Author Archives: Maeve Higgins

The Language of Climate Justice

We need a better, more truthful and more accurate term for ‘climate change’.  ‘Climate change’ is too vague, with too much space for doubt and not enough of the dynamism the term needs to convey. We’re at a turning point, with perhaps less than a decade to prevent further climate collapse and hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths of people and the continued mass extinction of animal and plant species.  At this point, whatever we do will transform the planet. Communicating this is essential, both the problem we face and the solutions to it. Through writing and podcasting, language is the main tool I use for communicating my ideals, which are rooted in climate justice. Language is culture, too, and language influences how we think and vice versa.

I look at the research of Dilling and Moser for insight into where communication turns to action, and where it does not. Many thinkers have grappled with these issues, and I learn that the term ‘climate change’ has been deliberately used to obfuscate the danger implicit in it’s effects, and writers like George Monbiot, Rebecca Solnit and Eileen Crist want terms to reflect both the violence of some humans toward the planet and the beauty of this planet. Other scientists and scholars like Robin Kimmerer and Glenn Albrecht argue for new terms to be adopted instead of English words, either from Native languages or made up completely.

I believe many of the terms we use in climate discussions are lacking – I will investigate how language has deliberately been used to obfuscate this growing threat, and argue that a new, more emotive and more powerful lexicon is needed to convey the urgency of the nightmare we are facing. My focus is on the term ‘climate change’.

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Credit: Luthi, D., et al.. 2008; Etheridge, D.M., et al. 2010; Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record.

NASA and The IPCC use the term ‘climate change’ because it is scientifically accurate, but I argue that is not enough. The writer Rebecca Solnit does not mince words. “Climate change is global-scale violence, against places and species as well as against human beings. Once we call it by name, we can start having a real conversation about our priorities and values. Because the revolt against brutality begins with a revolt against the language that hides that brutality.” This is a clear call to action for those of us in the words business; if climate change is violence, then we need to call it that.

Climate crises caused by industrialized nations have ruined homes and livelihoods across the Global South, but industrialized countries do not refer to themselves as displacers, it stays a noun. If we in the Global North admitted to causing displacement, we would surely have to compensate in the form of climate reparations or open borders. That is…unlikely. The passivity of a language that relies on nouns helps to disguise our behaviour, and to take agency away from the creatures and things we describe. I learned from reading Robin Kimmerer that there are other languages, namely her ancestral language Potowatomi, that are largely made up of verbs. This is ‘the grammar of animacy’ and is useful for those of us who want to repair our relationship with the planet. So we see that the English language is not always up to the task, and needs to borrow from other languages or new words.

I settle on ‘climate crises’ as my preferred term, as it implies the serious nature of the mess we are in, but also the opportunity to turn it around. I discover in this paper that it’s more than words we need to change, it’s actually our relationship with the planet and all of the creatures and even ‘things’ around us that we need to transform if we are to thrive here. Words are a good start though, as is silence when needed. 

Some resources

  1. Moser, Susanne C. and Dilling, Lisa. Communicating Climate Change: Closing the Science‐ Action Gap: The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society. Edited by John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg. Oxford University Press, 2011

2. Crist, Eileen, “On the Poverty of Our Nomenclature”, Environmental Humanities, volume 3 (November 2013): 129-147. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/6904

3. Monbiot, George. Forget ‘the environment’, we need new words to convey life’s wonders. The Guardian Newspaper, August 9th 2017.

4. Albrecht, Glenn.  The Importance of Language: “the expansion of my language means the expansion of my world”. From Glennalbrecht.com June 22 2020

5. Kimmerer, Robin. Speaking of Nature: Orion Magazine, June 2017

 6. Klein, Naomi. “Call Climate Change What It Is: Violence” The Guardian, April 27th, 2014

7. What’s in a Name? Global Warming vs. Climate Change, NASA website August 16 2020

Barn 8: Who Let The Hens Out?

