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From discussions of how to best document virtual strikers, organizers concluded participants should submit images of themselves holding signs of their commitment to fasting for a day with Diane Wilson. The series of images, showing many people from different countries, could create a sense of solidarity despite physical distance. In addition, images can serve as a tool against FPG demonstrating that many people disapprove of the corporation's actions, despite not being present at the in-person rally. Can images, however, form the same level of solidarity or connection that an in-person interaction otherwise would?

“ After extensive hurricane damage fueled in part by a warmer atmosphere and warmer, higher seas, communities in Texas are considering ways to rebuild more resilient infra- structure. In the U.S. Caribbean, govern- ments are developing new frameworks for storm recovery based on lessons learned from the 2017 hurricane season.” (34)

“​​However, Harvey’s total rainfall was likely compounded by warmer surface water temperatures feeding the direct deep tropical trajectories historically associated with extreme precipitation in Texas, and these warmer temperatures are partly attributable to human-induced climate change. Initial analyses suggest that the human- influenced contribution to Harvey’s rainfall that occurred in the most affected areas was significantly greater than the 5% to 7% increase expected from the simple thermodynamic argument that warmer air can hold more water vapor. One study estimated total rainfall amount to be increased as a result of human-induced climate change by at least 19% with a best estimate of 38%, and another study found the three-day rainfall to be approximately 15% more intense and the event itself three times more likely.” (95)

“​​For example, in the Nebraska part of the northern High Plains, small water-table rises occurred in parts of this area, and the net depletion was negligible. In contrast, in the Texas part of the southern High Plains, development of groundwater resources was more extensive, and the depletion rate averaged 1.6 km3/year.” (160)

“In the Southeast (Atlantic and Gulf Coasts), power plants and oil refineries are especially vulnerable to flooding…Nationally, a sea level rise of 3.3 feet (1 m; at the high end of the very likely range under a lower scenario [RCP4.5] for 2100) (for more on RCPs, see the Scenario Products section in App. 3)47 could expose dozens of power plants that are currently out of reach to the risks of a 100-year flood (a flood having a 1% chance of occurring in a given year). This would put an additional cumulative total of 25 gigawatts (GW) of oper- ating or proposed power capacities at risk.48 In Florida and Delaware, sea level rise of 3.3 feet (1 m) would double the number of vulnerable plants (putting an additional 11 GW and 0.8 GW at risk in the two states, respectively); in Texas, vulnerable capacity would more than triple (with an additional 2.8 GW at risk).” (180)

“The Southern Great Plains, composed of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, experiences weather that is dramatic and consequential. Hurricanes, flooding, severe storms with large hail and tornadoes, blizzards, ice storms, relentless winds, heat waves, and drought—its people and economies are often at the mercy of some of the most diverse and extreme weather hazards on the planet. These events cause significant stress to existing infrastructure and socioeconomic systems and can result in significant loss of life and the loss of billions of dollars in property.” (991)

“With the Gulf of Mexico to its southeast, the coastal Southern Great Plains is vulnerable to hurricanes and sea level rise. Relative sea level rise along the Texas Gulf Coast is twice as large as the global average, and an extreme storm surge in Galveston Bay would threaten much of the U.S. petroleum and natural gas refining capacity.” (992)

“The Southern Great Plains ranks near the top of states with structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges, while other bridges are nearing the end of their design life.16,17,18 Road surface degradation in Texas urban centers is linked to an extra $5.7 billion in vehicle operating costs annually (dollar year not reported).15 The region has tens of thousands of dams and levees; however, many are not subject to regular inspection and maintenance and have an average age exceeding 40 years.” (995)

“Along the Texas coastline, sea levels have risen 5–17 inches over the last 100 years, depending on local topography and subsidence (sinking of land).25 Sea level rise along the western Gulf of Mexico during the remainder of the 21st century is likely to be greater than the projected global average of 1–4 feet or more.26 Such a change, along with the related retreat of the Gulf coastline,27 will exacerbate risks and impacts from storm surges.” (996)

“Superimposed on the existing complexities at the intersection of food, energy, and water is the specter of climate change. During 2010–2015, the multiyear regional drought severely affected both agricultural and aquatic ecosystems. One prominent impact was a reduction of irrigation water released for the Texas Rice Belt farmers on the Texas coastal plains, as well as a reduction in the amount of water available to meet instream flow needs in the Colorado River and freshwater inflow needs to Matagorda Bay.” (997)

“The 2017 Texas State Water Plan52 indicates that the growing Texas population will result in a 17% increase in water demand in the state over the next 50 years. This increase is project- ed to be primarily associated with municipal use, manufacturing, and power generation, owing to the projections of population increase in the region.”  (1001)

[See Edwards Aquifer case study on pg. 1002.]

