Join us for a joyous celebration of the Environmental Humanities Laboratory’s past decade of activities and the launch of its new start as a KTH centre. The afternoon will consist of recapping the many activities of the EHL since its start in 2011/2012 under the leadership of Director Marco Armiero (“Wasteocene“) and hosting a roundtable on the purpose, importance, and future of environmental humanities research, in Sweden, Europe, and worldwide.
If you are interested who was involved during the last decade in the EHL’s activities, check out this list.
Join us for an afternoon of reflections, sharing, and discussions, followed by a mingle. Mark your calendars!
Alicia Gutting is one of three doctoral students, active in the ERC-project Nuclearwaters at the Division and supervised by prof. Per Högselius. In the thesis „The Nuclear Rhine“ she is researching transnational nuclear risk perception in Austria, Switzerland, France and Germany from the 1960s to 2018. In November the Environmental History Now blog published a text by Alicia on nuclear power, climate change and water risks focusing geographically on the Rhine river. Read an extract below, and get the link to the full text.
Low water levels at sunset, Upper Rhine in Karlsruhe Maxau (2018, next to the Rhine bridge between Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate). Photo by Alicia Gutting.
When I decided to write my PhD thesis on the history of the nuclear Rhine in the summer of 2018, the front pages of the newspapers were dominated by news of the record summer and that several nuclear power plants on the Rhine had to be shut down. Headlines focused on the topics of the low water level of the Rhine and to what extent the use of cooling water can affect flora and fauna, but also the danger posed by a lack of cooling water for the operation of nuclear power plants. By then, I had already planned to take a closer look at the effects of heat waves on the operation of nuclear power plants. In the course of my research, I found out that while heat waves are a problem, the thermal load on water bodies caused by the recirculation of cooling water is an equally pressing issue.
The Rhine River basin is, in relation to its flow per watershed, the most thermally polluted river basin globally mainly due to nuclear power plants. Thermoelectric power plants such as coal and nuclear power plants are major drivers of thermal pollution. Even though the European Union has set a limit of three degrees Celsius, the limit is exceeded by five degrees Celsius every year. The majority of thermal excess heat comes from nuclear and coal power plants that were built in the 1970s and 1980s.[1]
At the end of the 1960s, a planning boom began in the countries along the Rhine. Switzerland was one of the countries that wanted to roll out nuclear power in a big way and even slowly turned away from its role as the pioneer of hydropower. In addition, Germany and France also wanted to use the water resources of the Rhine for cooling purposes, which quickly led to conflicts on the fair distribution of cooling water. Switzerland, France, Germany, and the Netherlands planned to build roughly around twenty-five nuclear power plants in the Rhine River basin (including the Aare and the Moselle), which would have made the Rhine one of the most nuclearized river basins in the world.[2] Especially problematic was that energy companies were tempted to build nuclear power plants without external cooling systems as experts deemed the water resources of the Rhine to be sufficient.
In Germany, nuclear accidents hardly played a role in the early risk perception of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. This is because the broad public knowledge about the extreme effects of a nuclear accident was almost non-existent. Instead, the focus was on the immediate effects of nuclear power plants that were unavoidable during operation, such as thermal pollution of water bodies. It was also in these early years that water management authorities were the most vocal administrative opponents of nuclear energy. Political supporters of nuclear energy tried to counteract the opposition by handing over water competences to the Federal Ministry of Atomic Energy. However, this decision did not lead to the desired decrease in criticism. In the 1970s, criticism regarding water became even louder when it came to the thermal pollution of the Rhine and the Weser.[3]
We are happy to announce that Marco Armiero, director of the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, has been awarded the Mediterranean Culture Award 2022 in the section for Human Sciences with the book Wasteocene – Stories from the global dump. He recieved the award at a price ceremony in Cosenza, Italy, on the 13th of October.
This year it was the XVI edition of the Mediterranean Culture Award founded by the Carcial Foundation. The foundation represents the historical continuation of the Cassa di Risparmio di Calabria, established in Cosenza in 1861. Marco Armiero was nominated in the Human Sciences section together with emeritus professor of economy, Joan Martínez Alier and political scienteist Gille Kepel. His book Wasteocene – Stories from the global dump was published in 2021.