Core Text

Olin Unferth, Deb. Barn 8. Graywolf Press, 2020.

Summary

This novel follows two egg farm auditors whose job is, well, auditing egg farms, in Southern Iowa “a gray land of truck stops, crowded prisons and monocrop farming.” Janey is one, a heartbroken young girl who from the outside has almost completely shut down, though we are the lucky readers who hear her inner life narrated, and know that she still has imagination and wit. Janey meets Cleveland, a seemingly strait-laced auditor “Expressionless face. A rigid way of turning her head.” But beneath Cleveland’s uniform beats the heart of a rebel, one who has recently started to rescue the hens she’s supposed to merely check on. When Janey joins her, the book really takes off. The women are bound together in an unusual mother/daughter triangle that sheds new light on that ever fascinating relationship, adding complexity and beauty. Auditing is a simultaneously banal and evil role, they see to it that regulations are being followed so that there is no hiccup in the flow of eggs to the American consumer.

The impetus to right a wrong, to do whatever tiny thing we can against something as inhumane and damaging as big agriculture, or rampant inequality, or racism? The characters in the book understand that it’s easy to feel helpless. But Janey and Cleveland’s voices telling their version of the planning and rescue, hearing their fears, jokes and growth, this is a pure delight. Janey can’t get used to the barns, packed with hundreds of thousands of crammed hens. “The unimaginable scale, the tiny beside the huge, the existential power of size.” But they do something, at least they try to. They plan a huge heist, to free the chickens. Others join in too, there’s Dill, the burnt out director of undercover investigations, and Annabelle, a radicalized farmers daughter, and there’s even Bwaaukk, the first rescued hen, a brave and dopey little creature. Deb Olin Unferth verbalizes the vague unease I feel living in this militarized and profit obsessed country that still manages to be full of wonderful people. “Think high-rises, gated communities, all the places that give you a twitch of existential dread. The Amazon shipping facilities, the dying superstores, the prisons and detention centers, the pig farms, all the boxes that hold products and people and animals, the LeCorbusian landscape one skirts over or through, avoids.” This book does not avoid those places, instead bringing us inside for a close-up look at big agriculture and self-styled eco-terrorism.

Resources

Olin Unferth, Deb. Cage Wars, A visit to the Egg Farm, Harper’s Magazine, November Issue, 2014.

This is a deeply-reported piece of long-form journalism from the author of Barn 8. In it, Olin Unferth traces the history of American egg production from the 1879 invention of the incubator through to the time of writing in 2014, taking in all of the regulations imposed on what became a massive industry. The writer describes the sight and sound of 147,000 chickens in cages in massive barns she visits, and includes expert testimony and insight from farmers and scientists. She makes contact with activists for this piece too, and while they do not reveal their identity, they send her DVDs of animal abuse collected by whistle-blowers. She sees battery farming herself too, and her depiction of the suffering and death therein is quite devastating.  The piece ends on a sweet note of relief, with a group of former barn hens long ago given to an animal rescue center. They wander around outside with opened wings, sunning themselves and pecking about for worms.

Big Bird, Season 1, Episode 4 of Rotten, aired on Netflix US from January 5th 2018

Each hour-long episode in this documentary series follows the industry behind and production of a different food-source. This episode is about chicken farming, a massive and growing business in the US and around the world, with particular competition coming from China and Brazil. As a viewer, you will see inside the huge barns full of broilers, chickens bred specifically for meat. Corporations have a chokehold on the chicken industry and family farms get squeezed out, so this is about more than animal welfare or food production, it’s about neo-liberalism and a living wage for the people who work within. This documentary also depicts a terrible crime, when a disgruntled former chicken ‘grower’ killed thousands of chickens in neighboring farms after he was fired, with those farmers still seeking justice and compensation. We learn in the book about the cut-throat nature of poultry farming, and this documentary backs that up. This is an important look at what remains an opaque industry that in 2019 alone produced 9.2 billion broilers, in a country that eats more chicken than any other, with Americans consuming 98lbs of chicken per capita in 2019.

