The speed by which technological society advances could be measured by squaring the achievements of the last generation--that was [Henry] Adams's formula, and that was his law of acceleration. His gauge? The consumptin of coal. [ . . . ] There was Adams admitted, a chaotic upsurge, a "vertiginous violence" associated with such acceleration, but he believed the modern mind could harness that force and use it for good. "At the rate of progress since 1800," wrote Adams, "every American who lived into the year 2000 would know how to control unlimited power. He would think in complexities unimaginable to an earlier mind." But alas, we don't, and we don't.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Losing Lost Mountain
Last night, I finished reading Erik Reece's chronicle of the destruction of one mountain-top in Eastern Kentucky, Lost Mountain. Reece had decided to chronicle, furtively, the process of mountain-top removal mining, month by month. Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness is both beautifully written and heartbreaking, and it reminds us, again, that the costs of coal are always ultimately human, that poverty in America means a real lack of access to free speech and to democracy in general, and that the Bush administration managed to savage federal mining regulations that were in the first place largely symbolic and unenforced. Coal company shills are eager to point out how dependent our current economy is on coal, how those mountain-tops don't serve any purpose (but, on becoming flattened, are suitable for privately-operated prisons, and Wal-Marts), how their wanton poisoning of wells throughout the region is an unhappy side-effect of progress . . . Reece writes:
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11 comments:
I was shocked to see that Reece had found a publisher. I read his piece in Harper's a while back and found it appalling.
It's the sort of sentimental environmentalism that has its own appeal, but not to me. I don't read romance novels either.
I'm very critical of it because it seems to me that this sort of thing, purple prose, pathetic fallacy, moralism, is what turns many off to environmentalism.
Maybe the book is better than the article, but I doubt it.
CKR
Ooh, I'll let Barba comment on that.
I didn't see the piece in Harper's but the book's acknowledgments point gratefully to his editors, especially Sean McDonald at Riverhead, for excising lots of stuff. I won't say McDonald Ezra Pounded it, or anything, but it isn't so purple as you're making the article sound. At least I didn't find it so.
Part of what I found so compelling about the book was its treatment of the relationships between coal companies and politicians in KY, WV, and DC. Too few folks have been made to comprehend the kind of exploitive, anti-democratic politics we condone there. I'm also moved to be reminded that people continue to live in places like these, without drinking water, partly out of necessity, partly out of a reluctance to leave home. I grew up in West Virginia--strip mining is slowly destroying the land near my late grandparents' farm there--and now live in another of the poorest places in the country, in South Texas. I've been to my share of environmental assessment and impact meetings here (regarding the construction of privately-operated prisons); to attend these, to be confronted by a chummy panel of well-dressed industry folks and representatives from the government, inspires a genuine feeling of helplessness within democracy. One begins to believe there is nothing to be done.
So I don't see the harm in Reece's occasional sentimentalism. He's channeled it nicely in the book (it's avoidable, in other words). I'm no fan either, mind you, of the misguidedly sentimental. But nobody's going to be turned off to "environmentalism" (and I'm not persuaded that we need more people committed so whatever it is) by the book. No one who bothers to read it, at any rate. Pathos isn't always or even usually in the employ of fallacy in the book (again, don't know about the article, which makes this a weird kind of discussion we're having . . . it'd be easier for me to read that than for you to read the book, though). I mean, among the biggest challenges we face in really addressing the problems caused by mountain-top removal mining is the incapability of most Americans to identify with folks in Appalachia, people they think they know well as dirty, backward, themselves destructive dwellers on the land. To encourage some empathy can't be so bad, can it?
I see where you're coming from. The book is perhaps purple around the edges, occasionally. It's moralistic. But it also strikes me as profoundly important. I know I respond to it partly because of my feeling for the hills. I'd even entertain the argument that my "feeling for the hills" is just so much socially-constructed hogwash, residual sentimentality confused with my desire not to grow old, or up. But sometimes I just love to see a mountain, like the ridge in Mexico I can see only on the clearest of days down here. It makes me feel right. Sometimes I go with feeling. And damnit, the book moved me in several ways, none of which I'm willing to call inauthentic or contrived.
It's certainly possible that a competent editor could have helped to produce a readable book.
I agree with your (and Reece's) substantive points. As I said in my post, I even liked his framing: watch the mountain being taken apart and consider the implications.
