Last night I watched a movie called "Into the Wild" . A story of a young Alex who leaves the world to live in the wild. Its something he always wanted to do. He is fed up of the world he lives in, trapped in the college. When his parents offer him a new car, he refuses to take saying. :I dont need a Car, I dont need any Thing" His emphasis on this : Need and Thing talks about something deep that he is yearning for. He donates all his savings, destroys all his connections to the "civilised"world :the credit cards, Identity cards, Social security and drives away with a new identity : 'Alexander Supertramp', with an aim to reach and live in Alaska. On the way meets interesting people where he experiences a (their) different life: the Hippies, the vagabonds, the Old army man, the grain farmer, the socially marginalised. Once there, he lives in an abandoned van, living life all alone, writing his diary, hunting for food, reading, and exploring the life in wild. Inspired by the Idea of Happiness that Leo Tolstoy writes in his book 'Family Happiness and Other Stories' he decides to return only to find the river is flooded making it impossible to cross. He returns to the van for a few more days where he accidently consumes a wild inedible plant and wastes away to death. The end is so metaphorical , that once u turn to nature, to the wild, the return is impossible, the crossover difficult. A good movie which moves back and forth , in past and present of the boy's life, coupled with the narration by his sister. Its a tragic movie that at one level speaks of struggles between human and nature, at another, its of frustrations of civilisation.
But down below the surface its a story of parents who think the world revolves around themselves and fight like wild without realisng the consequences on people connected to them, especially their own children. Its the story of his parents which is reflected through his life. He and his sister are the consequence of what his own parents , their dramas , their fights, their love, their struggles which they innocently performed without caring that someone (their children) is at the recieving end, continuously getting hit, getting blown, getting meshed so much that their son leaves them all.
This connects me to another movie, a kannada movie called 'Prathama Usha Kiran': of a sister brother duo -Usha and Kiran, unable to adjust to the new life bestowed by the 'America Returned' parents: New School, new people, new language, new discipline at home, "american way of life": individualism, seperate rooms, parties etc etc. They respond to the alienation from their old ways of life in the village (they were left with their grand parents while their parents went to america on an assignment for three years), the affective connections with their grand parents, their cousin and aunt, the village school culture of adventure and above all from their own loving parents who had left them three years ago and never returned. The new parents (the mother who doesnt wear a saari anymore, the father who doesnt speak kannada any more, the father who doesnt like anything indian-pickles, his village, his relatives and way his own parents live) are disciplined and have everything but love. Usha internalises and resorts to a quieter life. She wets her bed every night. She stops going to school. Kiran runs away from the home. He projects himself as an orphan and moves away with some truck driver.
Children internalise all the drama that is staged in their homes and fashion their identity on that. Some would grow up as happy adults wanting to live their life in full, exactly like their parents. But some grow up as Sad adults who dont want to take responsibilities, as men and women who cant make relationships work, as some who run away from all that their parents did, all those institutions that their parents got involved into, not wanting to repeat histories. And Alex's story is exactly this who runs away from the life that his parents have given him. Many Parents never realise this.....that their children's lives are the seeds that they themselves unknowing sowed beyond bringing them to life knowingly.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
An Inconvenient Truth: a Critique
The movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ is a documentary whose central character, Al Gore, an American politician and environmentalist and a Nobel Laureate, speaks against Global Warming which is the subject matter of the movie. When I first watch the movie it is only a bundle of images for me. And these images speak loudly. Big slides, serene environment, a quite flowing river with green trees on its banks, melting ice sheets, dry cracking surfaces, fuming industries, forest fires, breaking icebergs, vanishing forests, diminishing water bodies- Lake Chad and Ural Sea, rising temperatures, a polar bear who finds no ice to rest on and swims, swims and swims, deadly hurricanes, among others Katrina whose victimisation is rather racist, benevolent sunrays and the rowdy Green House Gases who trap them and warm the earth’s atmosphere….Of classroom (probably a studio) full of faces, clapping and laughing at Gore’s occasional humour, huge screens with data represented by line and bar graphs showing what have we done to the earth, our own habitat. It’s a film evoking hysteria, giving a warning, providing images that are sometimes voyeuristic- images of planet earth, full, partial, rotating; sometimes panic inducing- the circulation of Gulf Stream which would eventually stop circulating and bring an Ice Age to Western Europe, a polar bear swimming away towards death, people being displaced by rising sea levels-Manhattan, Calcutta, San Francisco, Beijing; the emergence of deadly vectors, new born ones and old ones making a comeback; and, sometimes (pulling our attention) making us aware of what’s happening in places that we always imagined to be serene, beautiful and untouched by human hands- Kilimanjaro peak that’s fast loosing its snow cover, the retreating glaciers over the world, the melting of Antarctica and vanishing plant and bird species. Beyond these the film is also about another world full of swank airports, chic cars and tuxedo suits with White men in them, with laptops on their laps. I often wonder why do we see only white people is chic cars and swank airport lounges and Black, Brown, Red people trapped in hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones and typhoons, suffering in pain, poverty and waiting to be rescued by First World planes and fed by air dropped meal packets. It’s just an observation. Or perhaps a thought that wrenches out forcefully.