Lamarca, DSF, Pereira, DF, Magalhães, MM, & Salgado, DD. (2018). Climate Change in Layer Poultry Farming: Impact of Heat Waves in Region of Bastos, Brazil. Brazilian Journal of Poultry Science, 20(4), 657-664

This paper models the effects that climate change, as forecasted by the IPCC, will likely have on poultry farming in Bastos, a municipality in state of São Paulo, Brazil, specifically on layer farming. Layer farming is specifically for egg production, and this region accounted for 7% of they country’s egg production in 2015. It was also the scene of a mass chicken death, when over 500,000 chickens died during a 2012 heatwave there. The authors model using data from the IPCC and discover that worse and longer heatwaves are on the way, therefore they predict higher hen mortality in the future, unless the farms can convert to air conditioning. It’s vital to plan for the welfare of humans and animals in this industry as the environment becomes more deadly for both.

 Discussion Questions

  1. Cleveland’s character has an arc, what is it and what are the pivotal moments throughout the book that we see it bend?
  2. The final chapter of the book mirrors the final scene in Olin Unferth’s non-fiction piece, where a group of former barn hens are living in relative freedom. How successful is this as a plot point? What emotions does it stir, if any? Does the contrast between the graphically depicted misery of a barn chicken with the glowing image of a free chicken motivate you to change your view point or actions when it comes to buying and consuming chicken or eggs?
  3. How would you characterize humanity’s relationship with both chickens and climate change in relation to these readings? Does this relatively inexpensive source of protein discount the fact that big agriculture (the chickens and the grains that feed them) are damaging our climate? And what about than the modeling done in Brazil predicting more mass deaths during climate events like heatwaves, will that change our relationship?  

Oko Farms: Fish, Food and Friendship in Brooklyn

The Oko Farms Aquaponics Education Center located at 104 Moore Street, Brooklyn. It is the only outdoor aquaponics farm in New York City. The farm was established in 2013 and serves as a production, research and education farm. It’s an incredibly interesting and fun place to be, and they’re expanding to another site in Weeksville soon.

Their stated mission is twofold:

1.Practice and promote aquaponics as a sustainable farming method that mitigates the impact of climate change, and increases food security for New York City.

2. Spread the knowledge and skills required to practice aquaponics farming by educating children and adults of all racial and socio-economic backgrounds.

A little primer from The Aquaponic Source website in case you’re not sure what aquaponics is. I wasn’t until I visited Oko Farms!

Many definitions of aquaponics recognize the ‘ponics’ part of this word for hydroponics which is growing plants in water with a soil-less media. Literally speaking, Aquaponics is putting fish to work. It just so happens that the work those fish do (eating and producing waste), is the perfect fertilizer for growing plants. Aquaponics represents the relationship between water, aquatic life, bacteria, nutrient dynamics, and plants which grow together in waterways all over the world. Taking cues from nature, aquaponics harnesses the power of bio-integrating these individual components:  Exchanging the waste by-product from the fish as a food for the bacteria, to be converted into a perfect fertilizer for the plants, to return the water in a clean and safe form to the fish.

The Aquaponic Source

I visited Oko farms at the end of 2016 interview the founder and director, Yemi Amu, for a podcast I made called ‘Maeve in America: Immigration IRL.’ This was a podcast about immigrants, in our own voices. Yemi featured in “The Yemi Episode: Coming To America” where we discussed her immigration from Lagos, Nigeria to New York City as a teenager, her eating disorder, and her path to becoming one of the city’s leading aquaponics experts and a committed educator. Thinking on it now, I wonder if disordered eating intersects with climate injustice in that colonialism and capitalism contribute massively to both. In striving for some impossible idea of constant growth and perfection, we harm what already serves us well and keeps us alive: our bodies in the former, and the latter, the planet.