“Between 1982 and 2012, 82 dams failed in Texas, and during 2015 the high-hazard Lew- isville Dam was of concern due to observed seepage.” (1005)

“Within Texas alone, 1,000 square miles of land is within 5 feet of the high tide line, including $9.6 billion in current assessed property value and homes to about 45,000 people. Sensitive assets include 1,600 miles of roadway, several hospitals and schools, 4 power plants, and 254 EPA-listed contamination sites (hazardous waste and sewage).100 Up to $20.9 billion in coastal prop- erty is projected to be flooded at high tide by 2030, and by 2050, property values below the high-water mark are projected to be in excess of $30 billion, assuming current trends of greenhouse gas emissions.” (1005)

“Saltwater intrusion of aquifers has been observed in the Gulf Coast Aquifer, the second most utilized aquifer in Texas, which supports 8 million people. Although this was in part associated with heavy pumping, the Gulf Coast Aquifer remains vulnerable to further saltwater intrusion resulting from SLR and storm surge exacerbated by climate change.” (1006)

“In August 2016, a historic flood resulting from 20 to 30 inches of rainfall over several days devastated a large area of southern Louisiana, causing over $10 billion in damages and 13 deaths. More than 30,000 people were rescued from floodwaters that damaged or destroyed more than 50,000 homes, 100,000 vehicles, and 20,000 businesses. In June 2016, torrential rainfall caused destructive flooding throughout many West Virginia towns, damaging thousands of homes and businesses and causing considerable loss of life. More than 1,500 roads and bridges were damaged or destroyed. The 2015–2016 El Niño poured 11 days of record-setting rainfall on Hawai‘i, causing severe urban flooding.” (67)

“Increases in baseline sea levels expose many more Gulf Coast refineries to flooding risk during extreme weather events. For example, given a Category 1 hurricane, a sea level rise of less than 1.6 feet (0.5 m)47 doubles the number of refineries in Texas and Louisiana vulnerable to flooding by 2100 under the lower scenario (RCP4.5).” (181)

“Many urban locations have experienced disruptive extreme events that have impacted the transportation network and led to societal and economic consequences. Louisiana experienced historic floods in 2016 that disrupted all modes of transportation and caused adverse impacts on major industries and businesses due to the halt of freight movement and employees’ inability to get to work. The 2016 floods that affected Texas from March to June resulted in major business disruption due to the loss of a major transportation corridor.147 In 2017, Hurricane Harvey affected population and freight mobility in Houston, Texas, when 23 ports were closed and over 700 roads were deemed impassable.” (498)

“​​Communities in Louisiana and New Jersey, for example, are already experiencing a host of negative environmental exposures coupled with extreme coastal and inland flooding.” (548)

“An example of the effects of rising sea levels can be found in Louisiana, which faces some of the highest land loss rates in the world. The ecosystems of the Mississippi River Delta provide at least $12–$47 billion (in 2017 dollars) in benefits to people each year.155 These benefits include hurricane storm protection, water supply, furs, habitat, climate stability, and waste treatment. However, between 1932 and 2016, Louisiana lost 2,006 square miles of land area (see Case Study “A Lesson Learned for Community Resettlement”),211 due in part to high rates of relative sea level rise” (775)

“The flood events in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2016 and in South Carolina in 2015 provide real examples of how vulnerable inland and coastal communities are to extreme rainfall events.” (785)

“Hurricane Harvey was a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale when it made landfall on the central Texas coast near Rockport late in the evening of August 25, 2017. It then moved inland, stalled, and eventually moved back over the coastal Gulf of Mexico waters before making landfall a final time as a tropical storm several days later in southwestern Louisiana.” (992)

“The State of Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority’s 2017 Coastal Master Plan has more than 100 struc- tural and coastal restoration projects designed to provide benefits over the next decade and up to 50 years into the future.” (1320)

