Cultures of Energy

Dominic and Cymene talk about the Democratic debates on this week’s podcast. Then (13:57) we are humbled and thrilled to have legendary journalist Andrew Revkin join the conversation. We chat with Andrew about the environment beat back in the 1980s and how he became one of the first American journalists to take on the topic of climate change. We talk about the struggle for both reality and nuance in climate coverage, how to get people to connect emotionally to climate issues, and Andrew shares experiences from the trenches of the “information wars” surrounding climate science and his thoughts about the dangers of “narrative capture” in climate coverage. From there, we turn to the challenges of broadcast vs. online journalism, the new Initiative on Communication and Sustainability that Andrew is leading at Columbia University and the unmet responsibility of universities to do more on climate. We close on climate change as a long-term intergenerational ethical problem in which we live with the carbon legacies of previous generations and where the fruits of decarbonization actions today will only benefit generations to come.

Cymene and Dominic talk about Ok glacier’s 15 minutes of fame on this week’s podcast (e.g. https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/okjokull-iceland-glacier-death-plaque.html), ridiculous hate mail, and what it feels like being in the middle of the news maelstrom. And the first ever Cultures of Energy Everyday Climate Warrior™ award is bestowed upon Daisy Hernandez from Popular Mechanics. Then (15:52) we welcome the marvelous Mark Nuttall (http://marknuttall.com) to the podcast to discuss all that is happening in the Greenland today. We start with his new book (co-authored with Klaus Dodds), The Arctic: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford U Press, 2019) and how Mark thinks about the Arctic as a paradoxical space. We talk about the discourse of the “New Arctic” and its geopolitical implications, the Inuit experience of climate change, self-government and the extractivist politics of the new Greenlandic resource frontier, and the sharpened global gaze resting on Greenland at the moment. Mark tells us about the adaptive resilience of indigenous lifeways in the face of climate change and advancing industrialization and urbanization in the parts of Greenland where he has done fieldwork for decades. We touch on the dramatic changes the Greenlandic capital Nuuk is now experiencing and the tensions between the aspirations to Greenlandic state sovereignty and the Inuit Circumpolar Council and then close with the fascinating stories of Camp Century and Project Iceworm.

Cymene talks about her exciting new life as a contractor on this week’s podcast. Then (10:14) we welcome the brilliant theorist, artist and curator, Joanna Zylinska (http://www.joannazylinska.net) to the podcast to discuss her excellent new book, The End of Man: A Feminist Counterapocalypse (U Minnesota Press, 2018). We start with the central argument of the book that there is an intimate relationship between Silicon Valley technicism on the one hand and alt-right white supremacist populism on the other. We talk through genealogies of apocalyptic thinking and how they are interwoven with masculinist promises of salvation and Joanna explains why she thinks it is important to take seriously the sociopolitical precarity that is the norm for the vast majority of the world’s human population. We turn from there to her thoughts on breaking the “apocalypse habit,” why Isabelle Stengers’s Gaia concept might be a helpful alternative, and the importance of minimal ethics for her approach to the Anthropocene. We discover whether there is a place for play and laughter in the Counterapocalypse and then talk about the difficulties of representing the Anthropocene in art and her own short film  “Exit Man” (https://vimeo.com/203887003) which serves as a companion to The End of Man. Finally, we talk about the links she sees between Anthropocene stupidity and Artificial Intelligence.  PS Your co-hosts duograph on wind power in Southern Mexico is now available with Duke University Press. To receive a 30% discount on each volume use the code E19BOYER for “Energopolitics” (https://www.dukeupress.edu/energopolitics) and E19HOWE for “Ecologics” (https://www.dukeupress.edu/ecologics) at checkout. 

Co-host Cymene reminisces this week about being the first intern hired by Wired magazine waaaay back in the day. Then (14:42) we are joined by journalist Andrew Blum (https://www.andrewblum.net)—the celebrated author of Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet—to talk about his new book, The Weather Machine (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2019). We dive deep into it, beginning with our “golden age” of meteorology, and its improved computer simulations. We talk about human presence within massive information infrastructures, his interest in place philosophy, balancing attentions to weather and climate, comparing weather banality vs. weather catastrophe; and, Andrew explains to us the different ways of interpreting the history of weather forecasting. From there we turn to the intersection of war and weather, how Cold War rivalry and internationalism helped shape the weather machine as a global cooperative project, and whether private corporations like Google and IBM will control the future of forecasting. Chemtrails and other weather conspiracies make an appearance, as does the secret Nazi invasion of Canada to build a weather station. We close talking about weather and sympathy and sharing storm stories.

Dominic and Cymene celebrate the one thing the USA ever did right—Mr. Rogers. And we wonder whether there is such a thing as Canadian BBQ.  Then (13:02) the delightful Natalie Loveless (http://loveless.ca/about) joins the pod. She is the author of a forthcoming book with Duke University Press, How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation, and that’s where we begin the conversation with a discussion of the relatively new domain of “research-creation” in Canadian higher education and its potential to help expand who belongs in universities and their modes of legitimate practice. We turn from there to the dilemmas of teaching climate catastrophe to students and her new book project, Sensing the Anthropocene: Aesthetic Attunement in an age of Urgency, which connects research-creation to climate justice. We talk about relation as artistic form and why she thinks it is so crucial that Anthropocene art pursue ecological forms that rupture the systems that brought us to our present circumstances. Finally, we discuss why it’s important not to be captured by the tools and temporalities of university audit culture, her thoughts on the Anthropocene concept as lure and barnacle, and how we might build a feminist university of creativity, experiment and with an eros that is cathected, committed and sustaining.