The camera moves on. Its gaze intrigues me. It covers almost the whole of the Globe, the inaccessible areas that many of us might have never come across or known, making didactic effort to bring to us the world that is beyond but still connected to our lives in some way. Yet the gaze has its own politics and place. It is a gaze from above. It is never on the land, with the grassroots. It never comes down but remains far away- from the satellite- Apollo, Galileo among others; from the flying airplane, from places that aren’t on the ground but in mid air. It’s a gaze that sympathises but never experiences or shares the problem. It’s a gaze of warning, of alert. It’s not of victimisation but that of a warning of the threat of victimisation. A view from the top. Not too far so as to be away, not too near so as to get involved, experience and empathise. It shows the helpless polar bear, the Black victims of Katrina, the floods of Mumbai, the droughts of Darfur, but never goes too near, never becomes one, always keeping a distance of Us and Them. They are pictures with no sounds. Mute. Perhaps with no Voice. All laid bare for a particular audience. The Statistics (of Department of Energy, World Resource Institute among others) legitimises the threat of global warming while the American audience cheers and laughs even as elsewhere people feel the heat of their misdoings (30.3% of the world’s Carbon emissions come from USA).
The Narrative moves on with the narrator whose environmental activism stems from his own personal experiences and tragedies- his political career, his childhood memories, his son’s death, his sister Nacy’s loss to lung cancer etc. (I am often perplexed as to why only when an individual’s life is struck by personal loss that wider problems which are until now unheard of or simply ignored, begin to pinch. I am not questioning Al Gore’s commitment but the nature of Human Spirit.) Entwining the personal narrative to the wider issue of global warming, Al Gore takes us to places as he journeys from north pole to the south pole, from the glaciers of Alaska, Argentina and Andes to the lakes of Chad and Ural Sea, to the forests of Amazon and deserts of Africa, to cities of Manhattan, Calcutta and Mumbai, from underneath of the thinning ice sheets to the summit of Kilimanjaro, to Pacific Islands whose inhabitants had to be evacuated due to sea level rises and New Orleans whose residents were devastated, their livelihoods destroyed, the oil economy buried in the fury of Katrina, thus showing how we have entered the ‘Period of Consequences’. Yet even after globe trotting his panic, warning, hysteria (whatever ones likes to call) largely remain US centred. The data used, the policies critiqued, the warnings given (the dangers of Pine Beetle, the ravages of Katrina, panic of Manhattan drowning) all in the interests of a particular country- forcing me to think twice that why only when America feels the heat of issues- Global Warming, Terrorism, Energy Crises; that issues suddenly become “global” issues, truths become more truthful and the whole world is summoned to think over them and act, either making sacrifices or compromises or forced to bend knees in favour of the increasingly dying superpower. Lets not forget the not signing of Kyoto protocol by America for the survival of its own energy industry or for that matter how can one forget the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that were imposed shamelessly for the pleasure of the Oil and Gas lobby, the Military and Humanitarian industry. After all “Political Will is a renewable resource in America” that sways to save the world. Or is it the other way round?
The Second watching/ reading of the movie takes place after a long gap. The politics and (its) representation settle to the backgrounds. Having given it/them an apt place, it is Al Gore and his arguments that occupy my thoughts.
What is the Basic argument that Al Gore makes in the Movie?
How does he substantiate it?
What could be the counter Arguments that this work could have attracted?
