Climate change

Question 1

What does the climate crisis mean for Aisa?

Answer 1

• will be hit the hardest (discourse on climate crisis still mostly considering the west)
• countries that are most severely affected by sea level rise located in Asia
• extreme weather events; high population density (–> numbers matter) and social vulnerability (a lot of poor people; many people being discriminated against)
  –> disasters of different sorts very likely and have happened regularly; example: recent floods in Pakistan (heavier than normal monsoon rains and melting glaciers)
• there has been an ongoing drought in India for many years

Question 2

What was the “green revolution”?

Answer 2

• 1960s
• world initiative to eradicate hunger (US universities; Rockefeller foundation)
• India one of the main target countries (kind of experimental starting ground)
• HYCV = high yielding crop varieties –> pushing crops with high output to feed more people; did increase food production massively and reduce hunger for a while but many negative side effects
• these crops also need more input (water, pesticides) than normal crops –> farmers started to pump up ground water (pumps given to them practically for free)
• made the soil less fertile in the long run
• dangerous production of the required chemicals
• even more direct human made aspect than climate change

Question 3

Why will millions of people have to leave certain areas?

Answer 3

• sea levels rising
• at the same time land levels sinking (subsidence) because of the high amount of ground level water taken out; in some places a lot more important than sea levels rising (e.g. Indonesia moving building new capital to move critical infrastructure away from Jakarta)

Question 4

What was day zero?

Answer 4

• 2019
• 10 million people city in India (Chennai) had completely empty water reservoirs –> government had to bring water

Question 5

What is a technological lock in?

Answer 5

• need technology to deal with problems created by technological fixes to problems –> cannot go back to the way it was before the technology was introduced
• green revolution is a good example
• problem: hunger
• technology did not resolve the problem in the long run but made a lot of people more vulnerable
• lock in: people are dependent on specific technology and companies now

Question 6

name some forms of vulnerability

Answer 6

• economic
• discrimination along gender, race, caste etc.
• infrastructural

Question 7

describe the concentration of risk in Mumbai

Answer 7

• 20 million people live there
• totally unprotected island
• typical for colonial cities that they are built in places that are not ideal at all (before that people never built major cities directly at the sea); was not intended to become such a big city
• infrastructure of the city not built to deal with these hazards; no way millions of people can evacuate in time; nuclear power plant in the city

Question 8

Global solutions…

Answer 8

… have to work in Asia to have a real effect on global warming;
(- promise of “modernity” cannot be kept up; can’t all have two cars etc.)
- South and East Asia are not the highest carbon emitters)

Question 9

What is the great divergence debate about?

Answer 9

• Why did some regions begin path of carbon producing economies earlier than others? Why did the rest of the world start much later than that? (started catching up on carbon emissions with decolonization)
• many other regions outside of Europe had diverse markets and the potential to expand/industrialize; until around 1800 economy and military in China and India a lot more advanced and progressive than in Europe –> what happened ?
  answers:
  Kenneth Poermanz: colonialism; access to extra land and labor –> economic advantage –> Europe pulls ahead
  David Landes: Europeans were “cleverer” (inventions, private property etc.); doesn’t consider power relations

Question 10

What is the concept of multiple modernities?

Answer 10

• Gosh
• rejects idea that only the West was capable of fossil based industrialization
• could have happened in many other places
• e.g. Burma’s oil industry; was closest candidate to develop modern oil industry before British invasion
• was largest oil industry in the world; important source of revenue for Burmese dynasty
• still: first successful oil drilling in Pennsylvania refereed to as beginning of the oil industry
• other example: Indian shipping industry

–> these industries actively destroyed by European nations; developing capitalism in Europe needed a counterpart that produced cheap raw materials