I have mountains to look to from my house. They are lovely and uplifting. They are big enough that nobody's going to take them away, although up in Questa the moly mine made a good run at one of them.
The question is, once you have experienced all those emotions, what do you do about it?
America runs on coal. Probably Reece and certainly many environmentalists don't like nuclear. So we should freeze in the dark?
This is my orientation: I need to be looking to do something about dreadful situations, or I don't see the point of an article (book?) like Reece's. That's probably asking of Reece something he didn't intend, but I think that it's the responsible way to go.
CKR
Cheryl and Barba -
I don't know the Reece book, so I can't speak to that. I do know Barba, though, and I know he's one sharp dude who's not inclined towards letting overly sentimental button-pushing.
One of the seminars I teach is Environmental Ethics. It's a terrific group this semester. Eight grad students, including one who's doing a law degree as well as Policy Master's, one who's a Philosophy PhD student, one who is an enviro engineer grad student, a DC media consultant, and the other Public Policy grad students. The point of saying this is that I can't teach straight-up philosophical ethics (and don't want to), but I do some heavy teaching on the philosophy side relative to what the policy folks expect.
This means that I'm constantly dealing in my courses such as this one with skepticism about deeper environmental ethical claims about valuation and types of value, obligation, justice, critiques of common economic principles, a bit of science, the culture/nature dualism, the nature of experience itself, and so on.
It's usually the engineers who are the most skeptical. Part of the reason, I think, is that they often accept as truisms certain going conceptions of value and certain common ethical frameworks, usually some basic form of utilitarianism with a few dashes of deontology when it comes to more sensitive basic beliefs. In other words, there's often quite a bit to be explored and a lot of assumption-making being tossed around.
Utilitarian economic thinking rules the day in environmental policy. Wrongly so, in my view, since many of the basic assumptions, concepts, and economic tools are incoherent from a philosophical perspective. It also fits nicely with the basic worldview of most the engineers I encounter in these courses.
This isn't to deride engineers. It's to use an example of how certain kinds of value assumptions continue to frame the terms of debate. Even marshmallowy environmentalists understand this when they start to engage with the policy world - you either change your language to the going economic one or you risk ridicule. The only problem is that the human/nature relationship involves more than simply utilitarian instrumental values, which are what orthodox neoclassical economics is built upon.
I hear you, Cheryl. That's why I've moved from philosophy to policy issues. But at the same time, the tools and assumptions of policy-making need a thorough spanking at their conceptual core. I take up that project with alacrity. But I also see that one element of it is the constant discussion of what kind of worldview we wish to hold, what kinds of ideals we want to reconstruct, etc. in regard to the human/environment relationship. Sometimes books like, perhaps, the Reece one do some of that groundwork in a way that may not be immediately practical, but that tests our willingness to let things go to crap.
Doing immediate policy/engineering/etc. work is obviously important: energy issues, environmental conservation balanced with human development, global warming, restoration projects, etc. The problem is when we continue to do so based on faulty economic assumptions that led us down this path in the first place. And then we end up doing hands-on work in a rather reactionary way, rather than getting at the roots of the problems.
So... I'm on both sides of this one.
I'm constantly frustrated by the limitations that require talking about one thing at a time.
Although I'm a scientist who has done a lot of things that look like engineering, I seem to have been born with a quirky way of looking at things, exacerbated by a liberal arts education, that puts me in the position of asking questions that put others on edge. So I know what you're talking about, helmut, when you say that assumptions need to be shaken up, especially those in the neat-and-packaged engineering world.
My objection to Reece's article (don't know about the book) is that it perpetuates old stereotypes through sentimentality--just what you're talking about, but on the humanities side; anyone can play that game. My review was titled "Assumptions."
If I seem overly goal-focused right now, it's because I see a national leadership (both parties) that seems to have no concept of how things get done while stifling any attempts to go outside their limited comprehension. The antithesis of both your points.
I'm contemplating writing a post about management--sounds dull, but it seems to me that it could be something new. And it's really fun when you can do it with a good group of people.
