Cultures of Energy

Fresh off her #SXSL White House appearance with Barack Obama and Leonardo DiCaprio, we welcome (10:54) to the podcast this week atmospheric scientist extraordinaire, Katharine Hayhoe, Professor at Texas Tech, and one of the world’s most active and talented communicators about the dangers of climate change (http://katharinehayhoe.com). We discuss how climate change became such a highly polarizing political issue in the United States and what motivated her to become a climate scientist in the first place. Katharine explodes the myth that only a certain type of person cares about climate issues and she describes her work with evangelical communities in West Texas to counteract the misconception that climate science is somehow anti-Christian. We talk about climate change as a tragedy of the commons, her insights into the schizophrenic character of oil companies, and about corporate cultures that lose sight of our collective responsibility to each other and to the planet. We compare climate denialism and evolution denialism and Katharine tells us why, in her view, anyone who reads the Bible carefully would be at the front of the climate change movement. We close on her media projects like James Cameron’s Years of Living Dangerously (http://yearsoflivingdangerously.com) and her new Global Weirding web series in partnership with KTTZ (http://kttz.org/term/global-weirding). Enjoy!

We talk art and artistic superpowers on this week’s Cultures of Energy podcast. Our special guests (9:59) are the celebrated conceptual and multimedia artist Tania Mouraud (http://taniamouraud.com) and Allison Myers, the curator of Tania’s new exhibition, Everyday Ogres. The exhibition is composed of three videos, Once Upon a Time, Face to Face and Fata Morgana, which bring to life the immensity and intensity of industrial sites around the world. Fata Morgana, for example, was filmed at an oil refinery in Pasadena, TX, and captures the “invisible death” it sets into motion. We hear the stories behind the making of the videos and Tania explains why she seeks not a documentary process with her work but rather to forge an emotional and sensory connection through our bodies. We go on to cover Tania’s coming of age as an artist, why she burned all her paintings that one time, and why she loves to change mediums. Tania and Allison reflect on death and the Anthropocene as muses and we turn toward how the arts engage our environmental situation today. Tania explains why her view of ecology is not reductive; it is about finding new ways of being a citizen in the world. Everyday Ogres will be shown at the University of Texas-Austin Visual Arts Center until December 10th, http://utvac.org/exhibitions/tania-mouraud-everyday-ogres . Please check it out!

On this special bonus midweek episode of the Cultures of Energy podcast, we welcome (10:25) qualitative economist and green energy consultant Dr. Woody Clark (http://www.clarkstrategicpartners.net), author most recently of Smart Green Cities (Routledge, 2016) and The Green Industrial Revolution (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2014). Woody shares his long and varied experience in green technology beginning in the 1990s with his work as Manager of Strategic Planning for Technology Transfer Lawrence Livermore Lab, as a renewable energy and financial advisor to California Governor Gray Davis, and later as a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. We talk about the United States’ missed opportunities in renewable energy development, the coming of a green industrial revolution, why agile energy systems may be more important than energy deregulation, the role of China in securing global energy transition, cap and trade vs. carbon tax, and whether what Woody calls “civic capitalism” could be an antidote to the invisible hand economic thinking of the past few decades. Are we looking at a post-grid future? Is the Chinese state really authoritarian when it comes to its energy planning? How sunny is the future of solar? These questions and more answered right here!

This week’s podcast dives into ‘the chemical turn’ in the human sciences. Dominic and Cymene talk intoxication and wonder whether there’s a drug that could cure patriarchy. Then (9:04) we welcome Prof. Vanessa Agard-Jones from Columbia University to the studio to learn about her fascinating research on toxicity and chemical kinship in Martinique. We hear the story about how the pesticide chlordecone/kepone—a chemical now banned by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants—was introduced to Martinique by the owners of its banana plantations. Widespread use of the pesticide for over a decade has left the island and its citizens living in a plume of toxic contamination even over two decades after the pesticide was finally banned. We discuss the North/South, racial and postcolonial dynamics of Martinique’s situation and how ambient toxicity undermines both the possibility of “eating local” and the idea of political independence. Then Vanessa explains her theoretical approach to chemicals, how she seeks to balance the concerns of old and new materialisms in concepts like “chemical kin/esthesia” and “molecular ethnography.” We talk about vectors and scales of exposure, why she wants to study the body memory of the Caribbean and why she is looking to geology to think about accretion and sedimentation. In closing Vanessa explains why the chemical turn is also a queer turn and why she thinks it should be queerer still. Enjoy! PS For more on the chemical turn and Vanessa’s work, see www.agardjones.org and www.toxicsymposium.org ; PPS “Kepone Factory” is a Dead Kennedys song. Indulge your punk souls here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a41PUZ2oRc