Summary of the book
Humans may live in the Anthropocene, but this does not affect all in the same way. How would the Anthropocene look if, instead of searching its traces in the geosphere, researchers would look for them in the organosphere, in the ecologies of humans in their entanglements with the environment? Looking at this embodied stratigraphy of power and toxicity, more than the Anthropocene, we will discover the Wasteocene. The imposition of wasting relationships on subaltern human and more-than-human communities implies the construction of toxic ecologies made of contaminating substances and narratives. While official accounts have systematically erased any trace of those wasting relationships, another kind of narrative has been written in flesh, blood, and cells. Traveling between Naples (Italy) and Agbogbloshie (Ghana), science fiction and epidemic outbreaks, this element will take the readers into the bowels of the Wasteocene, but it will also indicate the commoning practices which are dismantling it.
Sverker Sörlin (KTH Professor of Environmental History and member of the Swedish Climate Council 2018-2022), Maria Wolrath Söderberg (docent in rhetorics with a specialisation in climate adaptation, Södertörns högskola) and Nina Wormbs (KTH Professor of History of Technology) have published a highly commentated opinion piece in Dagens Nyheter on 25 September 2022. Following Sweden’s close parliamentary election results, which find the left and the right block head to head with a slight advantage for the right, the three authors try to situate necessary climate policy within a potential future right-wing government. In the following we post our English translation of the article.
Photo: Unsplash
Translation:
DN Debatt. “It is patriotic to protect the climate”
It looks like that we are getting a government with low ambitions and bad premises to achieve the climate goal. But all is not lost. The person who searches through the parties’ fundamental ideological values can actually find something to build on – in all four parties. A smart leader does best when listening. To the person’s own conscience, to science and to the electorate – write three researchers.
In the past it was difficult for Sweden to live up to its reputation as a pioneering country for environmental policy. Just one out of 16 environmental goals set by the Riksdag/Parliament were met. Every year since 2018 the Swedish Climate Council has stated, that decided policies were inconclusive, and that Sweden belongs to the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, with an emission per citizen twice as high as the global average.
Emissions need to shrink with more than 10% per year, thus most in the next few years, for Sweden to have a chance to keep within the national emissions-budget specified in the Paris Climate Agreement. Before the pandemic hit, the rhythm of reduction was 1-2%. Nearly 2000 researchers recently have demanded that climate policy should be drastically sharpened.
This difficult situation has been drastically exacerbated by the election of the Swedish parliament. It looks like we are getting a government with parties which, according to several studies, have the lowest ambitions and the worst premises for reaching the climate goal.
The Moderates (M), Christian Democrats (KD) and Liberals (L) have put all their political weight into the electrifying campaign and they show no signs to reevaluate, even though we are witnessing skyrocketing prices. They do not want to offer adjustments to Swedish way of life, even though science is unified in saying that personal and societal transformations are necessary.
But isn’t there nevertheless a possibility for a powerful climate policy with the new government? We do not ask this question of changing the reasoning of a government without being unsettled by the possibility that climate politically invaluable years could be lost. This gives us the moral right, independently of the parties forming the government, to push that Sweden takes responsibility.
Big and durable political changes cannot happen during a conflict between the parties’ fundamental ideological values. Therefore we have evaluated those under the question whether they can be used – by smart and responsible leaders – to form the parties towards work on reforms. This is an urgent task.
We presume that the governing parties are not hypocritical, but that M, KD, and L actually want to achieve the climate goals they themselves have been involved in deciding. Hence it would be smart from the Moderates to link up to their conservative heritage and underscore that nature is not only a resource for the industry, but also has spiritual and national value. The conservative tradition highlights personal responsibility over the generations and that there are higher things other than material gains.
Even those who usually focus on ownership and entrepreneurship have something to pick up here. The business community is already criticising the right-wing parties for their unwillingness to see Sweden take the lead, most recently in the petition of 227 Swedish companies ahead of the election.
The Christian Democrat’s climate policy so far was messy and inconsistent. Agriculture is highlighted as already climate-smart (a puzzling exaggeration). Transition work is supposed to happen in other countries. They see a rising electricity usage unavoidable in Sweden.
