The Eleventh Plague: Thinking Ecologically after Derrida

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wood
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Ecological Sustainability ◽  
Creative Transformation ◽  
Climate Crisis

Derrida has been condemned by some and drawn into empty culture wars by others. He himself hardly ever tried to correct or contain this profligacy. But all of us who have followed Derrida at some point face the question of inheritance. What is it to inherit the work, the writings, the insights of another? Derrida animates the question of inheritance in Specters of Marx, offering a model that would require selection and creative transformation, even as, he insists, a gift sometimes calls for ingratitude. How should we apply these ideas to reading Derrida himself? Do we have to transform the idea of transformation to avoid just following him? To be faithful to Derrida do we have to betray him? Concretely, in response to the ten plagues that Derrida names in Specters of Marx, I insist on an eleventh plague—our growing global climate crisis, formulated at something like an ‘ontological’ level. Forging a Derrida/Heidegger hybrid, this chapter argues that the eleventh plague is not just one more plague, but is at the heart of the first ten: questions of violence, law, and social justice are inseparable from ecological sustainability.

The Eleventh Plague: Thinking Ecologically after Derrida

2019 ◽  
pp. 80-102
Author(s):  
David Wood
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
New World ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
World Order ◽  
Ecological Sustainability ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
New World Order ◽  
System P ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
The Way

This chapter develops an eleventh “plague” onto Jacques Derrida's list of ten plagues of the New World Order in his Specters of Marx: the growing global climate crisis. Forging an amalgam from Derrida and Heidegger, it shows that the eleventh plague was not just “one more plague” but was at the heart of the first ten, or at least was intimately implied or caught up in them. In the most summary form, this would be to show that questions of violence, law, and social justice are inseparable from ecological sustainability. A similar move would demonstrate that another candidate for the eleventh plague—the animal holocaust—is closely connected both with the first ten plagues and ecological sustainability, perhaps serving as a bridge of sorts. Derrida's remarks about the animal holocaust, and about human suffering and misery, are set in the context of people's denial, blindness, and refusal to acknowledge these phenomena, and the way that human suffering especially represents the contradiction, the hidden waste, produced by an ever more efficiently functioning system.

What we can learn from the parallels between the COVID-19 and the future climate change crises

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubén D. Manzanedo ◽  
Peter Manning
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Substantial Portion ◽  
Preventative Measures ◽  
The Future ◽  
Behavioral Norm ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Global Population

The ongoing COVID-19 outbreak pandemic is now a global crisis. It has caused 1.6+ million confirmed cases and 100 000+ deaths at the time of writing and triggered unprecedented preventative measures that have put a substantial portion of the global population under confinement, imposed isolation, and established ‘social distancing’ as a new global behavioral norm. The COVID-19 crisis has affected all aspects of everyday life and work, while also threatening the health of the global economy. This crisis offers also an unprecedented view of what the global climate crisis may look like. In fact, some of the parallels between the COVID-19 crisis and what we expect from the looming global climate emergency are remarkable. Reflecting upon the most challenging aspects of today’s crisis and how they compare with those expected from the climate change emergency may help us better prepare for the future.

scholarly journals Big data for climate action or climate action for big data?

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 205395172098203
Author(s):  
Maria I Espinoza ◽  
Melissa Aronczyk
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Intergovernmental Organizations ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Data Practices ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
User Data ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Depth Interviews

Under the banner of “data for good,” companies in the technology, finance, and retail sectors supply their proprietary datasets to development agencies, NGOs, and intergovernmental organizations to help solve an array of social problems. We focus on the activities and implications of the Data for Climate Action campaign, a set of public–private collaborations that wield user data to design innovative responses to the global climate crisis. Drawing on in-depth interviews, first-hand observations at “data for good” events, intergovernmental and international organizational reports, and media publicity, we evaluate the logic driving Data for Climate Action initiatives, examining the implications of applying commercial datasets and expertise to environmental problems. Despite the increasing adoption of Data for Climate Action paradigms in government and public sector efforts to address climate change, we argue Data for Climate Action is better seen as a strategy to legitimate extractive, profit-oriented data practices by companies than a means to achieve global goals for environmental sustainability.

The Era of Environmental Derangement: Witnessing Climate Crisis in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nupur Pancholi ◽  
◽  
Sanjit Kumar Mishra ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Cumulative Impacts ◽  
Environmental Deterioration ◽  
Human Interventions ◽  
Human World ◽  
Climate Crisis

Drawing on Amitav Ghosh’s novel Gun Island (2019) together with his nonfictional The Great Derangement (2016), the article strives to present that while advancing endless desires, human-centric culture and the idea of ‘good life’ drive climate change and environmental deterioration. It seeks to enumerate the devastating consequences of changing climatic conditions and degenerating ecosystems and their cumulative impacts on the humankind and non-human world. It aims to locate how human life at the margins has been affected by these cataclysmic consequences through analysing Ghosh’s Gun Island. It attempts to show that human interventions had significantly fuelled the global climate crisis in the seventeenth century, decoding the myth of Bonduki Sadagar that Ghosh identifies in Gun Island.

scholarly journals Management of changes in the insurance industry in the conditions of climate crisis

2020 ◽  
Vol 166 ◽  
pp. 13006
Author(s):  
Nelia Nagaichuk ◽  
Olena Shabanova ◽  
Natalia Tretiak ◽  
Anatoliy Marenych ◽  
Hanna Chepeliuk
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Insurance Industry ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Insurance Companies ◽  
Global Climate Changes ◽  
Theoretical Generalization ◽  
Scientific Task ◽  
Natural Climate ◽  
Climate Crisis

