5.3.05

Probably no posting for the next week, as I have personal business to attend to.
Stentor Danielson, 12:19, ,

4.3.05

Scarlet Stuff

This week's column was on the death penalty. I didn't have a comic for it because I had no idea what to draw.
Stentor Danielson, 14:39, ,

Radical Environmentalism

I'm a big fan of typologies. In the spirit of Ampersand and Hugo Schwyzer, I thought I'd offer a typology of radical environmentalism. Its structure is more like Schwyzer's typology of the men's movement in being an inductive clustering, rather than based on the logical combinations of underlying dimensions like Ampersand's typology of feminism or Cultural Theory.

Radical Mainstream Environmentalism
This seemingly contradictory title refers to environmentalism that is radical in its political goals, but continuous with mainstream environmentalism in its analysis of the problem. It shares the Malthusianism and concept of human activity as inherently destructive that characterize much mainstream environmentalism, though it typically sees those problems as greater in scope. It is the most accepting of mainstream ecological science, particularly Clementsian equilibrium notions. However, radical mainstreamers think the problem is too dire to be solved with the technological advances and shifts in demand that mainstream envirnomentalism advocates. Rather, they advocate major reductions in population and resource use, and a return to more local communities and economies. The Limits to Growth movement is perhaps the best known exemplar of this camp.

Deep Ecology
Where radical mainstream environmentalism gets its motivational energy from predictions of human catastrophe, deep ecology is centered on an ethical concern for the fate of the non-human world -- both individual organisms and environmental systems like rivers, mountains, and biomes. Indeed, they sometimes fear that it may be all too possible for humans to live a comfortable and sustainable lifestyle at the expense of the environment. This camp is by far the most religious or spiritual in its philosophy and practice, often claiming that worship of Mother Earth is the only way to ensure ecologically sound lifestyles. Linked to that religious attitude is a sometimes contradictory relationship to Clementsian ecology -- on the one hand it is accepted because it shores up deep ecology's holism and view of fragile equilibrium, but on the other hand science is suspect because of its inherent links to imperialist domination of nature.

Political Ecology
Political ecology is an extension of leftist social and political philosophy to environmental questions. It is decidedly anthropocentric, concerned with the social justice impacts of environmental change and rhetoric. Political ecologists are typically highly critical of mainstream positivist science, though there has been some rapproachement in recent years as the usefulness of newer notions of disequilibrium ecology has been recognized. The environmental justice movement is the main lay component of this camp. There is a great deal of diversity within political ecology. The best-known divide is the one between Marxist and structuralist perspectives on one hand, and poststructuralism and postmodernism on the other. There is also a divide about the direction from which the nature-society boundary is criticized. Early on, political ecologists extended leftist critiques of the way the dominant powers would justify social relations by ascribing them to nature (e.g. claiming gender differences are genetic) -- for example, showing how "natural" disasters are really the result of capitalist expansion. More recently, motivated in part by 1) concern that criticisms of naturalization seemed to give aid and comfort to anti-environmentalisms, and 2) the increasing adoption of mainstream environmentalist ideas by powers such as the World Bank, the direction of analysis has been reversed. Political ecologists now often write about how people -- in particular, poor third-world people -- are blamed for natural environmental changes. (Note that these two positions are not necessarily contradictory -- the line may be drawn too far on the "nature" side in some situations, but too far on the "society" side in others.)

I'm not sure I'd classify myself as a "radical" environmentalist, but insofar as I am, my sympathies lie with political ecology. Political ecology has a lot of interesting things to say, and acts as an important check on our hubris. At the same time, I recognize the political pragmatism of the mainstream environmental movement. And I am a believer in disequilibrium ecology, which has yet to make as much of a practical impact as the older equilibrium ecology (though there have been some promising baby steps in the direction of adaptive management).
Stentor Danielson, 12:36, ,

3.3.05

Vulnerability and Inequality

Dave Roberts has a post up arguing that environmentalists need to rethink their focus on greenhouse gas emission reductions as a strategy for combatting the disastrous effects of climate change. Based on a paper by Roger Pielke Jr. and Daniel Sarewitz, he argues that it would be more cost-effective to focus on reducing people's vulnerability to climate.