The basic argument that runs in the movie is that the world is increasingly experiencing Global warming and this is essentially due to increasing Carbon Emissions (Green House Gases GHGs) which are trapping the outgoing long wave radiations, thus warming up the earth’s atmosphere as a consequence of which our ice sheets are melting giving rise to sea levels, at the same time the water bodies are drying up, glaciers retreating and climate undergoing a human-made change resulting in emergence of new diseases, extinction of species, intensifying of cyclones and which could lead to destruction of our own habitat and civilization.
He substantiates his point by correlating CO2 with rise in temperature and establishes a direct causal relationship between the two.
Al Gore focuses on three major areas: The Glaciers of the World, The Arctic Region, Antarctica and Precipitation and droughts.
He puts on record the facts pertaining to climate change and its consequences from the 1970s, sometimes from earlier dates. The rising CO2 and temperature levels, the hottest decade-1990s, the hottest year-2005 etc. He then looks into what such rise in temperatures all over the world have resulted in.
Between 1970s and the current times, Kilimanjaro has lost its snow cover, different glaciers have retreated- Grennel Glacier, Boulder Glacier in Glacier National park, Columbia Glacier in Alaska. And such retreat of glacier, basically in Himalayas could have further consequences as millions of people depend on the rivers that these glaciers feed.
He shows us the effect of rising atmospheric temperatures on ocean body temperatures which resulted in violent hurricanes and tornadoes. He argues “As temperatures increase- the wind velocity increases and moisture content increases. Thus intensifying the power of hurricanes.”
He furthers argues that rising temperature causes more precipitation, leading to more severe weather events like flooding in Mumbai and China. It also causes more droughts by relocating precipitation. Eg: the drying Lake Chad. Global warming causes more evaporation from water bodies and also dries the soil moisture.
Arctic Ice sheets melt, permafrost melt and damage the buildings built on them and dunk the trees and roads. 225 frozen days in 1970 to 75 days in 2005. Sea ice diminished 1.5 million sq meters. When sun’s rays hit the arctic ice more than 90% are reflected. But then as ice melts, all sunrays are absorbed further fastening up the heat in Arctic Ocean. One of the more visible consequences of the ice melt, he says, are increasing deaths of polar bears. Polar bears depend on the ice. And many have drowned swimming longer distances looking for ice to rest.
He fears the planetary working of wind and ocean current patterns might go up in the air. The Gulf stream might just stop because of warming of waters in arctic regions, and Greenland melting away which could push western Europe into an Ice Age.
He takes the case studies done in Netherlands to bring to our notice that in the span of twenty years (1980-2000) how the seasons have shifted affecting the Migratory birds. During 1980s migratory birds hatched their eggs and this time coincided with the caterpillar stage of insect life cycle providing potent chances of availability of bird feeds. Twenty years later the caterpillars emerged much before the emergence of the chicks from eggs which has created an imbalance in the food and life cycles of the birds. As such there are millions of ecological niches that are affected by global warming in the similar ways. He correlates the declining number of frost days and emergence of new exotic species (inversely related) in southern Switzerland, filling the new ecological niches that are opening up. Again fewer days of frost meant ‘not-killing-the Pine beetles’ which have affected the 14 million spruce trees in Alaska, US. Moreover there have been new vectors (West Nile Virus, 1999) and diseases (Avian Flu) emerging, old ones making a comeback.
Coming on to Antarctica, he uses the melting of the Antarctica’s Larsen B peninsula since 1978 as an alarming sign of the global warming. The Larsen B ice shelf broke way from 2002. More so ever, once the sea based ice melted, it was the land based Ice which broke into the waters. As a result of which Pacific nations had to evacuate to New Zealand.
He further goes on to say that while moulins always existed, in the recent past they have been numerous and they have increasingly acted as agents for causing lubrication with the bed rock for Ice sheets to breakaway.
If Ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica melt away, sea level would eventually rise putting cities under water- Florida, San Francisco, Calcutta and East Bangladesh (South?), Manhattan, Netherlands, Beijing, Shanghai, devastating places and regions that hold millions of people creating a hundred thousand million environmental refugees.
According to him, “We are witnessing the collision between the Civilisation and the Earth and there are three factors that are creating this collision.”
