By Christine Shearer, Left Eye on Books

Posted on May 23, 2011

Humans have stolen their future. Now what?

Don’t be fooled by the title of Kari Marie Norgaard’s Living in Denial – this is not a book about people who reject the basic science of climate change (I’m looking at you, Koch brothers and Exxon). This is a book about many of us, and how we to varying degrees live in denial. Although focusing on a small rural community in Norway, Norgaard sheds light on how people systematically interact in ways that serve to downplay or ignore climate change, and avoid the unsettling emotions it raises.

In the Introduction, Norgaard says she is looking at climate change to build a model of socially organized denial, where denial is not just an individual, psychological process, but one that occurs through social interaction. By denial, she means Stanley Cohen’s three varieties of denial: literal, interpretive, and implicatory. Literal is outright dismissal of information (i.e. climate change deniers). Interpretive means reinterpretation of information (perhaps thinking climate change is natural, or will not be that bad).

Implicatory is Norgaard’s main focus, meaning the information is not rejected but the psychological, political, or moral implications are not followed. This is the heart of the book: why those who know about climate change fail to act on that knowledge. In that sense, Norgaard is not interested in climate change activists, but why so many who accept the science don’t act, and how this inaction becomes a cultural norm (similar to what political theorist Antonio Gramsci calls hegemony).

Norgaard explores the topic of social denial through interviews and ethnography in Bygdaby, Norway, from 2000-1. Bygdaby is a small rural community of about 14,000 people, with many farms and a strong sense of tradition, yet also firm roots to the modern world, including the fact that 34% of Norway’s national revenues came from petroleum in 2008.

Although gaining so much of its wealth from oil, Norgaard tells us that neither the country nor the town of Bygdaby has the well-financed climate denial operations that other countries have, most notably the U.S. That makes Bygdaby an interesting case study, since most of the residents, Norgaard tells us, accept the science of climate change, meaning much of the inaction here is apparently not due to simply literal denial.

In exploring the topic, Norgaard makes use of many different bodies of research in the social sciences and psychology. The work is nicely blended with her ethnographic research to illustrate the subtle ways in which individuals engage in social norms of selective attention to avoid uncomfortable feelings, crystallizing as cultural nonmobilization on climate change.

Much of these processes are not necessarily conscious nor deliberate, so in focusing attention on them, Norgaard helps make them conscious. In doing so, the book offers insights into underlying social and psychological barriers to action that – to my knowledge – have not been widely considered or discussed, yet arguably represent some of the biggest challenges to addressing climate change.

Norgaard notes many different ways that the social organization of denial works – she later calls it a kaleidoscope. Among them is the sheer enormity of the problem of climate change, one that can leave people feeling powerlessness, as individual actions appear insufficient and political actions seem so untenable. Thus bringing up climate change can feel like it accomplishes little more than bringing down the social mood of a group, kind of like Debbie Downer from Saturday Night Live: “Sure, it’s a beautiful, sunny day, because the planet is cooking us alive.” Wah-waaah!

Acknowledging climate change also immediately invites questions over how you live. Unless you have a zero waste home run by solar power with an organic garden and a bike, then you probably use fossil fuels, which invites criticism about hypocrisy – criticism that is somehow null and void if you just do not bring up climate change at all.

The result is that climate change is often only discussed during socially sanctioned times and settings, like classrooms. Yet it is in the fabric of everyday life that the problem is woven and changes need to be made.

Though focused on denial, Norgaard’s work indirectly raises the question of how and why people become active and push for social change. Norgaard says that most people in Bygdaby probably understand at least the basics of climate change science: increasing greenhouse gases trap heat and warm the planet. But does level of awareness – both cognitively and emotionally – make a difference in individual response? What if more people connected increasing greenhouse gases with daily weather events? (How to change the minds of people who deny the science outright is an entirely different matter, as science writer Chris Mooney recently laid out.)

For example, a recent Yale study found significant differences in how groupings of people respond to climate change, suggesting more variation between individuals than Living in Denial explores. This could be a function of place (the Yale study looked at the U.S.) and also time, as the science on climate change grows more alarming, and its everyday effects become more apparent.

