coe074_moore.mp3

Speaker1: [00:00:24] Welcome back, everyone to a Trump screws the world edition of the Cultures of Energy podcast, it's Dominic Boyer with Why.

Speaker2: [00:00:32] Thank you very much, Dominic. I'm so honored to be welcome to your world. It's so many how here your Twitter co-host, who's our World News World? I don't know. I think I'm just going to live in a fictional world for the next. How much longer do we have?

Speaker1: [00:00:47] Checking my non-existence, we are going to get to. So we have some because this news just came out a couple of hours ago. We've got some takes on it, some thoughts to share. But before we do that, we want to share the sunshine in this episode, which is a really fun conversation we have with Amelia Moore.

Speaker2: [00:01:04] Mm hmm. Amelia Moore, tell us a bit about Amelia. Okay. Thank you. What a nice intro to my intro. Yeah, we had a wonderful conversation with Amelia in none under the none other than Indianapolis, Indiana.

Speaker1: [00:01:19] And and we should shout out Fiona McDonald and Jason Kelley. Yeah, IUPUI for sure for inviting us in all to take part in the anthropology of the Anthropocene, right?

Speaker2: [00:01:31] And yes, the workshop and Amelia was there because she's been doing lots of cool, interesting smart work on the Anthropocene over the last several years and particularly in the context of the Caribbean. And we do talk quite a bit about the Caribbean island and the Bahamian Caribbean, the Bahamas that is and talking about small island nation states and their role in the situation, the sytch of climate change and how they're responding with energy infrastructure. So it's a fascinating conversation.

Speaker1: [00:02:03] We talk about

Speaker2: [00:02:04] Coral. Yeah, we talk about coral

Speaker1: [00:02:06] Outreach and the first offshore wind park in the United States Isle Frog Island, which is something she's working on this summer. But anyway, it is a really fun conversation.

Speaker2: [00:02:14] So I was going to finish up and say that she's also at the University of Rhode Island so that people know where she's at and she's in the Department of Marine Affairs, which is cool. So she's got this kind of hybrid crossover. Yeah, scholarly identity, which is precisely what we need for these kinds of studies of Anthropocene conditions and their ugly contingencies, as we found out today. And what if ever say with Amelia ugly

Speaker1: [00:02:41] News we want to to shout out Amelia's mom, who Amelia said might be listening to this podcast because she thought it was it would be more fun for her than reading her articles. And yeah, that's why. So Amelia's mom, you might want to plug your ears for the next several minutes because things could get a little a little salty, which is really pod, but also the funny. We have this funny conversation. Or maybe it was just me with Amelia, where she's from Seattle, and I was like, Why don't you? Why don't you cover with tattoos like you should? Because she's like, My mom wouldn't let me. So just a special plea to Amelia's mom also to let me get a tattoo. Oh, I think she's she's a big girl.

Speaker2: [00:03:13] She can get whatever she wants.

Speaker1: [00:03:15] I don't know. Ok, so Simone, how much sum up today's news about Trump's decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement? In one word?

Speaker2: [00:03:25] Oh, I don't know. Do I need one word I liked? I like Bill McKibben's word. He had two words stupid and reckless. Ok, those are two good words. No, go ahead. If I could hyphenate them stupid.

Speaker1: [00:03:35] Reckless.

Speaker2: [00:03:36] Yeah, I don't know. Suicidal, arrogant.

Speaker1: [00:03:40] Go it, expand.

Speaker2: [00:03:41] Share your thoughts! Oh, OK, oh, I was supposed to sum up in one word.

Speaker1: [00:03:44] Yeah. Well, then I was hoping you would expand on it.

Speaker2: [00:03:46] That's oh, well. I mean, I don't know what's to add to what's already out there in the New York Times and all over the media sphere.

Speaker1: [00:03:54] I don't understand punditry. You're supposed to just pretend as though none of that other stuff exists. Oh, I say your piece.

