Analyze

The sign pictured talks about 3 heroes.  A moral economy of COVID-19: Essential workers are called heroes in order to justify the risks they must take with their lives.

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?

Looking at a map of the New Orleans area I am struck by how many Wildlife Management Areas there are. I wonder if some of these areas are a result of dealing with spaces that cannot be readily developed due to their geo/eco features rather than explicit pushes for wildlife conservation/creation of green space. In some places it seems that green spaces can be created through spaces being unfit for building (e.g. in Orange County, CA).

Although I'm unable to dig into these spaces at this moment, many questions arise:

How accessible are these spaces to visitors? Are they designed for visitors/for environmental education or are they primarily spaces left alone for wildlife habitat? If they are visited, who uses them and how? (e.g. subsistence fishing and hunting? birding?) When were they officially created/designated? What differences in management exist between the national wildlife areas and state-managed areas? What perceptions exist among New Orleaneans about how these spaces are managed and about state vs. federal management? Has the management of federally-managed spaces changed since the beginning of the Trump administration/with the tumultuous activity within the Department of Interior? What challenges do these spaces face (e.g. ecosystem health/wildlife well-being, human use, land management) with changing eco/atmo conditions?

I found an article announcing the release of an environmental mapping tool meant to improve the process of planning "green infrastructure projects." The tool was developed by the Trust for Public Land (which has also played a role in the rebuilding/repairing of parks/other public green spaces in New Orleans following Katrina) as part of its Climate Smart Cities Initative. The mapping tool draws from numerous sources to put multiple kinds of information in one place (e.g. flood prone areas, head islands).

In April 2016 (the date of this article) the mapping tool was only available to city officials and organizers from the Trust for Public Land. I looked on the Trust for Public Land website to see if it was now accessible to anyone but was unable to find it (the description on the website still says the tool is being developed, though that may be a feature of the webpage not being recently updated). What would it take for such a tool to become something anyone could look at and use?

In 2016 with the debut of this tool, the Gentilly area of New Orleans was stated to be the model space for starting to use this tool, which according to Wikipedia is a predominantly middle-class and racially-diverse neighborhood. The area is right on Lake Pontchartrain. I wonder what the decision-making process was for deciding where to test/develop this tool was and what factors were considered went into making that decision (eco/geo features? socioeconomic conditions? etc.). Has the tool now been expanded to be used in other areas of New Orleans?

I found a document produced by FEMA that details the history of "building" elevation in New Orleans (can be found here). Raising structures above ground was a necessary response to the eco/atmo/geo conditions of the space--it has been a site of major flooding during the past coulpe centuries of European, then Euro-American, inhabitance. Through the 19th century, a lack of adequate drainage is reflected in descriptions of the city that include details of cesspools and trash-filled gutters, with residents collecting drinking water off their roofs. In the early 20th century, these conditions were responded to in the requirements that became part of building code, laying out specifications for how high above ground buildings needed to be built and so on. While elevating buildings was primarily the responsibility of the owner throughout the past 150 years, this document describes how in recent decades federal funding through FEMA and the National Flood Insurance Program has been used to elevate homes beyond just the New Orleanean elite.

As I learn more about the history of this place, I imagine that I may gain a better sense of how this document's narrative is shaped by its source (FEMA), but I found this document interesting to think with regarding the impacts of the anthropocene. Flooding and its effects on structures and infrastructure is simultaneously an old/ongoing feature of this low-lying coastal space and a new feature as patterns of storms/flooding shift and sea level rises. With this long history of building in response to these conditions, what features of New Orleans structures/infrastructure are a model for adapting to the anthropocene? How will changing anthropocenics limit the effectiveness of or make vulnerable some of these systems?

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? 

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? 

An ethnographic moment that stands out to me is when a yearly visitor to the Grand Staircaise Escalante region emphasized the importance of preserving the area under monument status. In a rare moment of recognizing the energy use/demands of even those who are preservation/wilderness proponents, he said "look, I know we have to get our energy from somewhere and maybe for now it's going to be fossil fuels, but please, not here. This place is sacred." Although everyday energy use and the use of petroleum to make such outdoor recreation products as kayaks is occasionally brought into view instead of displaced, these comments are often divorsed from thinking about how people in this area get energy, where the materials extracted from this area go, and what other forms of energy production might replace this extraction. Rather than arguing for a transition of how energy is produced, there seems to be a sense of inevitabilty of extraction but a desire for such industrial processes to be carried out somewhere else.

Thus far I am not sure yet what kinds of organizing there is around energy transition in/for the area. However, there is organizing around trying to "keep fossil fuels in the ground," and organizations such as Grand Staircase Escalante Partners and the Southern Utah Wilderness Association further efforts to keep federally-owned land in southern Utah under protected "national monument" status. However, what appears to be the case is that such efforts are driven more by a desire to keep these landscapes unmarred by fossil fuel extraction processes--i.e. maintaining a "pristine" envrionment--and less focused on discourses about how people in southern Utah or further afield get their energy.

Energy production in southern Utah is varied, but tends to be grouped together. For instance there are many solar generating areas around Cedar City along with a couple geothermal plants, petroleum and natural gas based plants around St. George, coal plants in the middle of the state, and a smattering of hydroelectric plants throughout southern Utah. There is a wind park in Monticello in southeast Utah. Closer to Salt Lake is primarily natural gas and hydroelectric plants. The UNEV pipeline runs the length of the state, from Salt Lake City (where it connects to the Chevron pipeline that runs further north) to Las Vegas, NV.