The insurance industry is rather effective in overcoming consequences of natural disasters. Insurance companies play a key role in financing natural disasters consequences, at the same time they sustain record losses and are in difficult financial conditions. Taking into account the above said, the issues of management of insurers risks is up-today and is connected with climate change. In article the content of “climate risk” as risk is specified, the emergence of which is caused by human activity, which leads to pollution, resulting from industrial activity and other sources that greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide) which are capable to absorb a range of infrared radiation generate and, as a result, predetermine warming of the global atmosphere that brings to change of structure of the world atmosphere and adds natural climate instability during the certain periods of time. The most destructive dangers threatening to mankind owing to global warming are systematized. Types of risks and their sphere of manifestation in Ukraine are outlined. The directions of adaptation of the insurance industry to changes, caused by climatic crisis are defined. Due to results of the research, the theoretical generalization and author’s solutions of a scientific task are offered, which appear in the development of scientific and methodical approaches and justification of practical recommendations about modernization of activity of insurance companies and reinsurers in the conditions of risks, generated by global climate changes. Scientific novelty of the research: specifying the role of the insurance industry regarding the prevention of risks connected with global warming.

scholarly journals The El Niño: A Meteorological Risk Factor for Vector-borne Diseases

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avi Patel ◽  
Keyword(s):  
El Niño ◽  
Neglected Tropical Diseases ◽  
El Nino ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Economic Loss ◽  
Tropical Diseases ◽  
Vector Borne Diseases ◽  
Vector Borne ◽  
Climate Crisis

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has been ravaging numerous coastal and inland communities with excessive flooding and drought conditions, causing immense economic loss, and the incidence of many neglected tropical diseases. Affecting over 60 million people directly, El Niño remains one of the greatest enigmas to human health, and combined with the ever-escalating global climate crisis, El Niño events are only projected to increase in magnitude in the coming years (WHO, 2016).

scholarly journals Mother Earth, Mother Africa and Biblical Studies : Interpretations in the Context of Climate Change

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul L. Leshota ◽  
Ericka S. Dunbar ◽  
Musa W. Dube ◽  
Malebogo Kgalemang
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
African Women ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Climate Crisis

Climate change and its global impact on all people, especially the marginalized communities, is widely recognized as the biggest crisis of our time. It is a context that invites all subjects and disciplines to bring their resources in diagnosing the problem and seeking the healing of the Earth. The African continent, especially its women, constitute the subalterns of global climate crisis. Can they speak? If they speak, can they be heard? Both the Earth and the Africa have been identified with the adjective “Mother.” This gender identity tells tales in patriarchal and imperial worlds that use the female gender to signal legitimation of oppression and exploitation. In this volume, African women theologians and their female-identifying colleagues, struggle with reading and interpreting religious texts in the context of environmental crisis that are threatening life on Earth. The chapters interrogate how biblical texts and African cultural resources imagine the Earth and our relationship with the Earth: Do these texts offer readers windows of hope for re-imagining liberating relationship with the Earth? How do they intersect with gender, race, empire, ethnicity, sexuality among others? Beginning with Genesis, journeying through Exodus, Ruth, Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of John, the authors seek to read in solidarity with the Earth, for the healing of the whole Earth community.

scholarly journals Climate crisis and social work: lack of climate crisis education in social work curriculum

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tasneem Zaman
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Code Of Ethics ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Natural Disaster Management

This paper argues that social work curriculum ignores the pressing matter of the ongoing global climate crisis. Using the theoretical frameworks of anti-racism and anti-colonialism, I propose four ways to deal with this curricular gap in social work, which are the following: 1) to insert ethical obligations on the part of social workers to address climate change and environmental justice within the social work code of ethics, 2) to expand the person-in-environment focus to include nature and environmental justice, 3) to embrace a transformative learning paradigm, and 4) to implement a mandatory course on natural disaster management.

scholarly journals Managing pandemics as super wicked problems: lessons from, and for, COVID-19 and the climate crisis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Auld ◽  
Steven Bernstein ◽  
Benjamin Cashore ◽  
Kelly Levin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Path Dependency ◽  
Wicked Problem ◽  
Forward Path ◽  
Resource Requirements ◽  
Climate Crisis

AbstractCOVID-19 has caused 100s of millions of infections and millions of deaths worldwide, overwhelming health and economic capacities in many countries and at multiple scales. The immediacy and magnitude of this crisis has resulted in government officials, practitioners and applied scholars turning to reflexive learning exercises to generate insights for managing the reverberating effects of this disease as well as the next inevitable pandemic. We contribute to both tasks by assessing COVID-19 as a “super wicked” problem denoted by four features we originally formulated to describe the climate crisis: time is running out, no central authority, those causing the problem also want to solve it, and policies irrationally discount the future (Levin et al. in Playing it forward: path dependency, progressive incrementalism, and the “super wicked” problem of global climate change, 2007; Levin et al. in Playing it forward: Path dependency, progressive incrementalism, and the "super wicked" problem of global climate change, 2009; Levin et al. in Policy Sci 45(2):123–152, 2012). Doing so leads us to identify three overarching imperatives critical for pandemic management. First, similar to requirements to address the climate crisis, policy makers must establish and maintain durable policy objectives. Second, in contrast to climate, management responses must always allow for swift changes in policy settings and calibrations given rapid and evolving knowledge about a particular disease’s epidemiology. Third, analogous to, but with swifter effects than climate, wide-ranging global efforts, if well designed, will dramatically reduce domestic costs and resource requirements by curbing the spread of the disease and/or fostering relevant knowledge for managing containment and eradication. Accomplishing these tasks requires building the analytic capacity for engaging in reflexive anticipatory policy design exercises aimed at maintaining, or building, life-saving thermostatic institutions at the global and domestic levels.

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