Speaker2: [00:04:00] Oh, OK, well, why don't you say your piece?

Speaker1: [00:04:02] You know

Speaker2: [00:04:03] You're putting me on the

Speaker1: [00:04:04] Spot. Well, I'm happy to be on the spot, but I thought I'd give ladies first.

Speaker2: [00:04:07] I've got something to say about what I found interesting, and that was the juxtaposition against the U.S., you know, pulling out of the agreement, having agreed to it originally and these other two countries that didn't. Yeah, Syria and then of course, Uruguay home Nicaragua.

Speaker1: [00:04:24] Ok, because Syria can't because it's a it's a pile of rubble, right?

Speaker2: [00:04:28] It's a pile of rubble. So what about? So they're in that Syria's in the midst of, you know, horrific civil war. And I guess the fighting was particularly bad and horrible at the time of the the accord. So they just didn't show up. And then there was a question about Bashar al Assad's representation of whether that was valid, et cetera. So Syria makes a lot of sense. So you're like, What the fuck Nicaragua? Right? And I had to worry for a second because you never know. The politics of Nicaragua are very volatile, but it turns out that they have actually been far more heroic than any of the other 190 countries. All right, in the agreement, because the reason that Nicaragua refused to sign the accord is because they were not mandatory emissions controls. It was only voluntary and there was no punishment for particularly emitting countries like the United States, for example, that would, you know, would face no sanctions if they were to, you know? To sort of overspill their carbon emissions, so actually Nicaragua, out of all the countries on the planet as far as I can tell, took the highest road of all right and said, we're not going to sign on, but they didn't actually their representative. Oquist didn't say anything during the negotiations themselves. He waited till after the accord was signed so as not to, you know, make a kerfuffle there in Paris or make it appear as though other other countries should bow out. But they just respectfully said, you know, this isn't strong enough and we are not going to sign on to an accord that's clearly going to take the planet. Even if everyone follows it, it's going to take the planet to like three and four.

Speaker1: [00:05:57] Yeah, because I mean, everyone knows the Paris Agreement is flawed. I mean, already it's flawed in that it's not aggressive enough. It's not binding enough. The argument for it is really not that it's the end in itself, but rather it's an important step and symbolic agreement and accord of nearly every nation on the planet that this is a area that needs concerted collective action to get anything done right. And this is a first tentative step.

Speaker2: [00:06:23] And the thing is is that certain countries in certain cities and states that we've been we've talked about on this podcast are already taking that initiative. And so that's that's the other piece is that Nicaragua has already committed. You know, within its own nation state to get to something like 90 percent renewables within the next five or 10 years, which I don't know if they'll be able to do because there's not a lot of financing and infrastructure and whatever transnational capital is a problem there. But anyhow,

Speaker1: [00:06:50] Some of Syria's in ruins. Nicaragua is is already far ahead of what this is trying

Speaker2: [00:06:55] To do in Nicaragua. Is my hero again.

Speaker1: [00:06:57] Thank you very much. Yes. And the U.S. is the lone actor out. And my word to sum up, this is just pathetic.

Speaker2: [00:07:05] Pathetic, absolutely

Speaker1: [00:07:06] Pathetic. Good move. And it shows a couple of things. One one thing I would really want to underscore is just how much of what this administration tries to accomplish is simply undoing what the Obama administration. I mean, it's an entirely negative practice. It's not creating anything new. It's just kind of tear things down, right? Which really makes me wonder whether the Republican Party as a whole is actually capable of governing. It seems to only have a destructive mission at this part. I mean, there are people in the Republican Party who have a constructive mission, but they can't seem to. They can't seem to win the argument so that we keep having this, you know, administration that's just trying to undermine things that the Obama administration passed is though that's the whole purpose of this government.

