environment

Global fire, fear and the good fire

October 20, 2020 / climate change, environment, podcasts / , ,

I’ve blogged before about the emerging fire crisis, which has only become even more worrying over the last years. Recent fires swept through the entire West Coast, where many of my students, colleagues and family were affected. Given the multiple crises in the United States at the moment, I’m not sure how timely it is to address this topic now. But the fires aren’t going away in coming years.

Wildfire smoke in Healdsburg, California in September 2020. Photo by Chiara Nicastro.

To understand these fires better, there are two amazing podcasts that are worth listening too, even during the pandemic. The first is called Good Fire by Amy Cardinal Christianson and Matthew Kristoff. It looks at how Indigenous peoples have used their knowledge around the world to create better and safer environments. While much of that knowledge was lost or suppressed, it’s not all gone, and can still be revived. For me, this podcast emphasized that there is not only one science, and that Indigenous sciences and knowledge are critical to our efforts to address global crises. Grace Dillon recently talked about Indigenous knowledge in her podcast interview with me on Indigenous Futurism, in case anyone wants to dive more deeply into this topic. Good Fire provides a truly global introduction to Indigenous fire knowledge, that reaches from Brazil and Venezuela to Australia.

The second podcast that I want to recommend is CBC’s World on Fire, which itself references Good Fire. The hosts carefully discuss the history, science and global trends that define fire. It’s an engrossing podcast, filled with interviews and first person accounts. I know that during the pandemic people are doom-scrolling on Twitter, but many others are seeking to retreat from the world. But these two podcasts are worth investing some attention when you’re ready. Both podcasts are available on Apple podcasts, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms.

Photo of the California wildfire’s smoke by Chiara Nicastro.

If anyone wishes to read further, I also recommend Edward Struzik’s Firestorm: how wildfire will shape our future. Although book was written from a Canadian perspective -it begins with detailed coverage of the immense 2016 wild fire in Fort McMurray, Alberta- he spends a great deal of time examining why wildfires have become so much more deadly in North America’s recent past. Struzik also covers how Indigenous peoples managed the land, and lessened the risks of wildfires. The book provides a good complement to these two podcasts.

Shawn Smallman

Indigenous burial ground near Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The white haze is smoke from the September 2020 fires in California, Oregon and Washington. Photo by Elle Wild.

Hope even for Chernobyl

July 1, 2019 / energy, environment / , ,

When the accident happened at Chernobyl’s #4 reactor in April 1986, it changed how people viewed nuclear power forever. Of course, there had already been the accident at the Three Mile Island power plant in the United States. But that was not the same as the meltdown that created a 4,000 square mile exclusion zone across the borders of what are now Belarus and Ukraine. The meltdown has become such a trope in popular culture that there is now even a horror movie about what has happened there in the aftermath. …

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The future of Global Warming

October 8, 2018 / climate change, environment /

I’ve talked before on this blog about the danger of teaching a Global Studies course as an introduction to global problems. Why would anyone want to study a field that consists of a long-list of overwhelming challenges? For this reason, I’m always careful to provide examples of people making a difference, alternative pathways, and positive information, even when discussing difficult topics. This approach, however, is increasingly infeasible for me when it comes to the question of climate change.

Crawford Kilian is a Canadian author who writes frequently for the left-wing online newspaper, The Tyee, which is located in British Columbia, Canada. Most of his posts address science or policy questions. On August 15, 2018 he had an article, “If we can’t stop hothouse Earth, we’d better learn to live on it.” In the piece, Kilian examined two recent science articles, which both depict a catastrophic future for the planet, in which vast areas of heavily populated land become uninhabitable, while the coasts face astounding degrees of sea level rise. Of course, two articles do not on their own provide a definitive view of the future. But I do think that Kilian’s piece bears reading. the question is, if this information is accurate, how should this change our teaching in the field? How do have students think critically about these issues in our classes, without shutting down emotionally, or retreating into denial? Given the primacy of this issue in our children’s futures, how should this reshape our courses?

Shawn Smallman, 2018

Fracking and Canada’s Oil Sands

August 7, 2018 / energy, environment / , ,

Syncrude Mildred Lake Plant. “This is a picture of Syncrude’s base mine. The yellow structures are the bases of pyramids made of sulphur – it is not economical for Syncrude to sell the sulphur so it stockpiles it instead. Behind that is the tailings pond, held in by what is recognized as the largest dam in the world. The extraction plant is just to the right of this photograph and most of the mine is to the left.” By TastyCakes is the photographer, Jamitzky subsequently equalized the colour. (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
In 2003 I wrote an article, “Canada’s New Role in North American Energy Security,” which examined Canada’s growing importance to U.S. energy security. This paper was written in the context of 9/11, and looking back I wish that I had talked much more about the environmental costs of this resource. In the years since, so much has changed. Canada’s oil has become a stranded resource. Indeed, Alberta is so unhappy with the opposition to an oil pipeline by its provincial neighbor, British Columbia, that it briefly banned the sale of B.C. wine.