But Christian values have a lot to offer. Christian Democratic parties on the continent like to emphasise the idea of solidarity: that you cannot unilaterally take advantage of the limited resources of the atmosphere just because you are a rich country. The creation should be managed for the good of all. Older generations need to think about younger ones. Christian values show special consideration with the people suffering and weak. Ideological conditions for being cautious thus exist.
A key point in liberalism is that one’s freedom should not inflict upon the freedom of others. The liberals’ climate policy is more ambitious than those proposed by the Moderates and Christian Democrats. L takes the climate crisis serious, but their hopes into techno-fixes, bio-fuel and CO2-captureing are unrealistic. Many of their favourite technologies take decades to materialise and it is not probable that they can be scaled up to the degree necessary.
To join freedom with responsibility is part of liberalism’s understanding of freedom, for example by living modestly. John Stuart Mill, Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt have warned against the barbaric circumstances, which lurk around the corner if we do not manage to create a sustainable society, which in turn can only achieve legitimacy if it can be combined with justice, as the Paris Climate Agreement presumes. But in our time, liberalism’s understanding of freedom has been pushed into the direction that one’s freedom is to choose what one wants. Such a position does not at all guarantee that the planet could be preserved.
Within the government base, the Sweden Democrats stand out. They deny climate science and claim that “Sweden has no climate crisis”. They want to shift responsibility for the large Swedish emissions to other countries where it is envisaged that corresponding emission reductions can be made at a lower cost. The Sweden Democrats want to reduce electricity prices and prices for fossil fuels, remove the reduction obligation and the aviation tax, the very driving forces that the progressive business community wants to maintain and strengthen in order to speed up the transition.
Support can thus be found in the values that once bestowed on us conservative and liberal parties: solidarity, care for the neighbour, love of creation, freedom for all not to suffer from the freedom of choice of others.
SD draws from two irreconcilable myths: that Sweden is the best and that this is a pity for us. None are true. For a responsible right-wing government it would be easiest to completely isolate SD in questions of climate policy. But if SD demands influence on the basis of its de facto position of power, the governing parties should appeal to the natural ideology that SD’s sister parties in eastern and southern Europe run, where their own “national nature” is nurtured as a unifying primordial force. Successful climate work would also reduce the risk of large climate migration, which SD wants to prevent.
In order to achieve that the Swedish climate policy does not fully lose contact with its goal, we have to think about the becoming government parties as open for development. They have so far more or less ignored research and facts. At the same time, nine out of ten Swedes think the climate is an important question which influences them. There are also many in M, KD, and L who really want to see a sustainable future.
Regarding the climate question it is not the people that deceive, but politicians who deceive the people. Therefore, they should listen to their consciousness and take responsibility in regard to this fateful question. There is also support to be found in the value that once gave us conservative and liberal parties: solidarity, care for your neighbour, love towards creation, freedom for all to avoid suffering from the freedom of choice of others. The argument is not only that we all deserve that the climate goal can be reached and promises been kept (like with the saying “pacta sunt servanda”, pacts should be kept). The parties should also be positively surprised, to get sympathy and to be able to develop a long-lasting greener right-wing policy. The parallel is of course the Reinfeld-government’s wise triangulation of welfare policy. The new Moderates took over their opponents’ best policy, safety for everyone, and called it their own.
This is just the beginning. After that it should be clarified that Sweden listens to science (which is patriotic) and that we shape policies in accordance to research. Then Sweden does not need to be embarrassed amongst climate-progressive Europe.
We are happy to share the news that Professor Sverker Sörlin was nominated by Sveriges Radio P1 to be one of the hosts for the aclaimed radio show Sommar. The show has been running during the summer weeks since the sixties. Every year a number of profiles of various backgrounds (research, arts, acting, politics etc) are choosen to host the show for a one hour session. The hosts choose the topic themselves and the music that goes with it.
The names are announced at the end of May each years, and the days before are always full of Swedes speculating in the lunch room about who will be on the list the upcoming sumer. It is an honorable nomination, and we are all very proud and happy that Sverker is one of the hosts this year.
“-My summer speaks about the love towards life and about such things that help us to live, for example empathy, justice and education. Therefore it will be about the vision of the fossil-free wellfare state Sweden. This is the new Green Norrland’s test case.”
