In terms of an overview, I thought that the event was a good review and summary of the international offenses of Formosa Plastics. As a researcher, I would like to know more about the different panelists' views on what can be done in each setting, as many have stated a lot of the historical offenses but left out their answers to the lead organizers' questions posed in the beginning of the event.
The concept of accountability was repeatedly brought up throughout this event. Lawyer Larochelle has stated, "There is no clear path for someone to hold accountability for what happened; there is a gap, accountability gap that exists all over. People need to organize, lawyers, academics."
Philippe Larochelle, a lawyer that works out of Montreal Canada but has been working on international criminal law cases and class action on environmental matters, which has led to his work now with Nancy Bui on Formosa.
Larochelle did his best to address a few of the questions posed by the lead organizers in the beginning of the event:
What are the main injustices happening with Formosa Plastics Corporation?
What do you think should be done?
Out of many of the panelists, I found Larochelle to be one of the few that really attempted to address these questions and answer to best of his expertise on the legal matters surrounding the Formosa case in Vietnam and Taiwan. Many Zoom attendees wanted him to expand on his statement of how Taiwan's stance as "not completely a country" making it challenging to operate in that environment when it comes to international law. Later on, he answered via Zoom chat that there is a disconnect between Taiwan and international law as there is no access to UN special procedures, but it is "very possible to sue Formosa there".
Diane Wilson: advocate in Calhoun County, Texas
Paul Jobin: a sociologist, academic at a university in Taiwan
Ta Du’c Tri: mayor of the city of westminster, Vietnamese-American
-The mayor spoke about the importance of this event to Vietnamese-Americans and the community in Westminster.
Nancy Bui: spoke on what she’s observed in the Formosa-Vietnam Case
-In April 2016, Formosa dumped chemicals, metals, into Vietnam waters and because of the delay in recognizing the problem, the Vietnamese government took over 3 months to recognize this issue. Two law companies; 800 something victims are to sue he Formosa in Taiwan and the U.S.
This event was held at the University of California, Irvine in-person on campus and over Zoom. "This seminar will focus on harms caused by the operations of Formosa Plastics Corporation in Taiwan, Vietnam and the United States, focusing on coastal communities. Panelists include people who have spent years working to address these harms in different ways." (DisasterSTS). The lead organizers include Tim Schutz and Kim Fortun.
As the research of the Energy in COVID-19 group progresses, I am beginning to take a deep interest in temporality as it concerns both the unfolding pandemic and responses to it. Though disasters are truly all about timing and time is a prominent focus in much of the disaster studies literature, it seems particularly salient here. Discourses around COVID-19 are suffuse with temporal references: infection rates, mutation rates, rates of recovery, the new normal, the global economic slow-down, "responding too late," "opening up too soon," returning fire/hurricane season, disrupted circadian rhythms, caretaker fatigue, quarantine dragging on, living in (Bill Murray's) groundhog day. To many, time in the pandemic appears discontinuous and contradictory. Or, better yet, pandemic time is like time out of sync. Things happen too fast in some places, too slow in others. Boredom mingles with anxiety.
In the electric utility world, our group aims to analyze how COVID's temporality is conflicting with that of the social and physical infrastructures that enable people's access to energy. This includes keep track of things like frequencies of outages as well as reports of increases in response times due to decreased staff and restricted movement. We are also noting how the crisis is precluding many of the daily coping strategies of limited-income communities who were already dealing with energy vulnerability (i.e. visiting friends or public spaces with AC during the heat of the day).
Beyond informal coping strategies, the extant social infrastructure of energy assistance is also strained by the pandemic's longevity. LIHEAP's energy assistance programs, which vary by state, were only designed to offer short-term assistance during "crisis seasons" (i.e. harsh summers and/or winters). Most are neither prepared nor funded well enough to offer assistance over the long term. The existence and duration of moratoriums on disconnections (as well as plans to recover their costs) also vary by state. Thus, as seasons continue to change while these moratoriums come to an end, we aim to create both a map and timeline of the shifting spatio-temporality of energy vulnerability taking shape across the US.
On the other hand, the crisis is also opening up the possibility of new energy futures. Many nations and states are shifting their attention from immediate emergency management to thinking about economic recovery. In the past, efforts to boost the economy would, by default, entail massive uptakes in carbon emissions. Today, however, the crash in oil and gas, which coincided the outbreak of COVID-19 has had deep and far reaching consequences and some experts are predicting that the combined stressors are such that the industry will not likely be able recover. In response, a number of prominent economists have generated Green-New-Deal-like recovery plans that have also been endorsed by international development agencies like the IEA and IMF. This new globalist turn toward sustainable recovery could signal a new imaginary for the planet's energy future.
Thus, in addition to thinking about the temporality of disasters (i.e. fast vs slow), this pandemic raises questions about how intersecting temporalities are also constitutive of the disaster. That is, how are the complex, multiple, and dynamic temporalities of COVID-19 entangling with and interrupting other cycles, rhythms, and rates of change? How is this engendering and compounding its disastrous effects? On the other hand, what opportunities has it created? How might the COVID-19 experience alter or shape new ideologies and phenomenologies of time or imaginaries of the future? What temporal sensibilities do we need to develop in order to cope with the new normal of the "post-COVID" world?
In Energy in COVID-19, we are focused on how these questions pertain to plans and practices for producing, distributing, and consuming energy and related services. However, I also hold that the "COVID moment" is opportune for a wider problematization of time and disaster in a more general sense, one that may have important implications for disaster studies and disaster governance in/of the Anthropocene.
I would like to think more about the politics of collaboration. Who does what kind of labor in a transnational project? How do we make our political and ethical commitments visible?
This brings me to the infrastructures at present for collaboration: How do we navigate between using the platform for collaboration and using the Collective call time? I would like to suggest that we have rotating roles for note-taking, archiving and analysing Collective call data. We can use Otter.ai for live transcription. It is not the best in terms of encryption but it's smooth and easy. Do people have other suggestions of live transcription softwares?
To archive the existing Collaboation Calls, we can (I can contribute) make a Timeline essay which would serve as a log and place to annotate meta-analysis of those calls.
I've been organizing and working with the Research Data KE Working Group. We have been collecting relevant links, articles and data in this essay. Some members of our group are now going deeper into thematic areas such as looking at gender and its intersection with COVID-19 in Kenya. We have a monthly call on the second Thursday of every month. We also have a WhatsApp chat group to exchange links and articles. We are open to new members, sign up here. You can find an archive of all of our calls and notes here.