Speaker2: [00:07:47] Well, I mean, it might just be that because there's such a high level of incompetence, maybe the most incompetence ever seen in this country in terms of national leadership, that the only thing to do is sort of negate what happened before, you know, just do a reverse on whatever policies were put forward under Obama over the last eight years. Just undo those. And then you can say that you've done you've done something for your base and it doesn't. It doesn't. As you said, it doesn't require a creative initiative. It only requires destructive back.

Speaker1: [00:08:18] And the retrograde argument that Trump gives that this is not about the environment, it's about protecting American jobs or it's protecting America from being financially manipulated by other countries is just preposterous and ridiculous. And it's, you know, green jobs are out there. There are many of them. Well, coming out of the Paris Agreement is not going to bring you back coal jobs.

Speaker2: [00:08:39] Sorry? No, it's not. And I think the ship has sailed. Economists are saying that, in fact, you know, sticking with the Paris Agreement would in fact produce more jobs in the United States and globally than than pulling out of it and pretending as though coal is going to come back because coal is not coming back because of fucking natural gas, like it's just it's a market, it's a market, among other things. Ok? They're solar and wind and et cetera. But right now, that seems to be the stories that people can't get rid of. Their coal and utilities don't want to burn coal.

Speaker1: [00:09:07] Right? But I think this is more generally about this idea that we need to and this is the Steve Bannon in it, that at all costs, we must, you know, avoid globalist politics and instead pursue strictly a, you know, kind of shortsighted nationalist agenda, right? And the irony here is that this is not even good for the nation in the short run because just as you're saying, what it means is that you're going to get brain drain and innovation drain to other countries. I mean, we are moving towards a different type of energy system and a different kind of set of energy, jobs and energy infrastructures. And to just say we're not going to do it, you know, we're taking our toys and going home is simply to basically allow Europe, Asia and everywhere else in the world that wants to be on the forefront of this to just have all the more success and a bigger share of of the spoils.

Speaker2: [00:09:56] So yeah, which is actually why it's beyond pathetic. It is actually suicidal. Yeah. And in terms of sort of if you think in terms of like the National Portrait, the national, the future of the nation probably is.

Speaker1: [00:10:10] And you know, the other the other thing I really wanted to stress today because this is which is not to diminish this news. This is bad news. Symbolically, it's terrible. And I think it's an embarrassment to be an American. Today with, you know, the president having taken this move, but I also want to stress the fact that this, you know, this decision is not going to to turn anything around, it's not going to slow down the transition to a cleaner economy, a cleaner energy system. It's not going to slow down the fight against climate change. And in fact, the piece of news that I woke up to this morning. I mean, we were sort of getting telegraphed yesterday already that Trump was going to pull out of the agreement. And the news that I read this morning that I found really encouraging was essentially a shareholder revolt at an ExxonMobil board meeting where a group of institutional investors pension funds from the Church of England in New York and California, but also signed off on supported by Exxon's biggest institutional investor, BlackRock, to force ExxonMobil to do a kind of annual stress test of its portfolio. So that basically, I mean, as I understand it, essentially what will happen is that they have to report to their shareholders how much climate mitigation policies, carbon taxes and the like are affecting the long term outlook for the value of their resources. Because the company's current position is, we're still going to burn everything that we have because it'll be necessary to spread growth and prosperity across the world. But and again, I don't believe for a second that all of these institutional investors are left wing radicals or progressives, even that they're even Democrats. Most of these are probably a lot of conservative money managers and accountants and people who are doing risk risk assessments who are saying, You know what? We are going to have a lot of stranded assets in a carbon bubble when it becomes clear that in fact, we can't and won't burn all of the fossil fuel resources that companies like ExxonMobil have. We can't.

Speaker2: [00:12:12] And unless they just, well, I don't know. We already talked about that unless they just try and speed up the track here and say, like, Oh, you know, if these if carbon taxes and other limitations and policy decisions are going to prevent us from producing our our product, our fossil fuel product, then maybe it'll be a race to sort of get it all out of the ground and burn it up faster than ever just to be able to extract quickly. Well, now that could be the other outcome of this so-called stress test.