But Norgaard’s main point is showing how a group of well-meaning people can be both aware of climate change and not addressing the problem – how they interact in ways that push climate change out of the range of full attention and action. In that way, it speaks to many of us. As we become more aware of the subtle ways in which we collectively avoid the unsettling reality of climate change, will we change our actions to align with the knowledge? Or will we continue living in denial?

Christine Shearer is a researcher for CoalSwarm, part of SourceWatch, and a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at UC Santa Barbara. She is managing editor of Conducive, and author of the forthcoming book, “Kivalina: A Climate Change Story” (Haymarket Books, 2011).

© 2011 Left Eye on Books All rights reserved.

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April 25, 2011

Preserving a Psychopathic Tradition?

By WALTER BRASCH

A moral imbecile proclaiming his status to the world. Depravity in the name of pastimes and "sport" in modern America. Of course neither politicians nor local clergy, nor the media, have ever done anything about it.

Take a pigeon.

Now put that pigeon, along with thousands of others, into small coops that don’t give the bird much freedom to move.  Don’t worry about food or water. It won’t matter.

Take some of the pigeons—who are already disoriented from hours, maybe days, of confinement—and place a couple of them each into spring-loaded box traps on a field. 

About 20 yards behind the traps have people with 12-gauge shotguns line up.
Release the pigeons and watch juveniles disguised in the bodies of adults shoot these non-threatening birds. Most of the birds will be shot five to ten feet from the traps; many, dazed and confused, are shot while standing on the ground or on the tops of cages. Each shooter will have the opportunity to shoot at 25 birds, five birds each in five separate rounds.

About a fourth of the birds will be killed outright. Most of the rest will be wounded. Teenagers will race onto the fields and grab most of the wounded birds. They will wring their necks or stuff them still alive into barrels to die from suffocation.

Some birds will be able to fly outside the killing field, only to die a slow and painful death in nearby yards, roofs, or rivers. A few will live.

Now, do it again. And again. And again. All day long. At the “state shoot” in Berks County, about 5,000 birds were launched from 27 boxes on three killing fields.

And, just to make sure that you’re a macho macho man, why not stuff a bird onto a plastic fork and parade around the grounds? How about wearing a T-shirt with language so nauseating that even Cable TV would have to blur the message.

By the way, make sure you collect your bets. Illegal gambling, along with excessive drinking, is also a part of this charade that poses as sport. The shooters don’t make much, but thousands of dollars will exchange hands.

These are the same psychopaths who probably twirled cats by their tails, and used birthday money to buy BB guns to pluck birds from fences and telephone wires. In their warped minds, they probably think they’re Rambo, their shotguns are M-16s, the cages are bunkers, and the cooing birds are agents of Kaos, Maxwell Smart’s long-time nemesis.

Thisis what the NRA is defending as Americans’ Second Amendment rights. And why the Pennsylvania legislature has been afraid to pass a bill prohibiting pigeon shoots.

For more than three decades, Pennsylvanians have tried to get this practice banned. For three decades, they have failed. And when it looked as if there was even a remote chance that a slim majority of legislators might support a bill banning pigeon shoots, the House and Senate leadership, most of them from rural Pennsylvania, figured out numerous ways to lock up the bills in committees or keep them from reaching the floor for a vote. In 1994, the House did vote, 99–93, to ban pigeon shoots. But 102 votes were needed.

But now a bill to ban this form of animal cruelty may be headed for a vote in the full legislature. SB626, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Browne (R-Allentown), forbids the “use of live animals or fowl for targets at trap shoots or block shoot” gatherings. It specifically allows fair-chase hunting and protects Second Amendment rights.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee finally got a spine, and voted 11–3 to send legislation to the full Senate to ban this practice. Six Republicans and five Democrats voted for the vote; all three negative votes were from Republicans, including the Senate’s president pro-tempore. Many of those voting for the ban are lifetime hunters; many are long-time NRA members. They all agree that this is not fair chase hunting but wanton animal cruelty.

But, the NRA, with its paranoid personality that believes banning animal cruelty would lead to banning guns, fired back. In a vicious letter to its members and the media, the NRA stated that national animal rights extremists, whom they have also called radicals, are trying to ban what they call a “longstanding traditional shooting sport.”