Cymene and Dominic cover the stress (and joy!) of center directorships and sandwich-making on this week’s podcast. Then (13:53) Dustin Mulvaney (http://www.dustinmulvaney.com) visits the pod to tell us all the things we need to know about solar energy but were afraid to ask. He’s the author of the excellent new book, Solar Power: Innovation, Sustainability and Environmental Justice(U California Press, 2019). We start by talking about whether it’s possible to make a solar power revolution both rapid and just. That gets us to the toxic externalities of solar cell manufacture and his work with the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (http://svtc.org) to create a Solar Scorecard system that helps pressure manufacturers to clean up their production processes.  Dustin breaks down for us the environmental advantages and disadvantages of both photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar (CSP) systems and then we turn to what he calls the “Green Civil War” brewing between animal rights activists and renewable energy activists over land use changes especially in the American Southwest. In closing we discuss whether a radically decentralized energy ecology could help advance environmental justice goals and what lessons should be learned from Obama era ARRA solar investments in terms of improving energy justice in the future.

Your cohosts report on the adventures of Cymene’s birthday week. We then (10:41) revel in the glory of having the most excellent Heather Davis (https://heathermdavis.com)—co-editor of Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies (London: Open Humanities Press, 2015) and editor of Desire Change: Contemporary Feminist Art in Canada (MAWA and McGill-Queen’s UP, 2017)—from the New School on the podcast. We begin with her new book project, Plastic: The Afterlife of Oil—soon to be part of the Elements series at Duke U Press—and talk about how the duration of plastic haunts the present and influences our future in many often invisible ways. Heather explains to us what she means by “petrotime,” how plastic creates an intimacy with deep time and impermanence, and what we learn from creatures who have found the plastisphere nourishing.  We turn from there to the problem of inheritance, mutability, plastic’s inability to uphold its own promise of synthetic universality and yet its capacity to globalize plasticity. We ask Heather what she thinks of the alt-plastics movement and talk about whether new plastics will really challenge the culture of disposability.  Finally, we touch on plastic as a bastard child of humanity, Heather’s work on art in the Anthropocene and her thoughts about how artistic practice can help us to learn to live otherwise.

Cymene and Dominic discuss a strange effort to police sugar packet play on this week’s podcast. Then (15:52) we are delighted to welcome Nigel Clark to the conversation. Nigel is Chair of Social Sustainability and Human Geography at Lancaster University (https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lec/about-us/people/nigel-clark ). He is the author of Inhuman Nature: Sociable Life on a Dynamic Planet (2011) and co-editor of Atlas: Geography, Architecture and Change in an Interdependent World (2012), Material Geographies (2008) and Extending Hospitality(2009).  We start things off by talking about a new book he is working on called The Anthropocene and Societythat he is working on with Bron Szerszynski and what it means to rethink humanity through planetary strata, flows, and multiplicity. We turn from there to Australian feminism, phosphates, Aotearoa New Zealand as a space of settler grassland experiments, wealth, and geocide. Then we touch on fire and its excess, our brittle life on an earth’s surface caught between solar and geothermal vitalities, metamorphosis, the early connection between gunpowder and combustion engines and European geotrauma. A special birthday week shout-out to our very own eternal Cymene Howe :)    

It’s a dazzling display of randomness to open this week’s podcast as your co-hosts discuss the Inslee/DNC fracas, writing memoirs in the forest, whether “in the danceline” can sub for “in the pipeline” and then Cymene coins the word “heteropuntal.” Then (18:03) we are very fortunate to welcome Max Liboiron (https://maxliboiron.com) to the podcast. Max is Director of the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR) and Assistant Professor of Geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland.  We begin with CLEAR as an incubator for better, more anti-colonial and feminist scientific methods, relations and ethics. She tells us about the importance of equity and humility in her lab’s work, and how they’ve established feminist protocols for conversation and authorship. We turn from there to their research on marine plastic pollution, which talks back to universalist discourse on plastic contamination. Max talks about the hate mail they’ve received, environmental harm vs. environmental violence, the importance of null results, wrestling with toxic agency and why she moved away from art to get her hands dirty in colonial science. In closing we talk about the open science hardware as a mixed bag, upstream violence, and which is more fun: stand up or roller derby. Be good relations, dear listeners, and cite CLEAR’s work! You can find more information and an archive at: https://civiclaboratory.nl

On this week’s pod, we firstly recall the happy days of After Oil School 2: Solarity. Then (14:31) your co-hosts share their conversation with the amazing Nicole “NicStar” Starosielski (NYU) about about her fascinating new book project Media Hot and Cold,which offers a deep dive into all things thermocultural. We talk with Nicole about how her earlier work on undersea cables led to a broader interest in temperature as a medium and mode of communication. We talk about the importance of queering McLuhan and moving toward more feminist and antiracist approaches to media. We chat about thermal sexism and the rise of thermal personalization under neoliberalism, thermal violence and the spread of sweatboxes, and her work to develop a non-extractive metallurgical method of analysis. We turn from there to practices of sunlight and why Nicole was inspired to think about solarity via her work as a farmer.  We close on the new book series she is editing with Stacy Alaimo, Elements (for Duke U Press). Check it out at: https://www.dukeupress.edu/books/browse/by-series/series-detail?IdNumber=4219856  PS A big COE pod shoutout to the organizers of Solarity and the Canadian Centre for Architecture for making this week’s episode possible!! PPS If you are thinking of going to the AAS meetings in Canberra this December please consider submitting a paper to the “It’s Elemental” panel that we are doing together with the magnificent Tim Neale. More information here: (https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/aas2019/p/8184)