United States.” Not only that, he compared the conquest of the Western frontier by the white victors with the The founding of the “American Spirit”—it was the frontier that nurtured the casual, free, democratic, and proactive character of Americans. However, this book examines the history of the conquest of water by American interests and the frontier myths of individualism and racism that have been shaped.
In fact, using dams, ditches and other hydraulic engineering technologies and farmland irrigation technologies, the western United States has been built as a modern hydraulic society. Deserts that were once water-starved have turned into fertile fields, and can even support the water-hungry cotton and corn industries. But what floods here is neither the order of natural landscape aesthetics, nor the order of community life closely integrated with it, but an “imposed techno-economic order”. “Like the water of the canal, the people there are induced by the organization, along a straight line, towards the greatest output, the highest profit.” The control of water is also the control of man and nature. And it is the power elites who have mastered capital and professional technology who dominate this simple and uniform and strictly hierarchical mandatory order.
In such a historical process, the myths of the western gold rush and frontier frontiers cover up the indigenous tribes that were killed and driven out by the white conquerors, the trees and swamps that were ravaged, and the large animals that were hunted to the point of extinction. Herbivores, agricultural workers made up of blacks, Filipinos and Mexicans – a rural proletariat. The development of intensive agriculture and the rise of industrial cities are increasingly difficult to conceal the fact that the ecology is unsustainable. The water control technologies developed on the lands of the Western Empire have brought about uncontrollable crises—land drought and desertification, salinization, falling water tables, pesticide pollution, aging dams, and so on. The construction of water conservancy projects is closely related to real estate developers, agricultural capital groups, large landowners and mergers, and government reclamation bureau bureaucrats with private interests. This is reminiscent of Polanski’s film “Chinatown” in the 1970s…
Movie “Chinatown”
#5
Heatwave:
The Social Anatomy of the Chicago Disaster
From July 14 to 20, 1995, Chicago experienced the most extreme heat on record, and the heat wave caused 739 more residents to die in a week than in the same period of the previous year. The urban excess deaths caused by heat waves are often in a hidden state in previous disaster research. The author attempts to explain the social causes of this disaster—urban inequality—and to present the social and political production processes of deprivation and suffering . The authors note that those most vulnerable during a heatwave are those in social isolation, such as the elderly living alone and black people in poor neighborhoods. Without reliable social networks and close relatives, the elderly living alone are at greater risk of death during heat waves, and illness and poverty make them more likely to lose access to information and resources to rebuild social bonds. Blacks in the city are trapped in depopulated, stagnant businesses, segregated neighborhoods with crumbling infrastructure, and high crime rates that leave them without sufficient community organization and stable neighborhoods to respond to life-threatening emergencies.
In fact, class and racial segregation in cities has a long history. Emerging media technologies may play a role in removing difficult people from the middle class. For the sake of marketization, news organizations must differentiate readers, making the invisible even more invisible. Instead of fixing injustices, citizens and voters in wealthy districts choose candidates that cut family benefits for the poor. The author also pointed the finger at city management. Although various committees, hearings, and official investigations organized by different government agencies demonstrate the efforts of official agencies in disaster management, some efforts have instead increased mortality. Paramilitary groups such as fire and police agencies and privatized municipal services have proven incapable of addressing the needs of isolated populations who are struggling, and may even cut government agencies off the community. At the same time, governments are increasingly using public relations and marketing to create myths about political success and use rhetoric to evade public accusations. During the Chicago heatwave, for example, government officials initially tried to deny forensic experts’ attribution reports of death. It was later suggested that those who died in the heatwave were already “on the verge of death” and that the heatwave only caused “early death”.
Although this sociological work, born in the 1990s, fails to link urban heat disasters to the global climate crisis, it certainly provides a public sociological perspective on environmental inequalities for examining today’s climate crisis.
#6
extreme city:
The Perils and Hopes of Urban Living in the Age of Climate Change
Cities are the most representative social and ecological phenomena in the 21st century. Today, cities house the majority of humans, emit most of the carbon into the atmosphere, and are also particularly vulnerable to the climate crisis. Whether it’s extreme heat and drought in many cities around the world this year, power outages caused by energy shortages or meteorological disasters, or urban waterlogging caused by short-term heavy rainfall, it seems that cities are becoming the front lines of human response to climate disasters.
In Extreme Cities, author Ashley Dawson uses interviews with climate-forward scientists, urban architects, and activists to give us a horrifying enough portrait of the future of cities. Today, most of the world’s megacities are located along the coast. Thirteen of the world’s 20 largest cities are port cities. More than 50% of the world’s population lives in coastal areas within 120 kilometers of the coastline. By 2025, this proportion is expected to reach 75%. In such areas, few people are adequately prepared for floods that are increasingly threatening coastlines. Instead, luxury beachfront condos have continued to be developed for the corporate elite and industrial facilities. Not only does this exacerbate carbon emissions, but it puts coastal residents at greater risk when water levels rise.
Documentary “Before the Flood”
The book also mentions some specific examples: the efforts of residents of Staten Island, New York, and Shishmarev, Alaska, to relocate to avoid being engulfed by rising sea levels; The stress-increasing coastal defense model, deltas and seawall projects are caught in a “control paradox”; the development of New York City before and after Hurricane Sandy – how to use the concept of resilience to make the free market order in this way How can it be deployed in the name of the military-industrial-urban security complex to suppress and monitor residents.
Cities are not only threatened by sea water. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, the drought is getting worse. The researchers linked the decrease in precipitation in southern Brazil to the deforestation of the Amazon forest. Forests originally had the function of conserving water sources and releasing water vapor. But 224,000 square miles of rainforest in the region have been cleared since 1980, leaving São Paulo without adequate water supplies. A large number of “water refugees” have flowed out, and illegal drilling that pollutes groundwater is difficult to contain.
Yet Dawson believes that the greatest hope lies not in sturdy sea walls, in “smart cities,” or in the wave of green technologies coveted by entrepreneurs. In fact, “Extreme Cities” does not refer to a city with a very large population size, but a description of the specific characteristics of the urban structure, indicating the extreme inequality of urban space. As we saw in the previous book, how a city responds to stratification and segregation in terms of race, class, and gender is closely related to its ability to withstand the climate catastrophe it suffers. Social inequality exacerbates the vulnerability of cities. Today, however, the global convergence of urbanization and climate change is being masked. As urban critics Lefebvre and David Harvey have argued, the underlying driver of urban growth is capitalism, and cities play a central role in addressing the periodic economic crises of the capitalist system. Urban sprawl is a major site of human indiscriminate depletion of natural resources. The authors argue that climate change will cause the greatest damage to cities, but that cities will also produce some of the fiercest fights against inequality of our time .
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Facing the common crisis of mankind
On September 22, 2020, China proposed a “dual carbon” goal, that is, to adopt more powerful policies and measures, and strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, and strive to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
To commemorate the proposal of China’s “Double Carbon” goal, WWF and the Publicity and Education Center of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment jointly launch a series of “Climate Action Week” activities on September 22 every year to raise public awareness and awareness of carbon neutrality. Understand, gain the impetus to participate in achieving carbon neutrality.
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