“Louisiana’s Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast has five broad objectives: reduce economic losses from flooding, promote sustainable coastal ecosystems, provide coastal habitats that support commerce and recreation, sustain the region’s unique cultural heritage, and contribute to the regional and national economy by promoting a viable working coast. The plan contains actions  that advance all five objectives, reflecting a set of tradeoffs broadly acceptable to diverse communities in the face of hazards, including coastal subsidence (sinking land) and sea level rise.” (1323)

Ch. 23, Southern Great Plains (Texas): This chapter provides five (four listed below) key messages about the climate of and climate change in the southern great plains region:

1. Food, energy, water resources - Changes in water supply due to climate change are intersecting with changes in water demand due to food, water, and energy consumption. 

2. Infrastructure - the built environment is vulnerable to climate change. Along the gulf coast of Texas, sea level rise in the coming years is a major concern. 

3. Ecosystems and ecosystem services - aquatic ecosystems are impacted by extreme weather events. Not all aquatic species can adapt. 

4. Human health - Increased temperatures that cause disease transmission and an increase in extreme events that cause injury and displacement are projected in the coming years. 

Ch. 19, Southeast (Louisiana): This chapter provides four (two listed below) key messages about the climate of and climate change in the southeastern U.S.:

1. Urban infrastructure and health risks - Cities in the southeast are particularly vulnerable to heat, flooding, and disease risk due to climate change. 

2. Increasing flood risks in coastal and low-lying regions - Low lying regions are susceptible to flooding due to extreme rainfall and sea level rise.

While I found the article illuminating (I did not read the book), I am frustrated by, what I found, to be the hegemonic visions of political theory and climate change. Is there no space for feminist epistemological stances when imagining future forms of governance? Even their presentation of Climate X--what seemed to me like a quest for a unifying theory of opposition that is neither realistic nor reflects the how resistence movements however stuttering they may be are also a source of possibility and hope.

I wonder about global corporations and how they might relate to the described US-UN-Western-Elite Climate Leviathan verus Behemoth on the Capitalist side. They already operate beyond nation-state territorial scope. Just from where I'm situated, I've heard a lot of people praising tech companies in the US for being the first to call for work-from-home. Facebook's Data for Good COVID mapping that Tim sent around also looks like a start of a global panopticon that already has the capacity to be monitoring a huge number of people's travel and symptoms, beyond state divisions, in fact explicitly in part because Facebook does not trust state data, and it does not need buy-in at a UN kind of event. People are already consenting in degrees to have Facebook "collect" and aggregate their data for the fun, validation, convenience, etc. of being on social media. As the Western Elite governments go to Behemoth, are the corporations of those elite places the ones to carry on the idea of Leviathan? 

This article also brought to mind a haunting story that I first heard from a fancy robotics professor of a "Noah's Ark" for Elon Musk. I haven't quite figured out how that fits yet with the chart of possibilites offered in the article.

I second Prerna's frustration about citation and writing like one is the first person to think of something. 

I admire Mann and Wainwright for taking on the impossible task of coming up with a political theory for climate justice. Their strength lies in how they inadvertently reveal the stubbornness of Leviathan, or liberal democracy. But I must question when abstractions turn into reifications. Like any political theory, it would of course rouse passions and frustrations, so here are mine.

(1)  The political theory of the state that Mann and Wainwright build on follows the tradition(s) of Hobbes, Hegel, Marx, and Walter Benjamin. If we are to limit ourselves in these traditions, there is a still a lot of space to talk about them that Mann and Wainwright keep open. I am intrigued by the phrases "a world without sovereignty is no world at all", and "democracy undoes the very possibility of rule", which reveal how stubborn our political imaginations are. In the construction of these phrases, a world without sovereignty and democracy is not recognizably a world. I think they are quite right here. I hope to explore in my own project the tensions they point out, that this moment reinforces in such a monstrous way: "Leviathan, whether in the Old Testament or in even oldermyths, was never a captive of its conjurer’s will, and remains at large today, prowling between nature and the supernatural, sovereign and subject." (1)

(2) The most obvious critique I have is their lack of imagination for where learning can come from. Their four climate scenarios assume a bipolar world of Asia and United States. Take for example, this quote: "In contrast to sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America, for example, only in Asia—and only with some revolutionary leadership from China—do we find the combination of factors that make climate Mao realizable: massive and marginalized peasantries and proletariats, historical experience and ideology, existing state capacity, and skyrocketing carbon emissions." (10)

The phrase in contrast leaves Africa and Latin America as places without coordinational capacity. We have to remember that the Haitian Revolution  happened in the Caribbean in 1791, a successful proleteriat revolution against a colonial state which had degraded both ecology and humanity. Admittedly the challenges are different in scale and scope today, but we have to be careful about the biases we reveal when we abstract. 

