Analyze

Among those now working to oppose the long-term release of more than 1.3 million tons of Fukushima’s radioactive wastewater, contemporary activists can draw inspiration and perspective from an earlier transnational movement during the 1970s, when Pacific Islanders were central to stopping a plan by the Japanese government to dump 10,000 drums of nuclear waste into the Mariana Trench (Branch, 1984; Avenell, 2017). The mobilization of Pacific activists significantly contributed toward achieving the suspension and eventual cancellation of the ocean-dumping plan by taking their stories to audiences in Japan while working in collaboration with Japanese activists. In a strategy that proved crucial for influencing changes in Japanese attitudes toward ocean dumping, Pacific activists shared moving accounts of the environmental and historical injustices to which the Pacific Islanders had been subjected. They gave witness to the harm caused by 67 nuclear weapons tests between 1946 and 1979, which had resulted in the loss of homelands as well as higher rates of leukemia, lymphatic cancers, and genetic defects. These powerful testimonies challenged Japanese audiences to oppose the committing of further aggressions against those with whom they could identify as fellow atomic victims. In “Pacific Solidarity and Atomic Aggression” (2017), historian Simon Avenell writes, “This Pacific iteration of environmental injustice opened the eyes of many antinuclear advocates to the ways Pacific activists connected the radioactive waste issue to a longer struggle for independence and the obliteration of nuclear neocolonialism.” That in turn complicated the victim consciousness which had long informed antinuclear protest in postwar Japan. The activists' intervention made plain the moral case for Japanese people to act in solidarity with their counterparts in the Pacific Islands, who had similarly suffered from the lethal toll wrought by the use of nuclear technology in ways that devalued human life and the natural world. Given the breakthrough achieved through transnational activist solidarity, this historical precedent serves as a reminder that the nuclear wastewater issue must not be relegated to the politicized nationalist frameworks that have become common in contemporary media accounts. Notably in 2021, the unilateral decision to release Fukushima's radioactive wastewater alienated not only residents of neighboring countries but also many of Japan's own citizens, resulting in a breach of public trust which needs to be addressed by stopping the release and pursuing a sincere dialogue with stakeholders - not simply a campaign to attempt persuasion - according to nuclear engineer and Nagasaki University professor Tatsujiro Suzuki (2023). To attain public trust and to honor the moral and ethical legacies surrounding questions regarding nuclear waste and the Pacific Ocean, such a dialogue must extend to transnational stakeholders, and Indigenous knowledge must factor highly into the debate over an issue with vital transboundary and transgenerational consequences. 

Image: GRID-Arendal, www.grida.no/resources/7365.

Kim, Nan. 2023. "A Precedent of Success: Pacific Islanders' Transnational Activism Against the Ocean Dumping of Radioactive Waste." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11. 

META: Water seems to be one important medium through which NOLA envisions the “impacts” of the Anthropocene—scarcity, abundance, temporalities and spatial distributions, management of, and hazards that emerge in its context. Less is said about the causal or attributional aspects of the Anthropocene. How might water function as an entry point into the assemblages of local anthropocenics?

I found the NOLA Hazard Mitigation Plan for 2018, which frames the impacts of the Anthropocene as an intersection of weather extremes amid climate change and evolving vulnerabilities of its people. Four of seven items in the executive summary note water as central to local interventions: flood awareness, flood repair, flood mitigation, flood infrastructure. Too much water or water in the wrong places and the aftereffect of water on infrastructure and lives. One expression, then, is preparedness.

MACRO: Mitigation is an interesting analytic for the Anthropocene. In the US mitigation plans are shaped by the 1988 Stafford Act (which amended the 1974 Disaster Relief Act). Constraints on communities come through rules, regulations, policies, (dis)incentives, and surveillance by state and federal authorities. Much of this is bound by economic and administrative discourses.

Goals are set in this document—broken out by timelines, activities, priorities, and capabilities. Another expression is classification of anthropocenics by subfields and accounting metrics. How do we measure progress and what is deferred to the future, 5-10 years out from today, a goal that has no tangible accountability but is named and acknowledged. What are the practices of naming, responsibility, and making (in)visible in the Anthropocene?

BIO: One new initiative, Ready for Rain, in particular is of interest to me as it highlights the more neoliberal vision for how the public should self-regulate risk and mitigate harm. I hear this as an extension of a government agency program to make the nation Weather Ready. Other bullets highlight “green” buildings, energies, and infrastructures. These could be examples of how the city envisions the Anthropocene feedback loop of humans changing/planning for climate alterations, which is a fairly typical lens.

Some questions: What does the water do? What does the water know? If we trace water in all its instantiations (e.g. historical water, flow of water, chemistry of water, application of water, temperature of water), what do we learn about the future imaginaries of what NOLA will / could / ought to become?

Resilience is a term that is widely embraced by many in city management and planning. It holds the positive gloss not just of recovery but bouncing back better. To my ears, it has become one of many anthems of the Anthropocene, a kind of restrained tempo thrumming along through communities that will adapt to climate change (or seasonal-to-subseasonal climate variability post Trump). They will mitigate, innovate, transform, strategize in order to endure unanticipated shocks, both chronic and acute.