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) disagree. In 1900, the IOC banned pigeon shoots as cruelty to animals and ruled it was not a sport. The PGC says that pigeon shoots “are not what we would classify as fair-chase hunting.” Also opposed to pigeon shoots are dozens of apparently other radical extremists—like the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association, and the Pennsylvania Bar Association. “Each pigeon shoot teaches children that violence and animal cruelty are acceptable practices,” says Heidi Prescott, senior vice-president for the HSUS.

The vote will be close in both chambers, mostly because of the financial power the NRA wields in the rural parts of Pennsylvania, and the NRA’s fingernails-on-the-blackboard screeches to its members. On his blog, Sen. Daylin Leach (D-King of Prussia), a member of the Judiciary committee, wrote that when he supported a ban on pigeon shoots in previous Legislative sessions, he “got more hate mail on this than any other issue I’ve been involved with.” He stated he “got e-mails from all over the state telling me that I obviously hated America and that God, who wanted the pigeons he created to be slaughtered as quickly as possible, was very disappointed in me.”

Failure to pass this bill into law will continue to make Pennsylvania, with a long-established hunting culture, the only state where pigeon shoots openly occur, and where animal cruelty is accepted.

Walter Brasch is an award-winning reporter who attended several pigeon shoots. His next book is Before the First Snow, a look at America’s counter-culture and the nation’s conflicts between oil-based and “clean” nuclear energy. He can be reached at: walterbrasch@gmail.com.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE
Morals & Society
EDITORIAL, April 2011

Is there no the ethical limit to what humans can do to helpless animals?

Evaristti and unwitting "partner" in art.

BY MERRITT CLIFTON, Animal People Magazine

CHILEAN SHOCK ARTIST Marco Evaristti won global notoriety in February 2000 with an exhibit at the Trapholt Art Museum in Kolding, Denmark,  consisting of 10 blenders containing live goldfish. Visitors were invited to puree a goldfish.

Evaristti,  however,  took the show on the road.  On April 20,  2006 the blenders and goldfish arrived in Dornbirn,  Austria. That night four animal advocates broke into the art gallery,  smashed the blenders,  and took the fish.

But from an animal rights point of view,  pulverizing a live fish would not be any less wrong if done for some socially acceptable pretext.

Stopping Evaristti is easy compared to stopping the practices of the poultry and fishing industries,  but stopping the poultry and fishing industries are longtime acknowledged goals of the animal rights movement.  Indeed,  some of the activists who publicized the break-in at the Austrian museum saw it as a symbolic gesture of opposition to the entire spectrum of cruelties inflicted on fish killed for food,  and hoped that the episode would help to promote public awareness about the capacity of fish to suffer.

Rocky alliance with enviros

Surveys of animal rights advocates have repeatedly demonstrated that upward of 90% also define themselves as environmentalists,  yet most acknowledge a wide gulf between animal rights perspectives and the prevailing views among mainstream environmentalists.

Mainstream environmentalism exempts much anti-animal activity from the ecological precepts it selectively advances,  and is especially self-contradictory in opposing pollution from factory farms without opposing the products of factory farms.

However,  despite the clear conflicts between the perspectives of animal advocacy and mainstream environmentalism, animal advocates mostly perceive parallel interests in protecting habitat and endangered species,  preventing pollution,  seeking to remedy effects of climate change,  and pursuing the safest,  least ecologically damaging forms of energy development.  Emerging at about the same time in the mid-1970s,  the contemporary animal advocacy and environmental movements have sometimes found themselves in awkward alliances despite often being at odds.  Animal advocates have generally regarded environmentalists as acceptable political partners,  despite the tendency of mainstream environmentalists to prefer to keep company with hunters.

Along the rocky way,  energy policy has been among the few areas of consistent agreement.  No major animal advocacy group has an independent energy policy,  but almost all of them frequently endorse energy-related legislation and policy statements originating with the major mainstream environmental organizations.

In all likelihood the alliance of animal advocates and environmentalists on energy policy will only strengthen in the radioactive aftermath of the apparent triple and possible quadruple meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear complex in northeastern Japan.  Few people in either camp appear to favor expanded nuclear energy development,  despite the acknowledged contribution of fossil fuels to global warming.  Both animal advocates and environmentalists have reservations about wind power,  as well,  since wind turbines have become recognized as major killers of bats and birds.

