scholarly journals Out of the Depths: Engineering, Submersibles and Assemblages

2015 ◽  
pp. 35-42
Author(s):  
John Reader
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
The State ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
Limited Capacity ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
Direct Relevance ◽  
Human Autonomy ◽  
Human World ◽  
Engineering Practices

Environmental concerns about the state of the world’s oceans have been growing over recent years, particularly as acidification, overfishing and the limited capacity of the oceans to absorb CO2 from climate change have come to the fore. Engineering practices and innovations in a number of forms are of direct relevance to this, notably through a concern to develop engineering in such a way as to be for the benefit of all, including the non-human world. This article argues that assemblage theory offers an alternative way of understanding how culture is always already a part of nature, and that human autonomy has to be seen as constrained and limited if the worst effects of pollution and climate change are to be addressed.

scholarly journals Out of the Depths: Engineering, Submersibles and Assemblages

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 35-42
Author(s):  
John Reader
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
The State ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
Limited Capacity ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
Direct Relevance ◽  
Human Autonomy ◽  
Human World ◽  
Engineering Practices

Environmental concerns about the state of the world’s oceans have been growing over recent years, particularly as acidification, overfishing and the limited capacity of the oceans to absorb CO2 from climate change have come to the fore. Engineering practices and innovations in a number of forms are of direct relevance to this, notably through a concern to develop engineering in such a way as to be for the benefit of all, including the non-human world. This article argues that assemblage theory offers an alternative way of understanding how culture is always already a part of nature, and that human autonomy has to be seen as constrained and limited if the worst effects of pollution and climate change are to be addressed.

The Historiography of Environmental History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. McNeill
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Industrial Pollution ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses the emergence of environmental history, which developed in the context of the environmental concerns that began in the 1960s with worries about local industrial pollution, but which has since evolved into a full-scale global crisis of climate change. Environmental history is ‘the history of the relationship between human societies and the rest of nature’. It includes three chief areas of inquiry: the study of material environmental history, political and policy-related environmental history, and a form of environmental history which concerns what humans have thought, believed, written, and more rarely, painted, sculpted, sung, or danced that deals with the relationship between society and nature. Since 1980, environmental history has come to flourish in many corners of the world, and scholars everywhere have found models, approaches, and perspectives rather different from those developed for the US context.

Epic Cruelty: On Post-Pandemic Performance

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Rick Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
California State University ◽  
The State ◽  
State University ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Disaster Capitalism

As today’s catastrophic Covid-19 pandemic exacerbates ongoing crises, including systemic racism, rising ethno-nationalism, and fossil-fuelled climate change, the neoliberal world that we inhabit is becoming increasingly hostile, particularly for the most vulnerable. Even in the United States, as armed white-supremacist, pro-Trump forces face off against protesters seeking justice for African Americans, the hostility is increasingly palpable, and often frightening. Yet as millions of Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrated after the brutal police killing of George Floyd, the current, intersecting crises – worsened by Trump’s criminalization of anti-racism protesters and his dismissal of science – demand a serious, engaged, response from activists as well as artists. The title of this article is meant to evoke not only the state of the unusually cruel moment through which we are living, but also the very different approaches to performance of both Brecht and Artaud, whose ideas, along with those of others – including Benjamin, Butler, Latour, Mbembe, and Césaire – inform the radical, open-ended, post-pandemic theatre practice proposed in this essay. A critically acclaimed dramatist as well as Professor of English and Playwriting at California State University, Northridge, Mitchell’s published volumes of plays include Disaster Capitalism; or Money Can’t Buy You Love: Three Plays; Brecht in L.A.; and Ventriloquist: Two Plays and Ventriloquial Miscellany. He is the editor of Experimental O’Neill, and is currently at work on a series of post-pandemic plays.

How Should We Talk About Climate Change and Migration?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Morrissey
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Migration ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
Limited Capacity ◽  
Flexible Approach ◽  
Single Term ◽  
And Migration

Abstract This paper is a response Ferris (2020), specifically to the call for coalescence around a single term by which to talk about people migrating in response to climate change. While sympathetic to the imperative behind Ferris’ (2020) call, my overall argument is to reject this proposal. Instead I argue for less of focus on what we call people migrating in response to climate change, and more of a focus on how we talk about them. To justify this, I argue that a single term is inherently reductive and likely to play upon anti-immigrant sentiment due to the need to portray ‘migration as a problem’. At best this will result in a policy focus with limited capacity to address the challenge of migration in a context of climate change. At worst it will drive a policy response that is overtly counter-productive. As an alternative, I propose embracing a multitude of discourses, informed by principals that I argue will drive a humane climate agenda, and allow for a flexible approach that can account for the variety of concerns at the nexus of climate change and human migration.