NOLA is one of 100 Resilient Cities named by the Rockefeller Foundation sometime in 2013. Like others selected across the globe, the city of New Orleans would benefit from the resources of a Chief Resilience Officer (CRO), an expert in resilience to be hired to work within city governance to develop a strategic plan; NOLA's was published in 2015. Selection of the cities for the "100 Resilient Cities" initiative was difficult, a competitive bid for resources based primarily on a city's recent experience with disaster, usually connected to a weather or climate extreme (e.g. hurricane, flood, etc). Resources were provided via the hierarchy of the CRO, sometimes to hire staff, develop training for the community, and create working groups and to write the stratetic plan. As one former directer of NOLA RC said of this opportunity provided by Katrina, the disaster that qualified NOLA for Rockefeller monies, it demonstrates the need for an the age of resilience. In what ways is resilience measured, accounted for, adjudicated and managed through or in spite of this strategic document? 

The language of resilience includes many terms that I think of as a collective imaginary of utopian preparedness, a vision for a nation that is--in the parlance of the weather prediction community in which I work--weather ready. Through the filter of resilience, then, vulnerability (another problematic term) is eradicated through individual action, community engineering, and adherance to strategic policies like 100RC. Yet how does this image of NOLA, one of "mindful citizenry" engaged in "partnerships" around the city (terms used in their summary video), match with the realities of living in NOLA, today and in the everyday future?

Resilience is also a term widely critiqued in STS and the broader social science and humanistic disciplines. For good reason. Common questions in this literature: What counts as resilience? Who decides? At what costs? Resilience against what? What does resilience elide? How has the discourse of resilience reframed individual and community accountability? What is the political economy of resilience? I'm interested in the discourses of preparedness and planning, and "the eventness" of disaster, as Scott has highlighted many times. But my concern is not just to critique and tear down concepts like resilence (or vulnerability). I worry that we then evicerate common lexicons of hope and imaginaries of the future that do some good. How are we as field campus participants and those who re-envision or reveal the quotidian reflexive? How do we triage the Anthropocene amid our own state of compromise--as scholars, participants in Capitalism, in post colonialism, humans? What are our ethical commitments? How do we make good? 

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act is a law requiring that anyone coming into the emergency department will be stabilized and treated no matter what their insurance situation is. In terms of women's health, it is important to note that this means for active labors, medical treatment is necessary and required, no matter the health insurance of the patient. The purpose of this law to prevent certain patients from being turned away in an emergency situation or refused medical treatments if they are unable to pay, putting their health at risk.

EMTALA was enacted by Congress in 1986 and was part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Acts of 1985. Congress saw different cases around America where doctors were refusing medical care to patients who could not make a deposit at the time of their admittance to the ER. An example of this is a patient Eugene Barnes, who in 1985 suffered a stab wound and ultimately ended up dying because 6+ doctors refused to help him without payment or some form of compensation. This made national news and other cases began to come to light, such as at Baptist Hospital in Miami and many other areas. News outlets began to follow these cases and this caught attention of government officials. Shortly after, EMTALA was enacted.

http://www.pitt.edu/~kconover/ftp/emtala-draft.pdf

This policy applies to American law and patients who are in need of emergency medical treatment and is to be followed by all emergency departments and personnel alike. 

This was touched upon a little in a previous question. Many cases of patient dumping were popping up around America. Patients in need  of emergency medical care were being cast aside, ignored and delayed due to their inability to pay. In addition to the stab patient, Eugene Barnes that sparked this law, there were dozens of other cases where patients needed to be transferred to larger hospitals but the hospital refused to take patients without insurance, so the patients died. There were cases of people being asked right before surgery for a deposit, and being unable to pay were discharged with no surgery. There was also a very high rate of dead babies that were arising due to the fact that mothers in labor were being turned away because the patient was uninsured. It was then realized by the government that there were no legal duties for a hospital to treat people who are in emergency situations but cannot pay, only ethical and moral duties, which apparently weren't enough in some cases. This led to the birth of the EMTALA, requiring medical attention to all ED patients as well as transfers if needed to stabilize, including mothers in labor.

This policy greatly helped sculpt emergency medicine and public health. By giving the right to the patient to have emergency medical treatment required without proof of insurance or payment, astronomically influenced the amount of patients being turned away and their possibilty of developing worse illnesses or dying. In a paper I read, a young doctor in the late 70s and early 80s remembers watching a woman in labor give birth in the doorway of the hospital and proceed to borht her child in the parking lot after being turned away for not having insurance. By requiring hospitals and doctors to see that all ED patients get care, no patient was at risk of dying or complicating their baby's health and birth due to a lack of insurance, ultimately increasing public health efforts. Not all hospitals turned away their patients, but enough did to make it a public health concern and get Congress involved. EMTALA changed emergency medicine protocols but also public health expectations and actions.

http://www.hhnmag.com/articles/5010-the-law-that-changed-everything-and…

This policy was explicitly made for vulnerable populations who couldn't afford or for whatever reason did not have health insurance. The vulnerable parties that did not have health insurance were at risk of being turned away at hospitals during crucial times of need and emergency situations. This act completely absolved the worries and fears of this vulnerable population without health insurance by making it a law that these ED patients were to receive care and stabilization. This act was made for this specific vulnerable population, to prevent discrimination.

This policy was received in good light by the public for the most part. Patients were only to benefit from this, especially those who lacked insurance. Even those with insurance didn't have to waste time proving it any longer, they were treated and stabilized and insurance issues and payment were brought up later. Any ethically sound doctors, such as the ones working in hospitals that were already implementing the actions set forth by EMTALA (before it was law) had no issues with EMTALA. No doctor should have any issues with it due to their duty to act as well as ethical and moral standards they should be holding themselves up to, written in their oath they took to become doctor. The only people that would stand to receive this act negatively would be the doctors who were actively turning away patients in need, who are clearly morally compromised. Yet, media, patients, a majority of doctors and staff found and received this act positively or with little reservation.