Sverker’s show will air on 7 July, but is accessable at the Swedish Radio webpage after. The show is always in Swedish.
Please check out the broadcast via Radio Sweden’s Website. The producer of the session is Niklas Zachrisson.
Abstract (from Radio Sweden):
Sverker Sörlin är prisbelönt författare och professor i miljöhistoria vid Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan.
Under lång tid har Sverker Sörlin också varit del av den svenska kulturdebatten som skribent i bland annat Dagens Nyheter. Han har skrivit en rad böcker, främst inom området idéhistoria, men också självbiografiskt om längdskidåkning, sjukdom och bildning.
I sin avhandling ”Framtidslandet” från 1988 beskrev han den första industriella revolutionen i Norrland i slutet av 1800-talet. En liknande utveckling sker idag – och framtidshoppet kring norra Sveriges nya stora industrier växer återigen.
It is no news that we are in a situation of climate crisis right now. Temperatures are going wild in many places of the earth. Already since March a severe heat wave struck Pakistan and India, affecting hundreds of millions of people. In the Pakistani city of Nawabshah a high temperature of 49.5 °C was measured. In the meantime, people have to pay more and more worldwide to get food onto their tables, while “over 2 billion people live in water-stressed countries”. The Great Barrier Reef, giving home to a unique biotope and one of the natural wonders of the earth has recently suffered a mass bleaching event and will most probably be gone soon. The situation is not coincidental as it is a clear result of accelerated humanmade climate change.
A recent update from the World Meteorological Organisation puts this into perspective. It says that there is a “50:50 chance of global temperature temporarily reaching [the] 1.5°C threshold in [the] next five years”. According to the Paris Climate Agreement from 2015, the 1.5°C threshold contained severe but somewhat manageable consequences of anthropogenic climate change. Many countries of the world had ratified this agreement, and ostensibly made it their goal to curb emissions in an effort to avoid a collapse. But instead and despite the Covid-19-recession, global CO2-emissions have been at an all-time high in 2021. The trajectory shows far beyond 1.5°C.
While a temporary increase in global temperature by 1.5 °C does not qualify as a permanent temperature increase, it nevertheless represents a looming cornerstone towards mass extinctions and the threatening of the foundations upon which human existence depends upon. It seems like the chance to act had been forfeited.
Drought and the lack of access to clean water constitute serious threats to human and natural wellbeing in many places of the world. Over the last century, drought has faded from quotidian life in many parts of Scandinavia and northern Europe. However, experiences of extreme weather in recent years have advanced a new awareness and preparedness agenda. Issues concerning water use and availability are now among the priorities of risk management, climate change adaptation, and preparedness efforts.
Sweden’s weather was fairly stable for much of the 20th century. The problems of drought were usually regarded as difficulties affecting local agriculture and drinking water supplies. In addition, concerns related to the climate and weather were commonly overshadowed by threats linked to the politics of the Cold War. In the 1990s, crisis management interventions were formulated around weather-related contingencies. Among other things, scenarios for dealing with flooding were being worked out.
The drought and the subsequent forest fires during the summer of 2018 ushered in a new discussion about Swedish preparedness against drought. The historical aspects of what was usually referred to as the extreme weather were highlighted by the fact that the drought and the subsequent forest fires were described as the worst in “modern times”. The abstract notion of long-term and large-scale global climate change was made concrete and meaningful here and now, as it were, in contrast to being viewed as a potential disaster happening in the future and mainly affecting other parts of the world.
Drought as preparedness problems is multi-facetted. Public agents, policy makers, and researchers underscore the large amount of work that needs to be done, the importance of facilitating a much-needed collaboration between different stakeholders and a holistic view of the issues at hand. The formulation of preparedness problems involves a kind of battle over the narrative of which threats are most serious, how they have developed, what may happen in the future, and necessary activities.
History is a fundamental component of the efforts of upholding vigilance against threats that may or may not materialize in the near or distant future. Learning from past events is crucial. However, while historical narratives help societies understand, manage, and cope with present vulnerabilities and challenges, it is impossible to devise effective preparedness measures based exclusively on historical experiences. In an era of climate change, the scale and speed of natural events have the potential of reversing understandings of historical development and build a foundation for a reformed narrative of Swedish readiness.