Speaker1: [00:12:40] Well, right.

Speaker2: [00:12:42] I mean, is that regulation is coming. Hurry up and burn it while you can.

Speaker1: [00:12:46] Well, that would make sense, except that flooding the market will only drive down the price. And after that, that actually helps the company make more money. If you're talking about that as a corporate strategy. I think the industry as a whole is essentially doing that by, you know, flooding our political system with a lot of money that's aimed at supporting candidates that deny climate change, that support fossil fuels above all else. But what what was great about this, this event, I guess it happened yesterday in Dallas, is that it shows that the consensus among the elite right is shifting about this issue. And that makes this move by Trump seem all the more pathetic to me because even, you know, a lot of the rich white folks that he whose interest he allegedly represents are actually looking for something different. So you know why in God's name are we doing this? And why are we doing this without some kind of a credible alternative? Which brings me back to this point that it really is just about destroying the Obama legacy. Above all, I don't know. That's kind of what I what I take away from it, and it's maddening. But I'm also not at all surprised because I was pretty sure he was going to do this, and I was pretty sure that any Republican we elected, even if it had been a Mitt Romney or a George Bush, there was a good chance that this would have happened anyway.

Speaker2: [00:13:59] Do you think so? I don't know. This is pretty extreme. I don't know that. I don't know that someone like Mitt Romney would have made a promise on the campaign trail like that. But no, I mean, this is the thing it's about destroyed everything Obama did, for sure. But it's also about, quote unquote, you know, following through on my promises so that he can, like, tick off a box, his little benchmarks. And like, you know, I said I was going to do this and I did. I said I was going to do that and I did. It's like ticking off these boxes so that he can go back to his. I don't know his congratulatory base who, right?

Speaker1: [00:14:34] But I mean, OK, well, OK, I see your point. All I'm saying is that I think

Speaker2: [00:14:38] That part of it's

Speaker1: [00:14:39] Both. I think it's interesting and maybe telling that this very incompetent administration that seems to be unable to do anything except stick its foot up its own ass again and again and again is the one thing they have been successful at doing is ruining environmental regulation. So there's there must be some level at which there's an overlap between the interests of this kind of radicalized sector and the establishment that's allowing them to do this, the conservative establishment. So I don't know. I mean, you're probably right. Maybe, maybe. Well, maybe Jeb Bush wouldn't have pulled us out, but I can see it having been a really serious conversation as a way of appeasing, you know, a radicalized segment of their voter base that really believes that. Fuck it, Nina, let's get rid of all government, because you know what? What's been happening hasn't been working for us and we feel expropriated to and let's blame it on whatever globalism. Having done that,

Speaker2: [00:15:33] Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting lecturing, lecturing the U.N. rights and the and the European Union. And then now pulling out of this, it's I think, one of the things that is also troubling. And this just goes back to the kind of fetish of family that seems to operate over there in the Oval Office is that somehow Ivanka failed to convince daddy. Yeah, we were

Speaker1: [00:15:56] Also hopeful she is going to be able to convince him, right?

Speaker2: [00:15:58] Well, I mean, it's like there seems to be like a minor amount of rationality between her ears. I get, I guess, I'm not sure, but. And now, you know, Kushner is under investigation as well. So those seem to be like the minorly balancing figures in that White House and apparently she failed to to convince him. So I don't know if that's a sign of future, you know, rightward leaning to come or not.

Speaker1: [00:16:29] Well, it's definitely a victory for the Bannon ites in the administration. I think that's well, yeah, he's the one who's been pushing this sort of thing. But let's say this also, I mean, here's here again. Not not to diminish the tragedy of this, but just to say that he's following the way in the actual procedures that were set down to do this, which means that it'll be actually take years and it'll it will have a chance to vote on twenty. We'll have a chance to vote on this in twenty eighteen and we'll have a chance to vote on this in 2020. And I think that means a lot, and I think that he may have unwittingly again shot himself in the foot by giving those of us who really care about climate issues and energy transition issues a wonderful thing to rally behind in the next two sets of elections here. So I do hope we will be properly energized and angered and, you know, both the shareholder activism and the street activism. We're making progress on both fronts. I hope we will recognize that and I hope we are going to go forth hard and strong on this. Ok? Don't you think?