I agree that vulnerability reduction needs to be a central part of our climate change strategy -- if for no other reason than that the political prospects of meaningful greenhouse gas reduction are so discouraging. Vulnerability has been overlooked too often, I think, because 1) it's studied by social scientists, who lack the credibility and clout of the natural scientists who study climate change dynamics*, 2) it doesn't fit as nicely into the technocratic "fix the environment" orientation of government problem-solving, and 3) it doesn't support environmentalists' favored narrative of "nature being destroyed by humans" -- indeed, it seems to reflect a "humans at the mercy of cruel nature" narrative that's often blamed for environmental destruction.

Nevertheless, there are good reasons to keep greenhouse gas reductions as a key part of the strategy as well. On a purely tactical level, much groundwork for raising public consciousness about the need to reduce emissions has already been done, whereas getting people interested in vulnerability reduction would have huge up-front costs. Commenters in Roberts's post raise some other issues, such as the fact that vulnerability reduction won't save wild organisms and ecosystems, which are also threatened by climate change.

The concern that occurred to me is international inequality. Basically, emissions reductions are a common good, while vulnerability reduction is a private good. While the impacts of climate change on different countries are substantially different even if we hold vulnerability constant, climate change is a worldwide package deal. A ton of carbon emitted by the US is not going to raise only the US's temperature. It goes into a global carbon bank that affects the whole world's climate. This is a major political hurdle, as negotiations over emissions reduction are plagued by collective action problems. Nevertheless, whatever reductions are made will benefit the whole world.

On the other hand, vulnerability reduction is a private good. If the US were to, say, change its tax laws to encourage people to live farther inland so as not to be so vulnerable to sea level rise, that would help only Americans -- Bangladeshis would still be living next to the ocean. In general terms, the countries that are most at risk from climate change are those with the least resources to reduce their vulnerability.

The obvious rejoinder here is that rich countries should finance vulnerability reduction in poor countries. Indeed they should. However, there are severe political and practical limits to how much that can accomplish. Politically, rich countries are simply not willing to devote much of their GDP to foreign aid. Practically, foreign aid can only do so much. The resources that are needed for vulnerability reduction are not simply financial. They're cultural, political, administrative, economic, and social as well. We can't build those resources in other countries simply by dumping money (and alien expertise) on them. Sixty years of "development" projects have shown that it's exceedingly difficult to use standard foreign aid policies to improve living conditions in poorer nations. Change needs to be deeply woven into the structure of society, not bought by an outsider. The prospects of the first world shifting to a radically new development paradigm in time to save poorer countries from the impacts of climate change are even more laughable than the prospects of drastically ramping up foreign aid money.

*Of course, social science is a necessary part of this researach too, though too often overlooked.
Stentor Danielson, 10:30, ,

28.2.05

Housework Expectations

Amanda at Mouse Words points out this letter in response to an article about men's failure to do their share of the housework, written by a man who does split the work 50/50 with his wife:

While there is no question that across the board the situation could not be defined as equal, I would hazard a guess that significant progress has been made in terms of fathers' active involvement in meeting their children's day-to-day needs. Characterizing this entire "generation" of fathers as a "lost cause" is as insulting as healthcare professionals who assume I do not know my children's medical history, daycare providers who refuse to address issues to me and instead wait to see my wife, whom they see far less frequently, or individuals who practically give me a gold star for correctly stating my children's birthdays.

Amanda is caustically dismissive of the writer's complaints, arguing that he shouldn't be demanding a cookie for doing the work he should be expected to do. I quite agree that men deserve no praise for doing 50% of the work, but I don't see this writer as asking for a cookie. All he's asking is that people complaining about men's laziness make their generalizations a little less sweeping (though it does seem that living in a relatively progressive social circle has led him to inflate the proportion of men who do take responsibility).

I also think that fixing the sorts of stereotypes that he reports could do some good for those families that don't split the work 50/50. We're strongly shaped by others' expectations of us. If service providers were to project the assumption that men do their share of the work, and act put out when that assumption isn't met, it would create more social pressure on men to live up to it.
Stentor Danielson, 11:07, ,