This is no more a new insight than the recognition that earthquakes and tsunamis can destroy nuclear reactors,  yet has been surprisingly little recognized.

Though the latter concern has not been completely ignored, it has rated low among environmental objections to nuclear energy development,  in part because similar occurs in cooling fossil fuel-burning generating stations,  while hardly anyone has paid attention to the differing magnitudes of harm done by the different types of plant.

At this writing,  publication of the new regulations has already been delayed once,  and may be delayed indefinitely,  or scrapped,  as result of the anti-EPA and anti-regulatory attitude of the Republican-dominated House of Representatives.

What if we talk about cruelty?

What if animal advocates were to decide that needlessly killing a trillion fish per year by methods every bit as grotesque as those of Marco Evaristti is an animal rights and welfare concern?

Emboldened by growing success in opposition to cruelty to factory farmed animals,  after decades of despairing that the public could be brought to care about species slaughtered for food by the multi-millions and billions,  the animal advocacy cause may be close to rediscovering cruelty to fish.

But despite the magnitude of fish suffering caused by energy plant cooling systems,  fish are scarcely the only animals who are harmed by energy production.  Though fish are by far the most numerous victims,  the case for raising animal suffering as an aspect of the energy debate does not rest on harm to fish alone.

Neither does raising concern about animal suffering as an aspect of the energy debate require politicians to become any more enlightened about fish suffering in specific and animal issues in general than they already are.  Politicans merely must be brought to recognize that the considerable numbers of voters who care about animals perceive cruelty as a dimension of energy issues.

Editor in Chief of ANIMAL PEOPLE, the world’s leading independent publication on animal issues.

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Recent studies suggest that a high number of birds are dying in Alberta's tar sands, yet another "collateral" cost to our subservience to the oil industry.

BY MARK VALLEN

IN MARKING the one year anniversary of the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I signed a letter of protest along with 165 other arts professionals and activists that appeared in the Guardian on April 20, 2011. Titled Tate should end its relationship with BP, the letter calls on the Tate Gallery of London “to demonstrate its commitment to a sustainable future by ending its sponsorship relationship with BP.”

The letter reads in part:

“In the year since their catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP have massively ramped up their investment in controversial tar sands extraction in Canada, have shown to be a key backer of the Mubarak regime in Egypt and have attempted to commence drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean. While BP continues to jeopardize ecosystems, communities and the climate by the reckless pursuit of ‘frontier’ oil, cultural institutions like Tate damage their reputation by continuing to be associated with such a destructive corporation.”

Signatories to the letter include the likes of writer and art critic Lucy R. Lippard, painter John Keane, artist and Stuckist co-founder Charles Thomson, artist Billy Childish, and many others. Anti-corporate globalization activist and author of The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein, was also a signatory.

BP anniversary: Toxicity, suffering and death is about as excoriating an account of corporate and government irresponsibility likely to be found.

BP Grand Entrance at LACMA looking not-quite-so-grand, but the article was hardly an in-depth critique that offered solid details on BP’s terrible record.

A protestor from the U.K. activist group, Liberate Tate, stages an intervention titled "Human Cost" at the Tate Britain on April 20, 2011. Photo: anonymous.

Also occurring on the one year anniversary of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, artists from the U.K. activist group, Liberate Tate, staged an intervention they titled “Human Cost” at the Tate Britain.

Single Form: The Body in Sculpture from Rodin to Hepworth is currently on display; the exhibit is part of a series of “BP British Art Displays” staged throughout the Tate.

A nude member of the Liberate Tate group assumed a fetal position on the floor in the middle of the room, while veiled comrades dressed in black poured what appeared to be oil over him from containers emblazoned with BP logos (the substance was actually ground charcoal and sunflower oil).

The motionless naked man, slick with viscous black goo, looked as if he were trapped in the globs of crude oil dumped into the Gulf of Mexico by BP exactly one year ago. Eventually museum security directed  museum goers out of the room, placing a screen around the area to hide the action from public view. In due course the protestors left the museum and a clean-up crew dealt with the aftermath. To my knowledge there were no arrests. Photographs of the entire happening can be viewed here. A video produced by “You and I Films” documenting the “Human Cost” intervention can be viewed here. England’s Channel 4 also broadcast coverage of the event.

