Category Archives: Consumption

Reframing the Climate Issue

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I’m taking this class with the firm belief that climate change, and by extension, climate justice, are inseparable from capitalism and the legacy of colonial and imperialist resource extraction. 

The Anthropocene documentary we watched in class got me thinking about the role of China as an eco-development state, coined by editors of the book Greening East Asia (Esarey et. al). Regions in East Asia are notorious for being some of the most polluted in the world, yet, paradoxically, within the last decade or so, East Asian countries have developed green energy, technology, and conservation, waste management, and urban design efforts at a scale that far surpasses developed Western countries. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that resource extraction has by and large happened within their own countries, so the costs of industrialization are borne by the domestic populations themselves. What would environmental policy look like in Western countries (including Scandinavia) if so much environmental destruction wasn’t externalized onto other parts of the world, or onto marginalized domestic populations?

A group of older Chinese ladies practicing taichi amidst heavy air pollution

I thought that the documentary presented a complicated history of Mao’s poor environmental policies as one of the single greatest contributors to climate change in order to attempt to lift the masses out of poverty. What would a documentary that centered Indigenous movements in North America look like? Would it discuss the impact of the near extinction of bison, hunted by white colonizers as part of their ‘Indian Removal Policy’, from 10 million to just over 300 within a couple decades (Phippen, 2021)?

A wall of stacked American bison skulls in the mid-1870s

Ultimate mass extinction might be inevitable unless radical change happens. Honestly, I can’t realistically foresee a timeline in our current reality past 2050, which is in 30 years. Who gets to live and who do the powerful let die? I have to believe that the earth will heal itself eventually, but what will happen between then and the more current future we are headed into?

 

Citations:

  • Bradshaw, S., Richards, J., Kyriacou, S., Gabbay, A., Ostby, M., Cassini, S., Steffen, W. L., Ellis, E., Zalasiewicz, J. A., Revkin, A., McNeil, J., Gonzalez, M. B., Odada, E. O., Vidas, D., Steffen, W. L. (William L. ., & Odada, E. O. (Eric O. (2016). Anthropocene. [Distributed by] Bullfrog Films.
  • Esarey, A., Haddad, M. A., Lewis, J. I., & Harrell, S. (2021). Greening East Asia: The rise of the eco-developmental State. University of Washington Press. 
  • Magazine, S. (2012, July 17). Where the Buffalo no longer roamed. Smithsonian.com. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-the-buffalo-no-longer-roamed-3067904/ 
  • Meyer, R. (2017, March 21). How climate change covered China in Smog. The Atlantic. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/how-climate-change-covered-china-in-smog/520197/ 
  • Phippen, J. W. (2021, June 7). “Kill every buffalo you can! Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone”. The Atlantic. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/05/the-buffalo-killers/482349/ 



Qualms About My Demise

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“Political Ecology of Death in the Anthropocene” is a fascinating title––oddly specific, yet broad enough to cover so many things. Signing up for this course, I was hooked.

My death is something that I contemplate quite often. It entails considering the possible ways that I want my body disposed of: I hate the idea of being eaten by worms, so burial and composting are out, and while I don’t enjoy imagining my body burning, at least my cremated ashes won’t be a direct meal for some creature. It entails thinking about my soul––will I have a next life, or will my “soul” and conscious just cease to exist in the universe? It also entails significant FOMO (fear of missing out), which is my ultimate motivator in life to do my best, please as many people as possible, see as many places as I can, and consume without need. To quote the NPR podcast We’re All Gonna Die!, “the fear of death haunts the human animal like nothing else.” I can certainly relate.

Now, only a week into this course, I’m realizing that there are many problematic implications with how I approach the fear of my death.

Using systems thinking, my death and following disposal is individual, in that it is important psychologically to me. It is also part of a larger system of the earth’s ecology. How then should I approach the subject of my body? Do I respect myself and get cremated to avoid the “ew” factor? Or do I respect the Earth, future generations, and climate action, and instead choose composting? The fact that I have a choice is part of the problem and demonstrates how our species is out of bounds. I am inclined to choose an option that hurts the environment, other humans, and the entire planetary system. To the question of “what kind of species will we be,” from Professor Litfin’s Becoming Planetary, it will someday be up to me decide in this one small, yet impactful decision and make the mature choice.

Considering terror management theory, it may be my fear of the unknown that drives my FOMO and qualms of the soul. Maybe if I were religious, I would not feel the need to travel so much or buy so many things because I could find comfort and security in a certain “after.”

I’m curious to see how this course’s content, discussions, and contemplative practices will continue to insight deeper understandings and challenge my views about death.

Image Source: Ken Lambert, The Seattle Times. Recompose, the first human-composting funeral home in the U.S. in Kent, WA.

Possessions After Death

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I despise unread emails — that little number in the corner of my screen taunts me, tallying up missed messages until I inevitably open my emails sooner than I need to. But what about when I die? My habits will be abandoned and promotional emails will pile up in my accounts year after year.

Emails only scratch the surface of what will be left behind. Tubes of chapstick half used. Shampoo bottles 3/4 empty. Torn shoes. Belongings that will be passed to family members, until sentimentality hardens into practicality, and my formerly-essential yet obsolete items end up in landfills. Death goes against the systemic way we move through life in the Anthropocene. We create permanent systems to manage the complexity of our temporary lives. The impact of death on such an individualized, capitalist society is startling.

Sara Schley’s “Sustainability: The Inner and Outer Work” touches on the interconnectedness of life that our modern society disregards. In other species’ ecosystems, sustainability is necessary for survival. Everything that an individual doesn’t use will be used by another, from habitats to food. No species on Earth accumulates individual items like humans do. In the Anthropocene, we know of our death but turn a blind eye and reject nature’s circular economy.

I’m in this class because cycles of human life and death intrigue me. What does it mean to live in a world where, #1, our objects outlive us and, #2, our modernization doesn’t force us to repurpose every item (yet)? I’m here for personal reasons as well. Death doesn’t scare me so much as the complexity of existing and the unknowns in our world. Why are we here? Why am I a conscious being, experiencing life? Why don’t we talk about how insane life is? Does anyone else feel this way?

Image from “history of the entire world, i guess” – Bill Wurtz

Logically I know the science behind life, but the absurdity of it all rattles me. I hope this class will bring me some comfort and appreciation for the unknowable. There’s a positive side to thinking deeply that I wish to find.

In the meantime, when life feels a little too large, I turn to two vastly different pieces of media. “history of the entire world, i guess” is your classic quick history piece that reassures me of the science behind complexity in our modern world. On the contrary, “The Only Reason We’re Alive” is a spoken-word piece that could tug anyone’s emotions in the right ways. It’s ok that we don’t know all the answers – we know and can feel the most important parts of life. Now how can we use that knowledge to live and die in a more circular, sustainable way?

 

Media & Citations

billwurtz. “History of the Entire World, I Guess.” YouTube, YouTube, 10 May 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuCn8ux2gbs.

INQonline. “The Only Reason We’re Alive | Spoken Word Poet in-Q.” YouTube, YouTube, 10 Feb. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms7wQI_Q5iU.

Schley, Sara. “Sustainability: The Inner and Outer Work.” The Systems Thinker, 14 Mar. 2018, https://thesystemsthinker.com/sustainability-the-inner-and-outer-work/.