Speaker2: [00:17:31] Yes, I was a very good speech.

Speaker1: [00:17:33] All right. Well, very good speech. Well, with that. All right. Amelia is listening again. Hi. Great to have you listening.

Speaker2: [00:17:40] Let's listen to Amelia. Tell it like it is.

Speaker1: [00:17:43] Go, Amelia.

Speaker3: [00:18:04] So, hi, Amelia Moore, we're so glad to have you here. Welcome to the pod. Thank you.

Speaker4: [00:18:10] This is so exciting.

Speaker1: [00:18:11] I'm a sultry Indianapolis summer afternoon.

Speaker3: [00:18:15] Yes, underneath really bad fluorescent lights, but that's one of our favorite places to be in the Anthropocene. Yeah. So we're here to talk about the Caribbean small islands and the Bahamas and coral and all kinds of good stuff. Hmm. So maybe we could begin with kind of hearing the genealogy of how you got interested in doing fieldwork and thinking through issues in the Bahamas?

Speaker4: [00:18:41] Well, OK, I'll try to make this comprehensible. Well, so I have an undergraduate degree in environmental biology, and I was, you know, getting that degree at Columbia University. And I had never been to the Bahamas. I'd never been to the Caribbean. I'm from Seattle, Washington. That was just not a part of the world that I thought about, but I did care a lot about the environment and a lot about non-human life. And I was, you know, wanted to save the world and I didn't.

Speaker3: [00:19:15] We all, when we were young and fresh faced, really, really did. And we really

Speaker4: [00:19:20] Believed, yes, yes. And and I think I wanted to be a zoologist. I don't know what I what I thought really at the time, but I decided to minor in cultural anthropology because I took a class on political ecology accidentally because it had ecology in the name and it transformed my life. And because of that, as part of my thesis, as you know, as as the impetus for my thesis research, I went up. I ended up going to the Bahamas to interview fishermen for a larger socio ecological research project. And at the time, I didn't even understand what I was getting involved in. I was just like, OK, I'll go to the Bahamas.

Speaker1: [00:19:59] It sounds like not a bad 20.

Speaker4: [00:20:01] This is great. And I was in a small town on a small island interviewing fishermen about their daily lives and practices. And that experience stuck with me, and it has never changed. And so eventually I decided to go to graduate school, and I ended up also doing research in the Bahamas on questions of social ecology. What is socio ecological research? How does environmental research, especially transnational environmental research, large research projects? How does it produce island space and island imaginaries and also but also island material materiality in ways that can then be picked up by policy? But also and this is something that has become central to my work also. How can it be picked up by the tourism industry and used in terms of destination branding and marketing? And it all just happened because I was 20 and wanted to go to the Bahamas for the summer.

Speaker1: [00:20:59] Yeah. And you know, tourism I can imagine as an outsider is kind of everything and everywhere in the Caribbean, right? So must be a huge part of the Bahamian economy and so forth. But something that your work has brought to light you and your colleagues work it's brought to light is that the Caribbean is really becoming an interesting zone of experimentation with energy, which I don't think is something people think about a lot, but we've been hearing more and more. So just wanted to invite you to comment on that a little bit.

Speaker4: [00:21:27] Yeah, I mean, the Caribbean is a foundational experimental space for all kinds of international global projects.