(3) So, where can learning come from? As I write in my annotation on the T-STS COVID project: "The question of political organizing and mobilizing in times of crisis therefore needs to build on movements and organizing that have resulted out of long histories of exclusion. How does movement-building look like to those who have learned to organize in a state that was to them mostly oppressive and withdrawn? Corinna Mullin and Azadeh Shahshahani (2020) reflect on what a transnational perspective on movement-building and organizing looks like. Their excellent article points to early Black radical internationalism and organizations, indigenous internationalism, the international peasant and ecological movement of Via Campesina, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, Black for Palestine and The Red Nation movements, for example. In short, we have much to learn from responses by ongoing anti-imperialist movements during COVID-19 which have called for cancellation of neocolonial debt, land repatriation, reconfiguration of gig and hustle economies, just to give a few examples." Where else can we find examples to build on?

(4) So, the world that I live in is not polar, nor is it confined to territorial nation-states. Does it still make sense to speak of the US as representative of liberal democracy? And does liberal democracy mean rule without terror? Mann and Wainwright contrast "Euro-American liberal hegemony" to the "necessity of a just terror" that climate Mao asserts (9). Further, they distinguish the mechanisms of "neoliberal contagion" from global climate change, as if the two operate on separate floating spheres (3). However, as Inderpal Grewal argues in Saving the Security State (2017) and Jasbir Puar argues in The Right to Maim (2017), the security state cannot be separated from the transnational parastatal humanitarian complex that has emerged to address global climate change, among other things. These parastatal organizations work within the contradictions of neoliberalism: benefiting from withdrawing of the state and the increased capacity of the state to surveil (as the COVID19 pandemic sadly shows too) and make citizens which see themselves as exceptional liberals if they participate in that complex. They maintain the US empire and benefit from it. Is there space to talk about present-day imperial projects in political theory about climate activism?

(5) I wished they would have cited and learned from other people who have been saying these things for a long time. Is my wish for them to "talk about everything"? No, my wish for them is to stop speaking as if they are the first ones to speak about this. A footnote would have sufficed. And that is my frustration. 

"Leviathan, whether in the Old Testament or in even oldermyths, was never a captive of its conjurer’s will, and remains at large today, prowling between nature and the supernatural, sovereign and subject." (1) [I like this quote because it displays what I think is fundamental about how we think about governance: mapping nature/supernatural onto sovereign and subject. Do different mapping exist?]

"Yet far more than the neoliberal contagion of financial crisis and market disorders, it is global climate change that has produced the conditions in which “the paradigm of security as the normal technique of government” is being solicited at a scale and scope hitherto unimaginable." (3) [In what ways do Mann and Wainwright view neoliberal contagion as different from global climate change?]

"Do we have a theory for revolution in the name of climate justice? Do we have a theory of how capitalist nation-states are transforming as a consequence of planetary change?" (3) [They argue that the answer to both is negative, necessitating a political theory]

"We posit that two variables will shape the coming political-economic order. The first is whether the prevailing economic formation will continue to be capitalist or not... The second is whether a coherent planetary sovereign will emerge or not. The question here is whether sovereignty will be reconstituted for the purposes of planetary management" [This is their argument: linking sovereignty to planetary management. The planetary sovereign would not inly act at the scale of Earth's atmosphere, but for the sake of life on it.]

"Our central thesis is that the future of the world will be defined by Leviathan, Behemoth, Mao, and X, and the conflicts between them... To say the least, the continuing hegemony of existing capitalist liberal democracy cannot be safely assumed." (5) 

"Climate Mao is marked by the emergence of a non-capitalist Leviathanic domestic authority along Maoist lines" [what does "domestic authority" mean here?]