A historical perspective on drought as a contingency problem includes but also goes beyond mapping and analyzing past episodes of low water availability. It also brings light on the human subjectivities, relationships, and forms of governance that have emerged in response to previous occurrences. Focusing on people, it brings into focus the efforts to cope with uncertainty rather than the historical development of specific technologies for turning potential dangers into controllable and calculable risk.
This contrasts with a narrative about the ever-increasing safety and certainty of modern society. Rather than illuminating the many ways in which science and technology have improved the protection of human and non-human life, health, and vitality, other actors and issues come to the fore. Through studying actors that have taken the existential concerns of low water availability as their primary concern, it is possible to contribute new understandings of drought as an historical preparedness problem.
This may contribute new perspectives on the present, a kind of genealogy of uncertainty. In this perspective, “unpreparedness” against drought is not merely seen as an inability or inadequacy of certain institutions or technical instruments. It highlights a lack of historical narratives that can give meaning to what is currently happening and relate contemporary problems to a longer history of how society has functioned in difficult circumstances. It may help to inform the kind of coping strategies needed to deal with a volatile relationship between humans and water, or lack thereof.
Erik Isberg: Will the climate lead Jeff Bezos to vote left?
Climate scientist Johan Rockström and sustainability analytic Owen Gaffney have presented in their new book not only their take on the planet’s geological and biological history, but also on human development and future solutions for the climate crisis. It is a mixture of popular science, civilisation history, and climate journalism, while at the same time presenting like an eco-political manifest. The book came out last year in English in combination with a Netflix-documentary. David Attenborough contributed to the film as speaker. Greta Thunberg wrote the foreword to the successful book.
As such it is a typical example of its time, as it combines the relationship between climate science, history and politics. Dipesh Chakrabarty said that scientists of earth systems, like Johan Rockström, would be the historians of our time, who write within a new narrative, combining the planet, life, and human history in one story. This would be an adequate description of the book at hand. It is divided into three parts: first it focuses on planetary and human history, second it elaborates on climate science and the situation of science today, and third it offers solutions to deflect the climate catastrophe.
Its main argument is that humanity would have developed in different distinct episodes, just like earth. Suddenly, the growth of unicellular organisms and today’s digitisation process look alike: both have swept over the world, without anything someone could have done about it. This would be a reductionist and well-known narrative. Yuval Noah Hararis “Sapiens” and David Christians “Berättelsen im allt” also use it. Humanity becomes a passenger in a journey, which someone else has determined. Industrialisation, colonialism and capitalism were processes working out of themselves, while humanity would watch from the stands and wonders. For example, the steam machine would have involuntarily started the industrialisation, as ostensibly all other options would have disappeared as James Watt started his machine for the first time.
A similar worldview can be seen in the second part of the book, which presents a possible option to avert an climate catastrophe. Although many of the proposed measures, such as higher capital tax, state investments in green technology, and closing the gap between rich and poor, were not presented as a part of a political discussion apart from the goal of society’s change towards a green future, these proposals can nevertheless be called leftwing.
The hope is portrayed that everyone, from Jeff Bezos till Extinction Rebellion could unite for the common goal of what Rockström and Gaffney call “Jordresan” (Earth’s Journey) towards sustainable “Jorden 5.0” (Earth 5.0.).
The will to see future climate policy already as a step in earth’s development, rather than a part of an ideological conflict, leads to oblivion towards power relations and material interests within the corresponding political discussion. Maybe in reality, planetary and social change work according to another set of rules, rather than in the simplistic way the two authors present it. Rockström and Gaffney provide an acute reminder of the crisis we are in, but are probably wrong within their deterministic argumentation.
Nina Wormbs, Professor of History of Technology at the division, has published an article relevant in the context of the recent COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter on 17 November 2021. In the following we will present a short summary of its main points in English, while you can read the original in full length and in Swedish here.
Summary:
When climate issues are discussed in Sweden, China is often taken as a comparison. In fact, people use China as an argument to not act in regard to climate change.
During the recent COP26 summit in Glasgow, the focus was also on China, since the country is highly invested in coal both at home and abroad. It is obvious that we need to work with China together, since its emissions are enormous. Despite this, China has recently undertaken steps towards a sustainable society.