Speaker3: [00:21:36] So slavery, slavery, you know

Speaker4: [00:21:39] That that thing? Yeah. You know, early the plantation system, right? Right. So and this is something that I have come to think about quite a bit over the years. But so part of what I find fascinating is the way in which different islands can be used for different interests, different purposes as experimental sites. And this is true of islands generally. But because of this Caribbean history as being kind of an experimental region, I think it has particular salience there. And now I think people are looking for sustainable solutions and in the context of an Anthropocene or an Anthropocene awareness, people are looking for alternative structures for to maintain, you know, daily life systems. So energy systems being a huge one and people are arguing that you can use islands as test cases so you can use they're small, they're small, they are very tiny. The illusion of smallness. Yeah, the illusion of boundary dish, right, which is very powerful. And people buy into this illusion over and over and over and over again. And so there are a lot. I think if you were actually looking, you would find so many more experimental projects than you would imagine in the islands of the Caribbean. So many, so many donors, so many funders, so many venture capitalists saying let. Put in solar panels, let's fund let's power this entire island with solar, or let's do experiments with geothermal energy, or let's experiment with turbines of various kinds

Speaker3: [00:23:19] On land,

Speaker4: [00:23:20] On land. And also, I think I'm sure that if you were looked, you would find offshore turbines as well. And I find that fascinating who's who's funding these kinds of things? How would they how are these funders can making relationships with sovereign state governments to do these experiments or not? To what degree do these plans? There's so much planning, so much modeling that's happening and using these island systems as prototypes for the scaling up of these ventures. One example I know is the island of Eleuthera. There's a research institute, and they feel that their job is to kind of produce these plans for the nation of the Bahamas. They're not run by Bohemians, they're run by Americans. They're primarily American and European researchers, and they have over the years produced all kinds of plans for sustainable living. One of these plans was a design for how you would run all of the nation's energy on solar power by the year 2030, and this never happened. It was all conceptual, but there's I just find it fascinating how these islands become tools for this generation of these ideas. And then these ideas get very bogged down in the everyday politics and complexity of actually navigating complex energy systems.

Speaker1: [00:24:49] Mm hmm. I was just going to say I was just going to as a follow up in the case then of the Bahamas specifically. To what extent have these kind of green energy utopias actually been institutional? I mean, have things been created or things actually working right now? Or is it all still in the kind of prospective future?

Speaker4: [00:25:06] Oh, very, very prospective. Except for private small ventures that can like if you have a private island, if you were fortunate enough to have your own island, for example, there are people who have who are off the grid on their islands, or if you have your own estate or home, there are people who are off the grid in that sense. But in terms of,

Speaker3: [00:25:26] You know, that little island, we have

Speaker4: [00:25:27] That little island, you guys. Oh yeah. Didn't I tell you about that? Yeah, it's a nice one. That's where you're offshoring. You know, certain things. Oh yeah, it's fine. Yeah, but the government

Speaker3: [00:25:36] Has no

Speaker1: [00:25:37] Government has no right to look into the totality of our finances. I think let's just get that

Speaker4: [00:25:41] Right out there. So but in terms of large scale like municipal level, there's there's none of that. There's still like horrific bunker C grade fuel that is shipped in and the leaky peer to the site and the central island of New Providence in the Bahamas. And that is what powers almost everybody's energy. And and they have kind of revamped their diesel generator. Yes, they've revamped their generation system a little bit, but it's still ancient. It's still falling apart. There's still not necessarily enough energy for, you know, peak use in the summer when everybody's got the air conditioning on there. Lots of brownouts. So it's an issue that everybody is concerned with, but it does not. There's no reason to think that the government is going to look towards renewables realistically in the immediate future. It's a bet. It's something that's very interesting to watch. But meanwhile, all of these experiments continue to happen all around the islands of the Bahamas. And so that contrasts between what is actually being used and what is being imagined is pretty stark and fascinating.

Speaker3: [00:26:53] Well, one of I think, one of the very interesting things about the Caribbean in general and absolutely in the case of the Bahamas, is the intensity of the economic reliance on tourism as an industry. And, you know, I don't know exactly what the percentages are, but it's a it's a very high quotient of the national economy. So it creates an interesting set of balances, I would think, in terms of energy use because you can't just sort of look at the nation state and say, here is here is the amount of energy that our population is using to cool their homes or to run their refrigerators. But you have to sort of take into account this BMF right of of the tourism industry and the cruise ships and whatever other forms it takes, which is also super.