 "In contrast to sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America, for example, only in Asia—and only with some revolutionary leadership from China—do we find the combination of factors that make climate Mao realizable: massive and marginalized peasantries and proletariats, historical experience and ideology, existing state capacity, and skyrocketing carbon emissions." [positioning Africa and Latin America as places of lack, from where learning cannot take place. They mention the Cochabamba revolution but I do not get why they think it cannot be a model?] (10)

"The contrast with religion provides an important way to conceptualize the challenge presented by climate Leviathan, since X could be seen as an irreligious movement in place of a religious structure. Climate X is worldly and structurally open: a movement of the community of the excluded that affirms climate justice and popular freedoms against capital and planetary sovereignty" (17)

"For Hegel, the monarch or the sovereign is "political consciousness in the flesh"... for Schmitt, it is constituted in the act of decision.. the political cannot pre-exist sovereignty. A world without sovereignty is no world at all" (18) 

"Hegel and Schmitt are right—democracy undoes the very possibility of rule. For them, of course, this is democracy’s great failure; for Marx, and for climate X, however, it is its great promise." (18)

"The politics Benjamin impugns here—faith in progress; confidence in mass basis; servile integration into apparatus—are precisely those of our three opponents in the struggle ahead: Leviathan’s ethos is the faith in progress; Mao’s is confidence in the masses; Behemoth is the integration into the security apparatus of terror" (19) [summary of what each of three scenarios stand for]

The aspirations of the Transnational Disaster STS COVID-19 project are similar to those of Climate Leviathan: to understand the range of political possibilities -- what could be called styles of governance -- that are emerging as COVID-19 unfolds.  We are reaching for what could be called COVID-X: 

P1: "While there is much justifiable attention to the ecological implications of global climate change, the political implications are just as important for human well- being and social justice. We posit a basic framework by which to understand the range of political possibilities, in light of the response of global elites to climate warming and the challenges it poses to hegemonic institutional and conceptual modes of governance and accumulation. The framework also suggests some possible means through which these responses might be thwarted, and political stakes in that construction of a new hegemony—which, to avoid suggesting we know or can yet determine the form it will take, we call “climate X”."

Mann and Wainwright give us four choices -- four hegemonic formations, each defined by “a mode of appropriation and distribution through which that hegemony is exercised: a capitalist climate Leviathan; an anti-capitalist, state-centered climate Mao; a reactionary capitalist Behemoth; and anti-capitalist, anti-sovereign climate X. They go on to say:  “Our central thesis is that the future of the world will be defined by Leviathan, Behemoth, Mao, and X, and the conflicts between them."  

What do cultural analysts bring to this? What if Mann and Wainwright’s hegemonic  formulations were thought of more extensively and discursively -- as the “problem-spaces” that David Scott draws out in Conscripts of Modernity (2004). Scott describes problem-spaces as the discuruvie context of articulation -- what sets up argument and stages intervention:

A problem-space, in other words, is an ensemble of questions and answers around which a horizon of identifiable stakes (conceptual as well as ideological-political stakes) hangs. That is to say, what defines this discursive context are not only the particular problems that get posed as problems as such (the problem of ‘‘race,’’ say), but the particular questions that seem worth asking and the kinds of answers that seem worth having. (4)

Also see David Scott’s discussion of problem spaces in an exchange with Stuart Hall. 

Now, a “problem-space” (and obviously I’m severely compressing here) is first of all a conjunctural space, a historically constituted discursive space. This discursive conjuncture is defined by a complex of questions and answers—or better, a complex of statements, propositions, resolutions and arguments offered in answer to largely implicit questions or problems. Or to put this another way, these statements and so on are moves in a field or space of argument, and to understand them requires reconstructing that space of problems that elicited them…. I have wanted it to help us determine not only what the questions were that an author in a particular problem-space was responding to, but whether these questions continue in our new conjuncture to be questions worth responding to.

This, then, suggests how we could think in terms of the (four) narrative alternatives that Hayden White maps out in Metahistory, and about the thought-styles (Fleck) and modes of evidence through which different hegemonies consolidate.   This, in part, is what our “COVID-watch” would focus on.  

This way of reading would not only leverage cultural analysis but also makes education a critical arena of action - in a manner that doesn’t necessarily recuperarte the modernist subject.  Education --  and “the university “ -- is where we learn to question ways “the problem” is formulated, thus staging and legimating particular modes of response.  Security can be rendered in many different ways, for example.