Lecture 6

Question 1

New imperialism

Answer 1

• Late 19th, early 20th century
• Global north imperial powers expand colonial territories on unprecedented scale in search of a) resources and land -> cash crop agriculture and b) cheap labor.
• Second industrial revolution increases demand for both by increasing productive capacity, thereby creating increased demand for raw materials and markets.

Question 2

Holleman’s ensuing socio-ecological crises

Answer 2

soil erosion
starvation
colonialim-environment harm link

Question 3

Soil erosion

Answer 3

o Colonial policies promote cash crop for export -> monocultural farming aimed at mass production for exportation.
o More land farmed more uniformly and more aggressively.
o Market also incentivizes cash crop agriculture and encourages farmers to produce as much as possible as quickly as possible.
o In the long run, this erodes soil -> 1st global environmental crisis.

Question 4

Starvation

Answer 4

o Cash crops for exports outstrip food crops for local consumption. Leading to a) decreased dietary variation and nutrition and b) severe humanmade famines in colonized areas.
o Likened by some to ‘late Victorian holocaust’

Question 5

Colonialism environment harm link

Answer 5

o Soil erosion understood at the time to be a consequence of colonial conquest and agricultural practices.
o Soil erosion a ‘disease to which any civilization founded on the European model seems liable when it attempts to frow outside of Europe’
o Soil erosion a ‘warning that nature is in full revolt against the sudden incursion of an exotic civilization – Europe – into her ordered domains.’

Question 6

The white man’s burden

Answer 6

o Rudyard Kipling author
o Imperial view that white race is morally obliged to civilize the rest of the world and facilitate its development through colonialism.
o Soil erosion framed as another white man’s burden - > burden of development that white colonizers must shoulder despite having created it.
o Recognition that colonialism creates socio-ecological crises, but contention that these can be fixed with more colonialism.

Question 7

Colonialism and white supremacy

Answer 7

o White supremacy is essential according to Holleman to new imperialism.
o Provides “justificatory” pretext for colonial conquest (i.e., alleged “superiority” means whites have obligation to intervene around the world).
o Environmental colonialism shaped, according to Holleman, by both;
 material compulsions of capital accumulation.
 immaterial ideology of white supremacy.
 i.e., capitalistic economic growth can be pursued via colonialism because racism provides a legitimating pretext for intervention.

Question 8

US dust bowl background

Answer 8

• Early 1870s: US ends recognition of native tribal sovereignty.
• 1887: Dawes Act authorizes federal government to privatize land held in common by native tribes.
  o Privatization opens large tracts of “unassigned” land to settlers and economic actors (75% of previously indigenous land designated “unassigned” and opened up).
  o Settlers of newly privatized land often economically disadvantaged.
  o White supremacy + domestic New Imperial land grabs = “release valve” for class antagonism.
  o Ensuing settler colonialism into Southern Plains region organized around environmentally destructive cash crop agriculture where market logic – not environmental health – dictates how land and resources are used.

Question 9

1930’s dust bowl

Answer 9

o Environment of Southern Plains can’t sustain cash crop agricultural practices.
o Empire, capitalism, and racism come to a head in soil erosion of 1930s US Dust Bowl.
o Dust Bowl: period of severe dust storms and drought.
o Not a domestic-regional problem.
o But a manifestation of first global environmental crisis (i.e., soil erosion) driven by imperialism, white supremacy, and capitalism.

Question 10

Contemporary implications

Answer 10

o Soil erosion and desertification likely to reemerge with climate change.
o Learning wrong lessons from past soil erosion means we’re liable to mishandle new, climate-driven forms.
o Colonialism might be over, but coloniality endures in how Global North calculates cost of climate action (i.e., sacrifices faraway peoples & places because changing own relation to environment too onerous).

Question 11

Standard dust bowl lession and Holleman criticism

Answer 11

o Standard Dust Bowl lesson: soil erosion and desertification caused by poor knowledge and inadequate tech, corrected through better knowledge and tech.
o Holleman argues this isn’t the right lesson: soil erosion and desertification weren’t just a knowledge-tech problem in the past (i.e., because they were caused by imperialism, white supremacy, and capitalism) and won’t be just a knowledge-tech problem in the future.

