Analyze

This Blog Post ties together an analysis of societal impacts of climate change, pollution related illnesses, racism, and COVID-19.

In our group we had Dr. Jessica Sewell come speak to us a little while ago about her book Women and the Everyday City and we landed on the topic of “imaginaries of space” for a long time. And the visual politics of space- so how do we notice things? What do we notice? What seems out of place or in place. Thinking about how imaginaries make certain presences completely invisible (thinking here about gendered labor, black labor, and more). And how powerful imaginaries are, how they intersect with our construction of language. But also how resistance can work with these imaginaries.. thinking about women’s sort of take over of dept stores during the suffrage movement as an extension of their private space, a space for organizing. This is long winded way of trying to think through COVID-19 national models in the context of national imaginaries. What has been puzzling me is so many Americans’ response to the Swedish model of governing in Covid and how imaginaries of Sweden have been warped in such a way that there is a complete erasure of how xenophobic policies have gained traction in Sweden in recent years.  

Dualistic attitude of humanity as separate from nature led us to believe that we can dump nuclear waste in a floodplain and it will not affect us. Refusal to trust in ecological processes, hubris of engineering, and faith that we are not subject to natural laws because we are above nature led us to use the land in this way. Ecosystems compromised are innumberable because of the nature of the site--its proximity to water and the porous nature of the karst beneath it. This is still not recognized as a fundamental issue as evidenced by the fact that our solutions to these problems are always based on engineering, attempting to outsmart geography, geology, and physics...never a long-term solution or re-thinking land use practices. 

The arid climatic conditions of much of southern Utah (and the American West more generally) have shaped the landscape in terms of land tenure. Much of the land that remained in federal ownership did so because it went unclaimed through such legislative efforts as the Homestead Act of 1864 and following homestead-related bills due to its lack of suitability for successful agriculture. This same dry climate means that cattle (and other livestock) grazing required massive amounts of space to have adequate vegetation, significantly more than is required in wetter climates. Consequently, successful ranching in this region essentially requires access to public lands, as few individuals would be able to own enough land on which to sufficiently raise cattle. This livelihood has had impacts on the ecological conditions of these spaces, as cattle shape the landscape by reducing vegetation and increasing erosion.

[TBC...]