Population- rising Life Expectancies and high Birth Rates (soon adding it’s the developing countries), Science and Technology- the more scientifically and technologically advanced we become, the more destruction we cause to the environment;
Our attitudes to the environment- our lifestyles and consumption patterns that transform our relationship with the environment;
He further brings out three misconceptions that are politically created:
Though no scientists disagree that global warming is not happening, they are many a times forced to change their conclusions to confirm to political ideologies. Moreover media reports create confusion by bring an element of doubt in the public minds. People who are a part of the anti-Global Warming lobby are increasingly being appointed in responsible positions (Environment department) in the Bush Administration. The choice between Economy and Environment is always a difficult and contested one.
But there are points where his arguments can be contested. Like
Co2 emissions lead to temperature rise. There have been geological periods where the carbon dioxide content in atmosphere was more than it is today but the temperature were much below that today’s levels. So how valid is the point of such a co relation. Thus the basic premise itself is contestable let alone the rest of the consequences.
He argues “As temperatures increase- the wind velocity increases and moisture content increases. Thus intensifying the power of hurricanes.” But then why did we not have more hurricanes like Katrina after that particular year. If temperature is rising, then the hurricane intensities should also have risen.
Between 1970s and the current times, Kilimanjaro has lost its snow cover: But Kilimanjaro has lost snow not because of temperature rise but because of lack of snowfall.
Rising temperature causes more droughts by relocating precipitation. Eg: the drying Lake Chad. But Chad Lake is drying because of intensive irrigation and diversion of the feeder river than chags in temperature levels.
The Gulf Stream might just stop because of warming of waters in arctic regions, and Greenland melting away which could push Western Europe into an Ice Age. But then ocean currents depend on pressure differences and as far as the wind system remains intact there would be no changes in the ocean currents.
Thus the premise on which the whole movie is based is contestable. Moreover the panic inducing consequences are as much flawed and are produced by many other factors too.
The biggest critique of this movie has been the energy industry, the Republicans and the anti environmental lobby. It’s more a politically embedded than factually correct. Many cases have been put on Al Gore’s Team and the team did accept that there were many flaws in the movie. In fact he even uses a fictional video of Ice Shelve calving from the movie “The Day After Tomorrow”. Chistopher Horner and Iain Murray have written books- Politically incorrect guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism and The Really Inconvenient Truths respectively questioning the premises of Al Gore’s Movie. But one does need to be careful while reading this as both the authors belong to the 'Competative Enterprise Institute' (Part of the pro energy, anti- environment lobby) ,which speaks about opposite direction of the blowing wind .
At the end of the day every work is a political work and every critique is a political one. And it’s the struggle of interpretation, arguments and counter arguments and in the end it is the victory that establishes whose truth is more convenient, big and valid and whose is not. While the two parties debate over the happening, causes and consequences of global warming, I try to stop believing in both. For me Global warming isn’t a matter to be worried about. I don’t know who is right, who is wrong. Both parties are playing their games. I retreat.
Last autumn was clear and beautiful. This year was something different. It rained for the whole year back home. It is still raining. There were unusual late summer showers in North India that affected the crops adversely and kept the food prices high. In autumn this year we had swarm of light-flies, lakhs of them, irritatingly flying around florescent tubes and bulbs. This was the first time in autumn that so many insects came every evening and died every morning. I wonder….. Is something happening to our climate……….
Environmental Ethics: A Comment
Environmental ethics is the discipline that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its nonhuman contents[1]. Though what is ethical is itself unresolved philosophical question because of its highly contextual nature within history, geography and culture (time, space and cultural context), it is taken to mean, having to consider an evaluation of human conduct vis a vis environment as how it is, as against, how it ought to be. What people ought to and ought not to do with the environment. As such it’s an interface between humans and environment and their impact on each other (through lenses of gender, class, race, sex and ability) at a moral level.
As a discipline environmental ethics adheres a recipe consisting of the meaning, scope and definitions of environmental ethics, its development, the theories and philosophies (like deep ecology, eco-feminism etc), challenges and the politics of environmental ethics. Further it deals with important things as small and simple as the way we look at the environment to larger issues of global warming, climate change, global diseases etc from different vantage points.
