THREAD: Happy #EarthDay ! Let’s look now at one key factor, besides Covid-19, that makes this year’s celebration different from many that have come before: the kids. #envhist#envhum
Of course, children and youth have long been involved in Earth Day events and other actions. Yet environmental leaders and the media have often presented them as emotional props, as symbols of innocence and vulnerability in need of adult protection.
Consider this 1963 ad produced by SANE in its campaign against nuclear testing. We see three white children, all sporting open-mouthed smiles and shiny white teeth. The text below, though, undercuts the carefree image: “Your children’s teeth contain Strontium-90.”
Images of children in danger provide ways to represent long-term environmental hazards, such as the accumulation of Strontium-90 in growing bodies. This strategy has also been used in climate change campaigns—such as this PSA of a girl on the train tracks.
In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore also emphasized intergenerational ethics. “Future generations,” he said, “may well have occasion to ask themselves, ‘What were our parents thinking? Why didn’t they wake up when they had the chance?’ We need to hear that question from them—now.”
Yet, as we know, political leaders did not come to the rescue. “It is worse, much worse, than you think,” @dwallacewells wrote in The Uninhabitable Earth. “The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn’t happening at all.”
The indigitation that Greta Thunberg and other activists express is a response to this form of denialism, a falsely optimistic vision that infantilizes the public, that denies collective agency at the very moment it is needed.
Thunberg’s forceful warnings and repeated protests in public spaces set her activism apart from the emotive symbolism of the vulnerable child, yet her background—an affluent white youth from northern Europe—no doubt helped propel her into the limelight.
As @chikaunigwe explained, “For years, young people across the world have been campaigning to draw attention to the crisis our planet faces, and to tackle it. Yet it seems the media is only interested in one young climate activist.” theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Reducing the movement to a single charismatic figure ignores the history of frontline communities building intersectional movements for climate justice. As Thunberg herself has emphasized, her activism should instead be seen as part of a much larger network.
While the school strikes are sometimes seen as nothing more than generational shaming, they are about something far more significant. @sunrisemvmt and other youth-led organizations are fighting for systemic change and pushing for a Green New Deal.
For a great intro to the Green New Deal, watch this video narrated by @AOC with illustrations by @mollycrabapple. It includes a fictional child named Ileana who later works on a government project to dismantle a fossil fuel pipeline and restore wetlands.
As participants in an intergenerational and intersectional movement, children and youth have helped push climate justice to the center of this year’s Earth Day.
I don’t know who needs to see this today, but I’ve put together a collection of caribou photographs—all of the Porcupine herd that migrates every year to the Arctic Refuge to have their young.
Let’s begin with this aerial view of the Niguanak River. Photo: Fran Mauer, 1986. (1)
Mauer estimates that there were 60,000 (!) caribou below him when he took that picture.
Here’s another aerial view—this one taken by Subhankar Banerjee in 2002. It shows pregnant caribou crossing the frozen Coleen River, and it's one of my favorite photos of all time. (2)
Wilbur Mills, one of the first photographers to visit what was then called the Arctic National Wildlife Range, took this photo in 1974. It shows two clusters of bulls, walking with apparent purpose, as they cross the frozen Kongakut River. (3)
I'm grateful to @brdemuth for suggesting that this thread on the Arctic Refuge might be useful in teaching. I thought I would add a few more sources in case you want to introduce students to this topic in #envhist and other courses.
The thread (currently pinned to my profile) includes many sources, most importantly a map produced by the Gwich'in Steering Committee (@OurArcticRefuge) as well as links to several videos and articles. But here are a few more I've used before in classes.
With yesterday’s announcement that the Trump administration plans to hold fossil fuel lease sales in the Arctic Refuge sometime this year, let’s consider what’s at stake in this fight.
At first glance, this might look like any other map—with a dotted line to mark the border between Canada and the U.S. Yet look closely at the two curvy lines, for they tell the map’s true story.
Map produced by the Gwich’in Steering Committee, @OurArcticRefuge. [2/n]
One line traces the transnational range of the Porcupine caribou herd, the other the homeland of the Gwich’in. What is most striking is how the two lines repeatedly intersect—showing the interconnections between migrating caribou and Indigenous communities. @ACaribouPeople [3/n]
Climate Justice is Racial Justice: On Fossil Fuel Development and the Right to Breathe
In reading this story about Trump administration plans for expanded drilling in the NPR-A, I am reminded of Rosemary Ahtuangaruak's powerful speech at The Last Oil in 2018 @UNM (1/4)
Ahtuangaruak had previously worked as a health aide in the Iñupiat community of Nuiqsut, Alaska, and had seen an alarming spike in patients suffering from asthma and other respiratory illnesses caused by the toxic pollutants emitted from the nearby Alpine oil field. (2/4)
“I had to start staying up all night to help people breathe," she said. "When you hold those little babies, and you see those sick little eyes, and you’re fighting for them to breathe, you get very active in the process about questioning what’s happening to our village.” (3/4)
Poster by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 1962-1964, with photograph by Danny Lyon.
In a terrific article about SNCC photography, Leigh Raiford (@professoroddjob) writes about this poster: "The text … raises the question of whether this trooper defends the viewer against racial violence or if he is in fact the first line of terror. (cont.)
"Police and state troopers had long been 'official' perpetrators of violence against African Americans in the South, carrying out a brutal and lengthy legacy of maintaining peace through state-sanctioned coercion."
I look forward to reading @billmckibben's Climate Crisis Newsletter every week, but I was particularly excited to see the one that arrived today. It features @bernademientief of the Gwich'in Steering Committee talking about the Arctic Refuge struggle. (1)
"Many people are not aware that this is not just about protecting our polar bears but this is about the indigenous voices being ignored, this is about a whole identity, about a people’s entire way of life being destroyed for profit." (2)
"These lands, these animals, these waters are our survival . . . We stand up for our future generations, the ones that do not have a voice yet, and we carry on 'in a good way' the love, kindness, and strength of our ancestors." (3)