The fundamental issue, however, for the oil sands is not the pipeline policy of BC, but rather the underlying economics. The fracking revolution has remade the finances of oil. It’s true that Canada remains the top oil exporter to the United States. Still, the financial value of its exports fell 47.5% between 2016 and 2017 (this is the dollar value, not the number of barrels shipped). Indeed, the drops in the value of petroleum sales were even larger for other major oil suppliers to the United States. Venezuela, the third largest oil exporter to the United States, saw it’s sales fall a staggering 71.8% during the same period, while Mexico’s fell 79.3%, according the website “worldstopexports.” The truth is that focusing on pipelines to the Pacific is rather like improving buggies to compete with Ford as the auto industry developed, which no less true for being a meme.

The Tyee is an online newspaper with good coverage of West Coast politics and society in Canada from a left-wing perspective. Mitchell Anderson has a wonderful article titled “Only Fantasies, Desperation and Wishful Thinking Keep Pipeline Plans Alive.” While Anderson’s article reflects the paper’s ideological leanings, the overall analysis shows the folly of trying to rely on this resource, at a time that global energy markets are undergoing a massive change, and coastal regions are trying to plan for sea level rise. With the rise of electric cars, the falling costs of utility scale batteries, and the growth of fracking, the energy landscape has change dramatically from 2003. No ban on BC wine is going to undo the dramatic changes in U.S. oil demand, and the United States will remain Canada’s main energy market internationally. While Albertans must rethink and diversify, they are only one player amongst many, which are struggling to adapt to new global realities.

Shawn Smallman, 2018

Book Review: Retreat from a Rising Sea

May 21, 2018 / climate change, environment, oceans / , , , ,

Citation: From the public domain source, the US EPA (2014): “This figure shows average absolute sea level change, which refers to the height of the ocean surface, regardless of whether nearby land is rising or falling. Satellite data are based solely on measured sea level, while the long-term tide gauge data include a small correction factor because the size and shape of the oceans are changing slowly over time. […]The shaded band shows the likely range of values, based on the number of measurements collected and the precision of the methods used.
By US EPA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Pilkey, Orrin H., et al. Retreat from a Rising Sea : Hard Decisions in an Age of Climate Change. Columbia University Press, 2016.

As I’ve worked on the previous editions of our textbook with Kim Brown, I’ve become increasingly convinced that it’s important for educators to recognize that our task is not only to teach about how humanity can prevent global warming, but also how humanity will need to adapt to climate change. There is now so much additional CO2 in the atmosphere that we are committed to global warming for generations to come. Perhaps no environmental impact will affect people as much rising sea levels, which is the central theme of Retreat from a Rising Sea. …

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Hope, Fusion and the Future

August 25, 2017 / energy, environment / , , ,

“This image shows the Sun as viewed by the Soft X-Ray Telescope (SXT) onboard the orbiting Yohkoh satellite.” By NASA Goddard Laboratory for Atmospheres and Yohkoh Legacy data Archive [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
As a kid growing up in Southern Ontario in the early 80s, I enjoyed listening to a science program called “Quirks and Quarks,” on CBC radio. Imagine my surprise to find that -thanks to the wonders of podcasts- I could still listen to this program, which is as good as it ever was. One recent episode, “Let there be Light,” compares two different approaches to fusion. In France, ITER is a $20 billion project which has entailed 35 years of cooperation amongst multiple nations. The reason why this investment makes sense is that fusion would create a virtually limitless supply of energy, without the danger of either nuclear meltdowns or the long-term storage of nuclear waste. In contrast, a Canadian start-up has a radically different and smaller plan. What’s most interesting to me about this brief podcast (14:08 minutes) is the scientists discussion of the level of resources required to develop fusion. They contrast this amount with the $200 billion that Qatar may spend to host the World Cup. There is hope for a radically different energy system, if we as a civilization are prepared to make the required investments.

Shawn Smallman, 2017

Hope and Fear in the Amazon

April 19, 2017 / environment, Latin America / , , ,

Macaw in the Amazon, taken by Shawn Smallman
Macaw in the Amazon, taken by Shawn Smallman

In the 1980s the global media gave extensive coverage to deforestation in Amazonia. Over the last thirty years, there has been a significant decline in media attention to this topic, which partly reflects very real progress that Brazil and neighboring countries have made in slowing deforestation. Still, the problem remains. In 2014, Brazil decided not to sign a UN agreement to defend forests.