CKR
Cheryl's question, though, ("what do you do about it?") lingers, irritating those of us who aren't planning to be environmental engineers, lawyers. etc. Others in the Chiva household here didn't even want to tell me the book was out; the fear was that it would leave me brooding, fussy, and feeling helpless. But it had a kind of opposite effect. I'm not going solar tomorrow--I should have yesterday given the amount of sunshine we get here. I already knew the biodiesel I make for our VWs isn't a panacea (and please, nobody tell Jim Kunstler I ever thought it was). The book reminded me, however, that in the work I do in my community and in the university where I teach, I can help--albeit in a tiny way--to shape the way people think about what democratic options they actually have in a historically impoverished, under-educated, resource-rich environment (we've got plenty of natural gas down here) that happens also to see, hear, smell, and breathe the transport of billions in NAFTA trinkets passing through each day.
But I've been having an optimistic week. Spring has that effect on all of us, probably. Check back in June, when it's so brutally hot I've given to running our huge central air conditioner 20 hours a day . . .
I meant to say, also: some awareness about toxic sludge ponds throughout KY and WV might help convince some of the traditional environmentalists to reconsider what they think they know about nuclear power. I don't know, however.
Yes, the "what do you do about it?" question is always important. That's what I'm getting at too. I'm simply saying that this question runs at both the practical policy and engineering side at the same time it does the normative side. Mapping the human genome, for instance, doesn't say anything at all about what to do with this new information. The latter is a normative ethical question. An engineer, scientist, economist are not necessarily the best-placed to answer that question, although they should all play some role in answering it. But I see the policy world dominated especially by economic thinking, which does take itself to be the exclsuive position capable of hammering out even the normative question (rather than sticking with the descriptive work it does best, when it does do it well)! Or we get involved in legal disputes that are more about extant property law than about other kinds of values that may provide us with good reasons for leaving natural environments alone or using them in wiser ways.
On the other hand, as a philosopher by training, I'm more than tired of the stale debates in environmental ethics over the nature of intrinsic value, which has been seen as the basis for a genuine environmental ethic that would place normative checks on development done through purely cost-benefit means. I don't think that debate has much to offer any more. But I still appreciate the motives behind it. If you do cost-benefit utilitarian analyses on the mountains you can see in southern Texas or New Mexico or West Virginia, mining these mountains in the name of the greatest benefit for the greatest number is always going to win. So, we're thrown back into the camp of figuring out why just leaving the mountains alone is a value in itself. CBA practitioners make up stuff like "existence value" and methods like contingent valuation to try fit that preservationist impulse into their calculations. But it still doesn't get at what counts because they're ways of quantifying non-quantifiable elements of the natural environment and the human experience of it.
When we look at the more practical question of whether wemine for coal to feed energy appetites or go with nuclear energy, we set up a real dilemma, the one Cheryl's pointing out. But underneath it remains the appetite for energy consumption. That's a much bigger question and an immensely more difficult practical one to resolve. There are times where the immediacy of a problem requires making the best of imperfect alternatives. Even though I'm not a sentimentalist, romantic environmentalist myself, however, I think narratives about environmental damage and protection are just as important for reframing the normative framework through which the more practical questions are viewed. Thoreau did this, Muir did, Leopold did, Carson did, and we're better off for it because we do have what can be called loosely an "environmental consciousness" that's not reducible to simple utilitarian terms. These writers demand a broader look at priorities, needs, and experience out of which arise the methods we do use for practical problem-solving.
[BTW, barba, I love those photos of mariposas y orange blossoms! I once lived in a place that had lemon trees in the backyard. A nice counterpoint to helmut's stinky lemon.]
I can't disagree with anything you both are saying in any big way.
I suspect that different approaches work for different people, or in different circumstances, and I'm willing to go with that. If Reece's book has been tightened up significantly from that dreadful article, it can make the impacts more real to those who are remote from them.
I do think, though, that too uncritical a use of emotion will undermine (has undermined) one's position. The dilemma is that one needs to draw attention and change normative frameworks, and emotion can be part of this. The normative framework I found in Reece's article, however, was one that is common in environmentalist discourse.
It's also not possible to include everything in every piece of writing, so my criticism of his not including the fact that he, and we, depend on that coal to do our writing, is not entirely fair. But letting the esthetic side dominate the discourse means being vulnerable to the criticism of airy-headed impracticality.
A real reworking of the normative framework would have integrated the energy needs with the esthetics. I'm not bright enough to do that here and now.
A few other thoughts here
CKR
to the anonymous that posted the first comment. you are simply ignorant. it is pointless to even spend time trying to explain an issue as complex as this to someone as naive and ignorant as yourself.
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