Of the Climate Action Lab videos we watched, one of the participants really stood out to me. Saara Nafici from Value Added Farms in Red Hook, Brooklyn spoke about that two site urban farm project as a “space of joy” for the young people that work there, what the Lab summarizes as  “providing a kind of collective psychic and spiritual sustenance in tandem with the healthy products grown and distributed by the farms themselves.”

Oko Farms echoes this message, that joy is an important part of their work, saying in a recent post about growing jute:
“It is a great opportunity to be able to grow food that sparks joy in people, connects them to home, and reflect our diverse food cultures.”


Oko Farms has had a vigorous response to the recent shifts in the Black Lives Matter movement, using their social media to support and expand on the BLM message. This includes educational posts about Juneteenth as well as fundraising and distributing funds to pertinent black organizations and individuals, like ‘Gardens Not Guns’ with the goal of getting money directly into the hands of BIPOC land stewards, healers, community gardens and mutual aid organizations.

This summer the farm is largely closed to visitors due to COVID-19, meaning no workshops or tours like they usually host, but they still harvest and sell food at local Brooklyn food markets.

The best place to follow them right now is Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/okofarms/?hl=en

The World Bank and Climate Justice: Impossible Bedfellows?

Bankers! From Walt Disney’s ‘Mary Poppins’

When my feeble brain tries to picture ‘The World Bank’ it comes up with some shadowy men in bowler hats, obscured by clouds of cigar smoke in the back room of a locked building. I realize this comic book image means that I don’t quite know who runs this mysterious sounding global organization and why, so dug into it after taking in their website and their various publications on climate changes, namely “Turn Down the Heat”. Here are three questions and answers:  

  1. Who are ‘The World Bank’ and what purpose do they serve?

Founded in 1944 to rebuild the devastation wreaked by World War II,  they have two stated aims for the global economy by 2030: to end extreme poverty and to foster growth in the incomes of the bottom 40% for every country. ‘The World Bank’ is now the largest development institute in the world and “works with country governments, the private sector, civil society organizations, regional development banks, think tanks, and other international  institutions on issues ranging from climate change, conflict, and food security to education, agriculture, finance, and trade.” Their business model is to provide low-interest loans, zero to low-interest credits, and grants to developing countries. They have their own historic capital, their profits, and they can also borrow capital from their wealthy member states. The CFO Bertrand Badré has this to say:  “Don’t forget that the World Bank is a bank, not a UN agency. In order to be sustainable, a bank has to make a profit and work with a credible budget.”  

  • Could you give us a more critical understanding of ‘The World Bank’?

Absolutely. Criticisms abound, particularly of the excessive neo-liberal policies adopted by the organization. As anyone with a loan knows all too well, it has to be paid back. And when you’re one of the worlds’ poorest countries, this means sacrificing money that could be spent on infrastructure or education or healthcare to repayments. A report from the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt also points out that “…any debt relief remains conditional on the application of a wide range of neoliberal measures that negatively affect the living conditions of most of the people, violate human rights, and weaken the economies of the countries concerned by exposing them to international competition…” The organization is not a democratic one, with wealthy countries in the Global North making up its powerful majority. The U.S gets to dictate a lot, because it has a 16% share of the vote. David Malpass, the current president, is himself a failed banker and a Trump loyalist. And last but not least, an intervention from ‘The World Bank’ can often do more harm than good to the people it purports to help. That leads me to my final point.

  • What does the World Bank have to do with the climate crisis?

Honestly? A lot. This is their take.