Speaker4: [00:27:37] And that's where the ethics and politics become, you know, even more complicated because the population of of this particular small island state, the Bahamas, is just under 400000 give or take, and the average tourist arrivals now is over five million. I think last year it was around six six million something. Wow. And so I mean, that's such a stark contrast. And these people, the visitors, the tourist. They need the kind they require, or they claim it is said that they require the kinds of consumptive capacities that they are used to at home, you know, in the US, Canada and Europe. And so the Bahamas, this tiny archipelago nation of 700 islands, we're using this really dirty fuel has to provide these, you know, this amenity energy as an amenity for these visitors

Speaker1: [00:28:31] Who are bringing their kind of northern lifestyle down to the island.

Speaker4: [00:28:33] They're not changing in any way, and it's considered an insult or a slight to the tourist industry if they are forced or asked to change their habits. So hot water, air conditioning, running, water, electricity, television, day or night, all the food and, you know, all inclusive amenities that you could that you could want. Now there are alternatives in the Bahamas. There are alternative kinds of destinations, but they are very small.

Speaker3: [00:29:02] It's like eco tourism.

Speaker4: [00:29:04] There are examples of that, but they are very small and that they're definitely not. They're not capable of approaching the lion's share of the tourist arrivals or are having the capacity to do that. Nor would that's not their purpose. So. So so the question is, what is all of the energy going to? What is it keeping alive and it is keeping alive the mass tourism industry?

Speaker1: [00:29:29] Mm hmm. So what about islands? Talk to us about islands, because it seems that islands are a continuous theme throughout the several research projects that you're working on right now in many different parts of the world. So I mean, at what point in doing your research, did the island itself become interesting to you?

Speaker3: [00:29:45] Conceptually, I moved a small island,

Speaker4: [00:29:47] In particular island in particular

Speaker3: [00:29:50] A small, big small island.

Speaker1: [00:29:52] Because Big Island sucked by the way Greenland

Speaker3: [00:29:55] Struck our

Speaker4: [00:29:57] Continent, island continent.

Speaker1: [00:30:00] I would get in trouble with people

Speaker3: [00:30:01] Going to tell people back at the conference about each other's islands. Oh man, really neat.

Speaker1: [00:30:06] Because if Australia is on an African island too, I mean, I know, right? Well, all right. Sorry, we got off

Speaker4: [00:30:11] Topic with this. So what the small island I notice I became? I mean, it came to my attention because it was in all of the grant proposals of the researchers and the scientists that I was working with and paying attention to. And it and it came up because it's in all of the international dialogue around the significance of climate change in the Bahamas, in the region where I work, you know, it's a small island state. And so I started to think about, well, what does that mean to be a small island? And it means a number of things. But in part, I think it means that a small island is now particularly attractive as a research site. For the reasons that we were discussing, experimental capacity kind of fits a certain kind of mold that people are looking for. And also because there's this sense of it's also aspirational and that it, the small island is now a unit around which people can organize, which we were talking about earlier that access the alliance of small island states and small island developing states network. They can claim kind of rights to make certain kinds of arguments in the context of global change policy that they couldn't make if they were not, if they didn't have the small island badge.

Speaker4: [00:31:29] And that badge basically says we didn't contribute to the problem, but we are going to suffer first and worst. So therefore you, the rest of the world, especially the developed world, especially these large carbon producing states, you have to care about us and you have to listen to us, and we are going to lead the way in terms of dictating or attempting to dictate where the conversation should go in terms of international climate remediation policy. So the small island is is a produced as a particular kind of tool that different kinds of organizations and groups can use for different purposes, which I find really fascinating to you. It's the small island is, I think, to me. To me, it is one of those iconic Anthropocene spaces, and that's something I think about. The Antarctic is obviously an Anthropocene space like glacial areas or Anthropocene spaces. The rainforest is an Anthropocene space. The small island is absolutely like an iconic Anthropocene space. The canary in the coal mine. They call it small islands.

