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Population, consumption and climate colonialism
Full text linkStrategies for combatting climate change that advocate for human population limitation have recently been understandably criticised on the grounds that they embody a form of ‘climate colonialism’: a moral wrong that involves disproportionately shifting the burdens of climate change onto developing nations (which have low per capita emissions but high fertility rates) in order to offset burdens in affluent nations (which have high per capita emissions but low fertility rates). This article argues that once the relevance of population growth to climate change has been correctly understood as working in tandem with consumption levels, this objection fails as a general criticism. Moreover, even if population could be ignored as a variable, the climate colonialism charge would re-emerge in a different form, since, at present population sizes, it would be environmentally catastrophic for developing nations to reach the production ambitions which see their per capita emissions massively increase. Even if emission reductions in affluent nations are (rightly) prioritised, there are good reasons to prevent enormous growth of emissions in developing countries. Those environmental risks become much greater given developing nations’ projected population increases in the coming century. The article then explores how the necessary radical environmental policies pertaining to fertility rates might be enacted in non-coercive ways, reducing the sting of the ‘climate colonialism’ charge. The article ends by considering some reasons to be moderately sceptical about such policies
Conflicting Interests: The Early Development of Makulatura Collection in Soviet Ukraine
Full text linkThe article analyses the early stages of wastepaper collection in the Ukrainian SSR during the 1920s and early 1930s, with a focus on the key actors and their conflicting interests. The significance of makulatura is considered in the context of its economic, political and ideological importance in the early Soviet Union. Special attention is given to mass mobilisation campaigns and wastepaper collection in housing cooperatives. The desperate struggle of archival institutions to preserve their documentary heritage is highlighted. The article also reveals the role of administrative resources as a tool of directive planning, used to lobby the interests of specific companies. It demonstrates how the organisational flaws in the state wastepaper collection system contributed to the development of the black market, where wastepaper flows were redirected through unofficial channels. The article argues that speculators were the only ones to make substantial economic profits, while the state primarily derived political and ideological benefits
SI Dams: The Contradictions of Dam Building in the People’s Republic of China
No full textScholars often characterize dam building as an instance of high modernism par excellence. Such characterizations typically imagine dams as gargantuan projects that involve government elites drawing on technoscientific expertise to re-engineer the physical environment to serve a political regime’s developmental objectives. This article complicates this high modernist understanding of dam building through an investigation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The article highlights two tensions that shaped the regime’s dam building efforts from the PRC’s founding in 1949 into the 1980s. First, contrary to our impressions, dam building in the PRC was defined as much by investments in small hydropower as it was by the pursuit of mega-sized projects. This counterintuitive reality was, in turn, undergirded by the consistent contradiction that existed between the regime’s limited administrative and technical capacities and its promethean visions of taming all China’s rivers, ending their history of floods, and turning them into a massive source of power for industrializing the nation. Through an examination of Li Peng as a representative elite in the hydropower sector, the second part of this article demonstrates how political agents navigated this contradiction and devised ways to build dams that reevaluated whether foreign or local expertise, mental or manual labor, or big or small dams should take priority in bringing hydraulic modernity to China
Senses SI: A Sour Disposition: Alcohol and Drinking in the Little Ice Age
No full textAt a time before there were large quantities of sugar, salt or meat available to most Europeans, tastes such as sourness and bitterness predominated. Although Galenic medicine and its focus on bitterness in food and tinctures still dictated medical ideologies and practices, by the fourteenth century, sourness came to define the European palate. Yet, late Medieval and Early Modern notions of sourness are quite different than our contemporary ideas. Rather than the brightness of lemons or limes or even the piquancy of tart cherries, sourness was characterized by vinegar’s biting acidity. Sourness and drunkenness went hand in hand and shaped ideas of gender and propriety as Europe began to shift out of feudalism and toward mercantilism and as people moved from the country into more urban spaces. Sourness also predominated at a time when individuals were beginning to question their civic and religious leaders and the role of the individual in society via the Reformation and Renaissance. All these changes were occurring at a moment when many Europeans were drinking copious amounts of alcohol
Too Much Modernity or Too Little? Efforts Towards a Global Discard Policy at the International Reference Centre for Wastes Disposal, 1966–1976
Full text linkThis paper examines the early development of international waste governance from 1966 to 1976. As industrialised nations generated more waste due to urbanisation and changing consumption, international organisations faced pressure to respond. The World Health Organization led efforts by creating the International Reference Centre for Wastes Disposal (IRCWD) in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute for Water Supply, Sewage Purification and Water Pollution Control (EAWAG) and the International Association for Public Cleansing (INTAPUC). The IRCWD aimed to centralise global waste management knowledge and coordination. However, institutional fragmentation, funding issues and differing views on whether waste was a technical or systemic issue hindered its success. While some saw waste as a symptom of flawed modernisation, most treated it as a technical problem requiring improved disposal methods. Competition from other organisations, WHO ambivalence, and reluctance to challenge economic systems weakened momentum. Ultimately, waste became a shared concern but was addressed in fragmented ways. The study shows how institutional and political factors, rather than environmental priorities, shaped early international waste policy
Practicing Cold Weather: English Agricultural Discourse and Memory in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century
No full textThe remarkably cold and dry weather of the 1740s presents an avenue of inquiry into the relationships between changes in English agricultural practice in the second half of the eighteenth century, the impacts of past climate changes and the memory of such climate extremes. Using historic climate data, proxy sources and the agricultural writings of William Ellis, this article considers the impacts of the 1740s in light of scholarship on climate change and the Little Ice Age, English agriculture and climate memory to demonstrate the impacts of a climate extreme on agricultural practice and discourse, as well as production. It argues that agricultural practice served as a repository of climate memory long after the 1740s ceased to occupy the writings of leading agriculturalists