April 20 was the culmination of a BP Week Of Action called by U.K. groups Liberate Tate, Art Not Oil, Climate Camp London, UK Tar Sands Network, Climate Rush, Indigenous Environmental Network, and London Rising Tide. Under the slogan of “BP and culture: time to break it off”, the groups held a number of public campaigns, the most amusing of which was an April 17 mass flash mob occupation and sleep-in at the Tate Modern, where some 100 protestors with BP-branded blankets, pillows, pajamas, teddy bears, and alarm clocks held a sleep-in among the art works. A video produced by “You and I Films” documenting the Great BP Sponsored Tate Modern Sleep In can be viewed on YouTube.

ABOUT THIS ARTICLE

Mark Vallen is a Contributing Editor in the Arts for The Greanville Post.
Mark Vallen, “An end to oil company sponsorship of the arts” (www.art-for-a-change.com/blog – April 20, 2011). This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

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Philosophical discussion series—

Is it morally correct to eat the flesh of animals?  Is the fact that so many do validate it as an ethical act? Those who indulge in such practices have plenty of help in religious quarters, almost all of which preach “dominionism”.

BY ROSE EISENBUD

Joann

Why such a contradiction is possible was earnestly explained to me by Gheorghe Constantin Nistorioiu a cleric of the Eastern Orthodox Church:

He goes on to state:

For those who understand that all lives are precious, including that of an infant sheep, such reasoning defies logic and compassion. Those who understand that a baby sheep should be allowed to learn to graze, kick up his/her hoofs, enjoy the sunshine and run through the grass, to live out his/her life as nature intended, the doctrine of dominion, as cited by Gheorghe Constantin Nistorioiu is nothing more than an excuse for man to indulge in greed and gluttony at the expense of a fragile and gentle creature, who has harmed no one and seeks to live, just as we do.

The lamb in this picture has in all likelihood already been slaughtered for a sumptuous feast of roasted leg of lamb with rosemary and garlic or some other herbs and spices.

What was once a weak, defenseless baby sheep has already suffered a violent and cruel death and has been reduced to a hunk of well-seasoned flesh, all for the joy and pleasure of those who believe that man has the god-given right to harm and slaughter animals.

The nature of sin:

The following message was received from a compassionate and thoughtful Chrsitian activist:

The explanation for  why it is not a sin to kill a living being, also lies in the dominion model. If as dominion states, god has granted man the right to harm and slaughter animals for human benefit, then such violence is a sacred right and therefore, not a sin. The necessity clause of dominion is particularly deceptive, as it creates the illusion of compassion, as it goes so far as to state that it is righteous to be cruel:

Therefore: He who is of necessity cruel to animals can be regarded as a righteous individual.

When cruelty is considered righteous, ab(use) and slaughter are tolerated, accepted and justified.

The strength and beauty of Jainism, is that it has taken god out of the equation. It has been effective in perpetuating a compassionate lifestyle based on the words of human sages who have achieved liberation of their souls because of their wisdom and non-violence. These wise human individuals observed that animals suffer, as do humans, when subjected to violence, so they deduced that to cause no harm to living beings is beneficial both to the victims and those who refrain from violence. As long as dominion prevails, speculation on what god intended, or why he/she allows for such cruelty to innocent animals sets up a dynamic which does not get to the issue: all living beings are entitled to their own lives and have the right to remain free from human harm. The jains have by passed the issue of god and speak directly to compassion. This resonates with me as a model of compassion with a sound foundation.

In the Jain tradition it is in fact a sin, not a right, to harm or kill a living being:

With all that I have said, it is not necessart to become part of a Jain community to understand and live by ahimsa. Those who care deeply about animal compassion would do well to completely reject the notion of dominion and understand that because it puts man above the animals, it does not have the potential to deliver compassion.

Until we stop the pretense that there is compassion inherent dominion, the Easter lamb will continue to be sacrificed for human pleasure and celebration, despite the existence of compassionate words, which do not challenge sanctified harm and slaughter.

Ruth Eisenbud fights to expose the brutal tyranny ensconced in so many unexamined traditions, especially religious, none of which surpass that visited on animals.

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