Keeping the Faith: Divine Protection and Flood Prevention in Modern Buddhist Ladakh

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Butcher
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Himalayan Region ◽  
Flash Flooding ◽  
Flood Prevention ◽  
Proper Order ◽  
Religious Engagement ◽  
Moral Universe ◽  
Human World ◽  
Northwest India

In August 2010 the Himalayan Region of Ladakh, Northwest India, experienced severe flash-flooding and mudslides, causing widespread death and destruction. The causes cited were climate change, karmic retribution, and the wrath of an agentive sentient landscape. Ladakhis construct, order and maintain the physical and moral universe through religious engagement with this landscape. The Buddhist monastic incumbents—the traditional mediators between the human world and the sentient landscape—explain supernatural retribution as the result of karmic demerit that requires ritual intervention. Social, economic, and material transformations have distorted the proper order, generating a physically and morally unfamiliar landscape. As a result, the mountain deities that act as guardians and protectors of the land below are confused and angry, sending destructive water to show their displeasure. Thus, the locally-contextualized response demonstrates the agency of the mountain gods in establishing a moral universe whereby water can give life and destroy it.

The Impact of Climate Change on States

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 115-132
Author(s):  
Łukasz Kułaga
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Law ◽  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
Impact Of Climate Change ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The increase in sea levels, as a result of climate change in territorial aspect will have a potential impact on two major issues – maritime zones and land territory. The latter goes into the heart of the theory of the state in international law as it requires us to confront the problem of complete and permanent disappearance of a State territory. When studying these processes, one should take into account the fundamental lack of appropriate precedents and analogies in international law, especially in the context of the extinction of the state, which could be used for guidance in this respect. The article analyses sea level rise impact on baselines and agreed maritime boundaries (in particular taking into account fundamental change of circumstances rule). Furthermore, the issue of submergence of the entire territory of a State is discussed taking into account the presumption of statehood, past examples of extinction of states and the importance of recognition in this respect.

scholarly journals Mitigation/Adaptation and Health: Health Policymaking in the Global Response to Climate Change and Implications for other Upstream Determinants

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 629-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay F. Wiley
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Health ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
World Health ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
The Face ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
United Nations System ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Development Objectives

In coming decades, enhanced global health governance will be crucial to achieving international health and development objectives in the face of a number of challenges; this article focuses on one of them. Climate change, which is now widely recognized as the defining challenge of the 21st century, will make the work of ensuring the conditions in which people can be healthy more difficult in a myriad of ways. Scientists from both the health and climate communities have been highlighting the significant interaction between climate and health for decades and have made significant strides in integrating health and environmental research. Those of us in the law and policy community have been a bit slow to catch up, and have only just begun to call for better integration of our responses to health and environmental concerns. Environmental health specialists at the World Health Organization have recently pointed to a mandate for better integration of health and environmental concerns within the United Nations system. The Millennium Development Goals interweave health, environmental, and development concerns.

Autonomy and Paternalism

1982 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 47-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Young
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
The State ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Adult Individual ◽  
Voluntary Consent ◽  
Human Autonomy

Paternalism has generally been thought of as forcible or coercive interference with a person's liberty of action which is (believed to be) justified because it will prevent harm to that person's welfare interests or the like. Opposition to paternalistic interference with adults, whether it involves the intervention of the state (legal paternalism) or another adult individual, has usually been based on a concern to preserve human autonomy or self-determination. More strictly it is opposition to so-called ‘strong’ paternalism - interventions to protect or benefit a person despite the person's informed voluntary consent to the contrary- which has been grounded on such a commitment to self-determination. ‘Weak’ paternalism involves interference where there is (or is believed to be) a defect in the decision-making capacities of the person interfered with (or to ascertain whether the person's behaviour is fully reflective). It is claimed to be justifiable insofar as consent to the interference would be forthcoming were these capacities restored.

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