In particular, it has become normal to point to China in a debate, if one does not want to engage with those questions the current climate crisis is bringing up. This can include coal power plants but also a justification for flying to Mallorca or Thailand for fun, because Chinese tourists could be seen in Gamla Stan. In order for this practice not to spread further, we have to understand why those arguments are not valid and what they result in.
First, it makes no sense to motivate one’s own harm-doing by arguing that someone else would produce even more harm.
Secondly, the comparison with China’s emissions are an eternal but nevertheless problematic way of relativising one’s own influence. Because you are always able to find someone who produces more emissions than yourself. More than Sweden. More than Europe. Of course it is important how much we emit as humanity, but the China-argument suggests that there would be some form of give- and take, like as if life would be a zero-sum-game. Instead, it is the opposite: every ton of CO2 counts.
Additionally, the China-argument points to an understanding, in which one does not have to do a tiny bit of right, while someone else does so much wrong. Maybe this argument is spreading, because more and more people repeat it. People in Sweden have limited knowledge of China. China is bigger, has more people, and all of them are striving towards a better life. That’s why it might be easy to point to China, in order to relativise one’s own responsibility.
Thirdly, China is often portrayed as an enemy in Swedish media. It can therefore be seen as a nation different from Sweden, being imagined like the negative “other”.
Why are the USA never mentioned in this context, despite their higher historical and per-capita-emissions (IPCC and carbonbrief.org)? Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are also hardly ever named, even though they are leading the per-capita-emissions statistics.
If one looks into the emissions of production chains of consumer goods, of which a lot are produced in China but used somewhere else like in Sweden, the territorial basis for emission-calculations seems off.
Furthermore, within most individual nations the gap between rich and poor gets bigger, which means that the individual emissions are not what the average suggests, but rather high if you are rich, or low if you are poor. Therefore, it would be a great idea to change the focus from nations to individuals, like Chancel and Piketty suggested in 2015. This makes even more sense, since the richest 10% of the world’s population accounted for 50% of emissions since 1990. Those 10% can be found in every country, but they are not evenly distributed. More so, since 40% of those live in the USA, while only 10% live in China. It might be a cold shower for a Swedish discussant that every Swede with a monthly income of over 27,500 SEK belongs to this group.
This is not being written to support China’s climate policies. Instead, it is to show that China is not relevant if one wants to discuss a domestic climate action plan, as the relationship between being rich and producing lots of emissions is evident – and Sweden is one of the richest countries on earth.
Division professor Nina Wormbs researches along with Maria Wolrath Söderberg from Södertörn University, in the project Understanding justification of climate change nonaction. The project runs 2019-2021 and is financed by The Swedish foundation for humanities and social sciences, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. This June Nina and Marie published the article Knowledge, Fear, and Conscience: Reasons to Stop Flying Because of Climate Change in Urban Planning. Find the link to full text and read the abstract below.
Much research on the societal consequences of climate change has focused on inaction, seeking to explain why societies and individuals do not change according to experts’ recommendations. In this qualitative study, we instead consider people who have changed their behaviour for the sake of the climate: They have stopped travelling by air. We first asked them to elaborate their rationales for the behaviour change. Then, using topos theory to find thought structures, we analysed their 673 open-text answers. Several themes emerged, which together can be regarded as a process of change. Increased knowledge, primarily narrated as a process by which latent knowledge was transformed into insight, through experience or emotional distress, was important. Contrary to certain claims in the literature, fear stimulated change of behaviour for many in this group. Climate change was framed as a moral issue, requiring acts of conscience. Children were invoked as educators and moral guides. Role models and a supportive social context played an important part. Alternatives to flying were brought forward as a motive to refrain from flying. Only a few mentioned shame as momentous. Instead, stopping travelling by air invoked a feeling of agency and responsibility, and could also result in a positive sensation.
A historical perspective on drought as a contingency problem includes but also goes beyond mapping and analyzing past episodes of low water availability. It also brings light on the human subjectivities, relationships, and forms of governance that have emerged in response to previous occurrences. Focusing on people, it brings into focus the efforts to cope with uncertainty rather than the historical development of specific technologies for turning potential dangers into controllable and calculable risk.