Environmental Ethics as a discipline was born in the 1970s posing challenge to the Human centred world. It questioned the moral superiority of man over nature. It grew out as a response to works that put forward the coming of a doomsday which would eventually and drastically affect the human race. Rachel Carson’s Silent Springs in 1963 that spoke about the use of pesticides and their impact on environment and public health, Lynn White Jr’s essay The Historical Roots of Ecological Crisis in which he argued that it was basically the Judeo- Christian thinking that humans are above other life forms and that the earth is basically made for the enjoyment of man that resulted in ecological crisis, Paul Ehrlich’s work The Population Bomb in 1968 and Dennis Medows’ Limits to Growth in 1972 both which spoke about population growth and environmental crisis, that the days that were to come were numbered for the human race if they did not stop and re look at their relationship with the environment.
The call for a “basic change of values” in connection to the environment reflected a need for the development of environmental ethics as a new sub-discipline of philosophy.[2] The new subdiscipline emerged in three countries – The US, Australia and Norway looking into the ethical ways in which we need to look and redefine our relationship with the environment. As time went on, new philosophies took shape from different vantage points- Deep ecology as a critique of shallow ecology that failed to look beyond pollution and resource depletion; Eco Feminism critiquing the partiarchal oppression on nature and women.
For me, given this history of the subdiscipline and situating within my own time-space- culture contexts, environmental ethics as a discipline then is just another western hegemonic discourse that was born out of the situations and panics created in the western society, and that which has been exported to us in the east. I can only wonder, which I did throughout the course, why am I studying something that isnt unfamiliar to me. Living in the Asia, where the ways of life are woven into ecologically sensitive ways and where “modernity” has only partially penetrated our minds and cultures, I felt I was studying something that I wasn’t a part of but at the same time being connected to it[3]. At times not related but still connected. When I look at our own lives I see that we grow trees but hardly use much paper for our sanitary purposes. We protect our rivers but our energy consumption is much less than the west. We cook food and many a times end up sharing it with the gods (bhog, prasad), animals (Cows, dogs, cats) and plants(manure). We appreciate mountains and at the same time meditate for alteast two minutes realising the oness that we share with nature. Everytime a river is dammed, we raise our voices, everytime a tree is cut we mark our protest and everytime an animal is in danger we try our best to rescue it. And we respect animals for their “intrinsic” value (though there might be exceptions in all these eg: the state, smugglers etc). Then do we need something like a course in Environmental Ethics?
Yet on a second thought I feel the course makes us think as to how we do take steps that aren’t right enough for the environment, how our own cultures can give better options (and solutions) than we ever thought they would (we value western medicine more than our own home bred ayurveda, and only relook at it, accept it and celebrate it when the west has accepted and acknolwedged it). Given the “rationality” of western science and technology which is highly valued as “developed”, “modern” and “sophisticated” and we as given-in subjects to these highly valued western discourses often fail to look whats available in the ground beneath our own feet. Environmental ethics does the job, it takes us back to our treasures critiquing the west and its “modern” “sophiticated” “developed” ways of life. As such even as the discipline emerges out to respond and serve the western panic of environmental crises, it reaffirms the value system of the ecologically sensitive cultures and helps us to set our minds to think whether we are doing something right or wrong (a western acknolwedgement of eco-sensitive cultures to which I am bowing? Cant help, I too am from the system!). As we become more and more western centric, more consumeristic, as more Malls and Flyovers, Burgers and Pizzas, PETAs and Fabindias, ITs and MNCs –chic, swank, modern, global, cover our skyline replacing the local, common, “traditional”, environmental ethics shall play a vital role in adressing our new (western?) problems and panics that arise out in our relationship with nature and beyond. (Art of Living has already brought Indian meditation and a “Smile” back into the lives of well educated middle and higher classes). The discipline comes to our resue there giving us options to choose from to make up for the mistakes that the west created sometimes ago and transferred them to us quietly.The discipline is good as far as it invokes a sense of responsibility in us towards our surroundings and makes us sensitive enough to do what is ought to be done.
But somewhere deep down I feel that the West is selling our own property to us putting a chic brand tag name called Environmental Ethics.
References
[2] ibid
[3] ‘Women are closer to nature and men are closer to culture…..’says eco feminism. But I too am as close to nature as women are though I am not a woman. How do I negotiate my own sense of self to this argument which is basically an argument from the western scholars
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