Cymene and Dominic compare their ecospirituality on this week’s episode of the Cultures of Energy podcast, appreciate the mystical connectivity among all Californians and then Dominic explains the two aspects of Nature that frighten him the most. After all that (10:44) we welcome to the podcast our true spirit guide, Bron Taylor, Professor of Religion and Nature, Environmental Ethics, and Environmental Studies, at the University of Florida (brontaylor.com). We talk about his landmark book Dark Green Religion (U California Press, 2010) and Bron explains the increase in naturalistic and Gaian spirituality across the world today. We discuss the struggle between biocentric and anthrocentric ethics, how collaborations between indigenous and environmentalist movements have helped create green countercultures and we debate Lynn White’s thesis that Christianity has helped to accelerate contemporary ecological crisis. We cover the mainstreaming of green spirituality in popular culture, science and media and whether the “dark” in “dark green” also has something to do with violence. Finally, we turn to Bron’s most recent book, Avatar and Nature Spirituality, (Wilfrid Laurier U Press, 2013) and discuss what role films like Avatar might play in spreading green spiritual ideas and feelings. Why have most humans been so slow to react to their environmental predicaments? How is Abrahamic spirituality connected to agriculture? Is surfing an aquatic nature religion? All these answers and more on this week’s episode!

Until a few weeks ago, most of us hadn’t heard about the lawsuit and protest of the Standing Rock Sioux against the Dakota Access Pipeline project. Now the resistance is the subject of national and international media coverage. Still, there is much we do not understand about the history and stakes of what is happening at Standing Rock in terms of Indigenous rights and sovereignty, climate justice, and the struggle for energy transition. By way of comparison, Cymene and Dominic briefly discuss Indigenous resistance to energy projects in their fieldwork in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Then (11:08) we welcome to the podcast Jaskiran Dhillon and Nick Estes. Jaskiran is a first generation academic and advocate who grew up on Treaty Six Cree/Métis Territory in Saskatchewan. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Anthropology at The New School and author of the forthcoming Prairie Rising: Indigenous Youth, Decolonization, and the Politics of Intervention (U Toronto, 2017). Nick Estes is Kul Wicasa from the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is a doctoral candidate in American Studies at the University of New Mexico, an Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Fellow, and a co-founder of activist organization The Red Nation. A winner of a Native American Journalist Association award for his writing, Nick’s research focuses on the history and politics of the Oceti Sakowin (The Great Sioux Nation), border town violence, colonialism and decolonization, and Indigenous internationalism and human rights. Together we discuss what led to opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, the legacies of settler colonialism and empire in the region, and the impact Indigenous youth are having on the climate justice movement. Jaskiran and Nick explain to us why what is happening at Standing Rock is truly unprecedented and why it might give us hope despite how deeply pipeline politics remain invested in traditions of settler violence. Finally, we discuss what they think will happen next and how people wishing to support the resistance can help; for those with the resources to help, donations to the legal defense fund and to support the community can be made at standingrock.org PS special thanks to Audra Simpson for helping to make this episode possible!

It's our back to school episode this week! And to make some of us feel a little better about being back at school, we want to highlight all the good green work that goes on, often behind the scenes, on our college campuses. Dominic and Cymene share their views on the necessity of office space and then welcome (10:40) to the podcast Rice University’s chief sustainability officer, Richard R. Johnson, Director of ACSEM (sustainability.rice.edu) and Professor of the Practice of Environmental Studies in Sociology. Richard walks us through the history of the campus sustainability movement and explains why jobs like his these days are more about things like rethinking building design, improving power purchase agreements and getting students engaged in changing the carbon footprint of their campus than they are about recycling. Richard makes the case for the benefits of using less and explains how a shift to solar energy could revolutionize campus life. He shares his mixed feelings about divestment campaigns and discloses what “sustainability” means to him. We close on how to change the sprawl mindset in campus development and Dominic eventually agrees to give up his office in exchange for a coffee card. Does your campus have a frivolous building project that is driving you crazy? Do you want some good ideas for how to make your campus, academic or otherwise, greener? Then this episode is for you!