I’ve been teaching a course on Amazonian history for 20 years, and I’ve never found such a good classroom resource on the topic as this storyboard by the Council on Foreign Relations. The storyboard combines small amounts of text, with imagery and short videos to place the issue into historical context. Many of the pages are dynamic; that is, there is movement in the background. Some of the maps are excellent. I also particularly liked the successive aerial shots of forest in the Brazilian state of Rondonia over ten year increments.

One weakness is that the storyboard focuses only on Brazil. While Brazil is the country that on its own has the largest Amazonian territories, it would have been useful to have more information on Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela as well. I also personally believe that dams are perhaps the greatest environmental threat in the region, and would like to have seen more coverage of this issue in the storyboard. Still, for any class that addresses environmental issues, this would be a great link in a course shell.

Shawn Smallman, 2017

The problem with de-extinction

August 2, 2016 / environment /

"This photo is of a pair of Thylacines, a male and female, received from Dr. Goding in 1902." By Baker; E.J. Keller. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
“This photo is of a pair of Thylacines, a male and female, received from Dr. Goding in 1902.” By Baker; E.J. Keller. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
In my “Introduction to International Studies” course my students this spring watched a TED talk by Stewart Brand that discussed the idea of bringing back extinct species. This idea has attracted a great deal of media attention, but major challenges remain As my students pointed out, there is distinction between bringing back an individual and bringing back a population. Population geneticists typically say that the minimum size for a viable population is fifty genetically distinct individuals. Even if one thylacine or passenger pigeon could be brought back, how could a population with sufficient genetic diversity be recreated? What would the experience of an individual animal that was brought back be like, if it was the sole member of its species in existence?

My students also asked the question: “Where do we draw the line in terms of time?” Do we bring back passenger pigeons? What about mammoths? Other ancient species?

Still, work in this area is moving forward quickly. Scientists are working to insert the DNA of mammoths into elephants, which might succeed in creating a viable population, although they note that much work remains. Would such an animal, however, truly be a mammoth? Efforts that do not depend on cloning –such as the TaurOs project, to restore the auroch- seem much more likely to achieve success. Despite the accelerating rate of technology, I believe that deextinction is more distant than most media coverage might suggest. Of course, I would love to be wrong, and to be able to travel to Tasmania to view thylacines in the wild.

My students, however, often suggested that more effort should be put into preserving existing species, such as the California condor, before investing in reclaiming lost animals. One of my students said that this technology should be used to help save the northern white rhino, for which there are no breeding pairs in existence. While students loved the idea of seeing extinct animals brought back, they felt that the environments in which they lived had to first be preserved for this effort to be meaningful.

That said, a few students felt very strongly that all of humanity had a strong moral responsibility to bring these species back. Some students also argued that bringing back extinct animals will also benefit entire ecosytems, so that the impact on the species alone wasn’t the major issue. One point that all students seemed to agree upon was that there is a difference between a species that has recently gone extinct due to humanity’s influence, and ancient species. Nobody wanted to see dinosaurs brought back.

Shawn Smallman, 2016

A Hidden Wonder in Brazil

November 16, 2018 / environment / , , ,

It’s not true that the age of discovery is over, and everything worth knowing has already been found. We live in an age of revelations, such as the resting site of one of the ships from the lost Franklin expedition, an immense canyon in Greenland, and an unknown tapir in the Amazon. How can an mammal that travels in groups and weighs 200 pounds have remained undiscovered for so long? What is remarkable is the pace of the discoveries.  A new species of wolf has just been revealed in the Himalaya. Three new species of lemurs were discovered by researchers at the University of Kentucky. Multiple new species were just discovered in the ocean off of Atlantic Canada. Still, all of these discoveries are less surprising than the recent announcement that a coral reef exists at the mouth of the Amazon. The reef is the size of Delaware. Part of the reason that it hasn’t been studied before was that nobody thought that such a reef could exist in the fresh water and heavy sediments that pour into the ocean from the river. If we can miss an ecosystem 600 miles long (965 kilometers) long, what else is out there that we’re missing?

If you are interested in Latin America, you might wish to read either my book on the region’s AIDS epidemic, or my study of military terror in Brazil.

Shawn Smallman, 2016

Dutch Ruling on Climate Change

June 25, 2015 / environment / , ,

A Dutch court has required that the government impose mandatory carbon cuts. This is not the first such suit, as others are pending elsewhere in Europe. This article by Lauren McCauley describes the ruling, and the impact that it is likely to have. Environmental groups are now planning to bring similar suits across the globe.

Prof. Smallman, Portland State University

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