Question 12

Environmental racism

Answer 12

• 1970s scholars study distribution of environmental harms across society.
  o In racialized societies, allocation of environmental bads/costs and goods/benefits can track race.
  o E.G. in US, non-white populations more likely to live an work in environmentally degraded places.
  o Environmental racism = sacrifice of racial minorities’ wellbeing and environmental health for sake of racial majority’s.
  o Logic of sacrifice link environmental colonialism and environmental racism.

Question 13

Bullard and Holleman

Answer 13

o Just as global north sacrifices global south’s environmental wellbeing for its own wellbeing (Holleman), racial majority (can also be a private actor) within north may sacrifice racial minority’s environmental wellbeing for its own (Bullard).

Question 14

Environment and white privilege

Answer 14

o White privilege = benefits and advantages that accrue in highly racialized societies to white people simply due to whiteness.
 Different from overt racism because not intentional.
 Can occur even when no one means to be racist, for example only maintaining status quo in social structures that reproduce white privilege.
 White privilege means environmental racism can be unintentional (i.e., environmental sacrifice of racial minority for racial majority).

Question 15

Environmental injustice

Answer 15

o That environmental-material benefits enjoyed by some are paid for at others’ environmental material expense is unjust.
o Ecologically unequal exchange (EUE): structural relationships between more and less powerful groups can lead to the uneven, unfair, and unequal distribution of environmental flows, good and bad.
o EUE can play out at international level (e.g., between Global North and Global South, per Givens et al.) or within single country.

Question 16

Givens; EUE and environmental injustice

Answer 16

o Injustice
 Global North takes more environmental goods or resources from Global South (i.e., tap).
 Global North dumps more environmental bads or waste in Global South (i.e., sink).
o Environmental load displacement.
 Global North physically relocates environmental bads to South (e.g., shipping of waste, offshoring environmentally taxing industry).
 Global North temporally relocates environmental bads to South (i.e., future generations generally obliged to bear environmental harms they didn’t create and this phenomenon magnified in South).
o Above dynamics may be overlooked without a global perspective (e.g., Netherlands Fallacy).

Question 17

Givens; ecological debt

Answer 17

o Ecological debt: unequally and unjustly treating Global South as an environmental tap and sink (EUE), the Global North developed by incurring a material debt to the Global South .
o ”Paying off” this debt could mean:
 Global North mitigating its emissions.
 Global North helping Global South to achieve comparable development, ideally in a now less environmentally taxing way.

Question 18

Fraser

Answer 18

o Environmental cost of fixing metabolic rift in North borne by South (e.g., guano-nitrates trade).
o Environmental good of soil repair in North achieved via imposition of environmental (alongside social and political) bads in South.

Question 19

Holleman

Answer 19

o Historical environmental cost of growing capital in North borne by South.
o Today the environmental cost of climate inaction in North borne by South.

Question 20

Distributive environmental justice

Answer 20

• IF environmental injustice = unfair distribution of environmental goods/benefits and bads/costs.
• THEN environmental justice (EJ) = fair distribution of environmental goods/benefits and bads/costs.
  o Distributive EJ asks whether environmental goods and bads are allocated fairly and, if not, calls for fair re-allocation.
  o Informed by unfairness of ecologically unequal exchange.
  o Linked to legacies of environmental colonialism and racism.

Question 21

critique of distributive EJ 1

Answer 21

• Universalizes what is a particular view of the environment.
• Views nature as collection of inert material to be divided.
• But some people and cultures may see nature very differently (e.g., as a force, entity,
• or being of its own, including one that humans have duties toward).
• Obliging all to “speak” the language of distributive environmental justice may mean.
• that some justice claims are “lost in translation,” which may be an injustice in itself.

Question 22

Critique of distributive EJ 2

Answer 22

• Why should there be so many environmental bads that need to be fairly allocated to begin with?
• Distributive EJ doesn’t dig deep enough into and interrogate the root causes behind the existence of environmental bads.
• More robust EJ would entail environmentally sustainable forms of production and consumption that either minimize or eliminate negative distributive concerns.