Big news this week, friends, it turns out we’re living in the Anthropocene after all. The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) of the International Union of Geological Sciences released its report at the International Geological Congress in Cape Town that we have left the Holocene behind. Cymene and Dominic find themselves more melancholy than they expected to be about this. But fortunately we’re able to talk it over (12:50) with Jan Zalasiewicz, Professor of Paleobiology at the University of Leicester, author of the marvelous The Planet in a Pebble (Oxford, 2010), and the Chair of the AWG. Jan walks us through the Working Group’s process of investigation, the forms of evidence that mattered to them and the ensuing debate over whether to make the Anthropocene a new geological time unit. We discuss the early history of climate science, the origin of the Anthropocene concept, what skeptics of the concept are thinking, and the study of deep time as a labor of love that may be able to help us all with the transition to a new sense of time. Is the Anthropocene an age or an epoch, when exactly did it begin, what are its key markers? What is the “golden spike” we are now hearing about? Even if we can’t make anyone feel better about the Anthropocene, we can at least answer some of your questions about it :)

Dominic and Cymene discuss air conditioning, fathers who don’t listen, and share certain VC-ready ideas for revolutionary technology. Then (10:04) we welcome to the podcast esteemed and delightful Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen to talk about his recent book Overheating: An Anthropology of Accelerated Change (http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/O/bo25051909.html) and the collaborative research project from which it originated. We talk about intertwining crises of economy, environment and culture in the context of the mind-boggling acceleration of social change over the past 25 years. Thomas muses on how modernity has lost its nerve and faith in progress as endless cheap energy has finally turned against us. This brings us to the double-bind of modernity between growth and sustainability and why today’s goals for development should focus more on improving relationships than on securing material luxuries. Thomas concludes that we need more political imagination about what constitutes a good life. We then turn to his fieldwork in Gladstone, Australia, a city “marinated in fossil fuels,” and its struggle with “solastalgia,” the sense of loss connected to the rapid deterioration of natural environment. Thomas agrees that it’s no accident the Overheating project is based in Norway given the country’s somewhat paradoxical situation—“the vegetarian that runs a butcher shop”—as a petrostate strongly commitment to environmental sustainability and future-oriented ethical investment. We close by musing on how increasing climate refugeeism might impact European multiculturalism in the future. Concerned that the treadmill of modern life is moving ever faster? Then this episode is for you.

This week’s episode takes a close look at New Orleans and shines some light on the legacies of Hurricane Katrina and the impacts of climate change as Louisiana suffers under another round of mass flooding. Our guest and guide (11:39) is the brilliant Shannon Lee Dawdy—Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, author of Building the Devil’s Empire: French Colonial New Orleans (U Chicago Press, 2008), and a 2010 MacArthur Fellow—who weaves together anthropological, archaeological and historical methods in her research and writing. We talk about her most recent book, Patina: A Profane Archaeology (U Chicago Press, 2016) and what it teaches us about the importance of materiality and narrative in the history of New Orleans. We talk about New Orleans’s distinctive critical nostalgia and how it challenges the temporality and utilitarianism of the fast capitalism that surrounds it. We talk about collective care of objects and responses to trauma. And we talk about contemporary ruins, living with ghosts, how Louisiana’s relationship to the oil industry and riverine commerce has undermined its environmental stability, and whether the levees will hold in the future. We agree on the revolutionary potential of everyday practices and small acts. We then (58:00) turn toward her current ethnographic research and film about contemporary American death practices, which Shannon convinces us is a happier topic than it sounds. We touch on popular ontologies of the afterlife, the rise in green burial practices, cremation and carbon footprint, and the beauty of cemeteries. The takeaway: death affirms life, but also reminds us that what we do with our finitude makes all the difference. So, dear listeners, please send energy and support to our brothers and sisters in Louisiana and tend to the people and places you love.