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Pödelwitz got future

JonnyGruensch
Annotation of

Pödelwitz is an activist initiative  in the central german coal district, which is located in a village which was supposed to be evacuated for a planned expansion of a neighboring coal mine. After successfully resisting this expansion, the activists now promote social-ecological transformation in the village and the wider region. I will collaborate with them as part of my project in C-urge to study the role of justice in such transformations. Thereby we hope to arrive at an understanding of justice that is not opposed to urgent societal transformation in light of climate change, but a means of achieving this.

Harmful PM2.5 emissions in Dhaka, Bangledesh prompting researchers to study emissions during winter and monsoon season.

helena.dav

Assessing the PM2.5 impact of biomass combustion in megacity Dhaka, Bangladesh - PubMed (nih.gov)

This article is about crop burning in Dhaka, Bangladesh and attempts to figure out if there is more or less harmful PM2.5 particulate air pollution caused by either fossil fuels or biomass, and during which season is one or the other higher in the air pollution it produces. During monsoon season, fossil fuels lead in the most PM2.5 releases at 44.3%. When it is not monsoon season and is the winter season, the percentages are way higher for PM2.5 air particulate releases at 41.4% for the remainder of the year. Across the globe, there are now people stepping up to uncover the true and real environmental and health impacts this harmful particulate byproduct causes in different parts of the world and with differring weather conditions than what we see in North Carolina. 

Emissions from Biomass Burning in South/Southeast Asia; correcting the miscalculation about the PM2.5 emissions from burning.

helena.dav

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351209404_PM25_Emissions_from_…;

This study is set in South/Southeast Asia and uncovering that, when trying to count the percentages of PM2.5 put off during biomass, the true amount of emissions were being gravely undercalculated. Specifically rice straw burning becuase the amount burned varied so much because of different harvest and burning practices that it just wasn't taken into consideration. What this study does is go bottom up using these strategies: "subnational spatial database of rice-harvested area, region-specific fuel-loading factors, region, and burning-practice-specific emission and combustion factors, including literature-derived estimates of straw and stubble burned"(Lasko et al. 2021, 1). 

The Clean Air Act and the EPA laws and regulations against harmful PM2.5 air pollutant matter

helena.dav

The most common air pollutants are called criteria pollutants and are regulated by the Clean Air Act and the EPA. These pollutants are: particles, ozone, nitrogen oxides, sulfer dioxide, carbon monoxide, and lead. The EPA have sections under the CAA that help regulate factories and air pollution in the environment. For example section 108 requires the EPA to identify the pollutants that are criteria pollutants, listed above, and determine if where they are coming from and if they "endander public health or welfare". Under section 109 the EPA had to set standards across the board for air pulltion in regard to human health and to the environemtn sperately (Christopher D. Ahlers 2016, 51-52).  There are many more sections that go into detail about what the CAA can do and what the EPA members are required to do as well. 

Ahlers, Christopher D. “Wood Burning, Biomass, Air Pollution, and Climate Change.” Environmental Law 46, no. 1 (2016): 49–104. 

Safe Side Off the Fence

EfeCengiz

The documentary is missing because the documentary is as safe as the fence it mocks in its title.
In the beginning we are asked to bear witness to the construction and use of the most devastation weapon of indiscriminate death the world has ever seen, and all the harm the construction of such a tool, yet its construction and its use is justified near instantaneously by repeating the same old propaganda.
In continuation, we are asked to bear witness to the continuous production of similar weapons and the devastation caused by the mishandling of the waste that accumulated in their production, yet why such a production took place is not only left unquestioned, but simple hints of cold war propaganda is left in their places for safekeeping.
In the end, we are asked to bear witness to a sombre victory, same spectres of patriotism and nation-of-God watching over our shoulder, yet how the pitiful situation of being forced to celebrate even such a small victory is never explored.
To sum up, we are shown people, good people, who struggle against the symptoms of a disease, yet this disease itself never named, nor challenged. It could not have been challenged, as it would force a complete change in their discourse.

If we sincerely would like to critique how the bodies of these workers were made disposable; used, harmed, dislocated and discharged as deemed necessary; if we wish to explore this topic as the necropolitical issue it is, we cannot stop halfway through. This inability to stop chasing connections, relationalities wherever it fits our ideology, is not a call for “objectivism”, it’s a call to respect the term of Anthropocene with all its rhizomatic connections.

An investigation of nuclear waste, that does not factor the use of its product, the socio-political effects of said product, and the historical conditions that even led to the possibility of producing it in such ways and such quantities, are of no use for us.  It cannot penetrate the barrier of capitalist realism. If it could, at least a single mention of workers unions would have existed. Instead, it has confessionals by atomic weapons lawyers whose heart goes out to these workers.
An America that refuse to face up to the fact that it is what it is by the great necropolitical project it led for hundreds of years, I struggle to accumulate sympathy for, what I can easily accumulate is rage however, which this documentary is missing..
Wish the documentary would have at least attempted to say something radical, instead of praising these disposable bodies for being patriotic about it. There are lives who never had false fences built as idols for safety, the collective idols of old America, the patriotic nation under God were built upon their broken bodies, what would you ask of them?