“Climate change is a major risk to good development outcomes, and the Bank Group is committed to playing an important role in helping countries integrate climate action into their core development agendas.” From www.worldbank.org

However, while they are loaning and granting many billions of dollars to climate – forward initiatives globally, this focus on economic development over everything seems like a huge missed opportunity along the lines of what Bina and La Camera concluded in their analysis ‘Promise and Shortcomings of a Green Turn in recent policy responses to the Double Crisis’, namely that growth has become synonymous with modernity and success, while justice and well-being are way down the list. This goes for climate justice too: an economic approach is not enough, what is required is a paradigm shift. And as for the past, a wide-ranging investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found huge problems with the bank’s projects. From 2004 to 2013 alone, they physically or economically displaced an estimated 3.4 million people, forcing them from their homes, taking their land or damaging their livelihoods. By financing dams in Brazil and coal-fired power plants in India, the bank damages and destroys the natural environment and the people living there, as well as racking up more carbon emitting and rapacious infrastructure that contributes to long-term climate chaos.  

Trying and Failing: A Loser’s Journey.

A decade after An Inconvenient Truth, the 2006 documentary following former vice president Al Gore’s attempt to educate and empower the public about global warming, comes this follow up feature, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. As in the first film, viewers follow Gore around the world on his mission to empower the public about the existential threat facing us all, and to convince governments, both local and national, to stop using fossil fuels and switch instead to renewable energy. The narrative of the film builds from some devastating updates on how rapidly climate chaos is coming at us towards COP21, the 2015 United Nations Climate Conference where nation states are set to meet and figure out a united front to tackle the crisis.

This hero’s journey style documentary is spliced through nicely with some private moments, Gore removing his sopping socks after trudging through a waterlogged Miami street, and some very sweet moments of levity. On a field trip, Gore shares a joke with a Swiss scientist about the ice melt looking like Swiss cheese, “You call it Swiss Cheese, we call it Emmenthaler” their laughter is poignant in contrast to the look that comes over their faces as they watch the melted ice flow away. An elegiac score and powerful sky-eye camera work drive home the scale of this unfolding nightmare, it’s huge. TV news and personal phone footage of various climate catastrophes propel the movie forward with an impressive sense of urgency.

Gore himself is an amiable but melancholy character, somewhere between Winnie The Pooh and Eeyore. From a once thrusting young politician with the world at his feet, he quite literally conceded defeat to the powers that have since overwhelmed this country. The anti-science conservative movement was cemented in place by the victor of his 2000 Presidential race, George W.Bush and while he does not connect those dots, he speaks candidly of feeling deep levels of personal responsibility for how badly the planet has fared these past few decades.

He insists at various points throughout the film that there are reasons to hope for a brighter future where we successfully switch to renewable energy, but the facts out-weigh him and he says somewhat balefully “It’s not happening fast enough.”

The reason why it isn’t happening fast enough is not explicitly stated, and this is a mistake. Intensely neoliberal policies and late stage capitalism have allowed the fossil fuel industry to take a deep and toxic hold in the U.S. It is one of the most powerful industries when it comes to lobbying against restrictions or taxes that could impact profits. According to a recent IMF report, in 2015 the government spent $649 billion subsidizing the industry, that’s 10 times the federal spending on education. Instead of taking these giants on, the film seeks out small victories with traditional opponents, with Gore gamely taking photos with a conservative Texan mayor who uses solar power. Hurried phone calls and brusque meetings with Indian government officials provide some narrative tension, and demonstrate well enough the void between the Global North and the Global South when it comes to who needs to take responsibility for what, but it’s just not a satisfying story.

I believe the story does not work because it’s an incomplete one. Chummy mentions of ‘Elon’ (Elon Musk, of Tesla and white savior fame) and the dogged belief that some start up corporate solution will save the day combine with flashes of Gore’s own insider status at the Paris talks to show us that he is too close to strike hard enough. The rampant race, gender and economic issues intersecting with the injustice of climate change are barely touched on, aside from a trusty Martin Luther King quote at the end of the movie, and more’s the pity. The looming presence of Donald Trump, soon to undo all of Gore’s work in The Paris Agreement is the nail in the coffin for this particular strain of crusading white environmentalism. That, at least, is well captured here, for all of posterity.