Speaker3: [00:32:35] Yeah, paradigmatic political technology almost sounds right to, yeah, well, you know, this is interesting in the first and the worst. I mean, it's it's a great slogan, right? Because it's very memorable and it's accurate, and it's so descriptive in a short, small number of words. It also it kind of brings me back to thinking about the tourism again and

Speaker4: [00:32:56] Which is never far right, which

Speaker3: [00:32:58] Is never far away. You can't sort of is right. They're going to put the Caribbean in your head without thinking tourism and slavery. I mean, it's really those are kind of the fundamental pieces that at least resonate in the Western imagination. But I wonder of all these millions of tourists who have come to the Caribbean and the fact that the Caribbean is a kind of global tourist destination for relatively wealthy northerners. If that contact that some of these policymakers and some of these experts have actually been to the Bahamas and laid on the beach or whatever they do actually helps the case of Caribbean nations because it's a familiar place to some people who have power decision making power and who have influence in ways that Antarctica, for example, can. Because most of us haven't been to Antarctica, we're not going to get there and we don't have that kind of like contact sympathy with the place. But if I think about the gazillions of people who've been to the Caribbean, some of those people are sitting in Washington. Yeah, some of those people are in U.N. committees, et cetera.

Speaker4: [00:34:06] I don't think that that connection has been has been worked. I don't think people are necessarily making that connection, but I think it's I think it exists. You know, I think people, people have been and do go to the Caribbean in droves. They do have an a direct, experiential connection with a small island place. They just didn't realize it at the time. The tourism industry for most of its history in the Caribbean, and this is changing, which is something also studying. But for most of the time, you know, the Caribbean is paradise, right? And it's intentionally designed as paradise at sun, sand and sea. It's, you know, it's eaten with all the problems that that brings all of this, the silencing, all of the madness, the ahistorical silencing of all of the complicated past and the the centrality of the Caribbean region to especially the history of the Americas. Yeah, that's all. That's not part of the tourism product that has never been part of the tourism product. It's only recently that in attempts to diversify it, the tourism product of the Caribbean and the Bahamas that there has been such a thing as diasporic heritage tourism, where you can actually go to plantation sites and plantation ruins, or where you can actually be asked to think about the relationship between islands and global change, where in particular sites and particular islands that are involved with ecological research in an eco tourist vein, but also but also not also as part of just the regular everyday tourism experience that people are trying to promote there. But that's very new. And so I think your average tourist still goes to the Bahamas and doesn't think about it in terms of any other sense of place besides paradise. You know, they don't leave their hotel. Typically, they don't leave their cruise ship, except for to do some buy some souvenirs.

Speaker3: [00:36:04] And the last thing you want to do when you're on vacation is think about climate change

Speaker4: [00:36:07] And think about how you just you contributed to it by flying for three hours. Yeah, but it's

Speaker1: [00:36:13] Interesting to me, like just this just occurred to me. We were talking that in some ways, the core of what people are trying to experience is still a low carbon pleasure. It's a soul or pleasure. Going to sit in the sun, I want to feel the air. I want to sweat something like that. I want to be near and

Speaker4: [00:36:28] In a way. It seems that way. Right.

Speaker1: [00:36:30] But everything else in that apparatus and everything else that fossil fuel

Speaker4: [00:36:33] Intensive does exactly that preserves this idea that all you need is the sun, the sea and the beach, and you're going to drink and you're fine. That's so much work and so much energy literally goes into producing them

Speaker3: [00:36:46] Because when they get off the beach, they want to take a nice shower and want to have a bunch of clean towels to drive.

Speaker4: [00:36:51] And they want air conditioning

Speaker3: [00:36:52] And they want air conditioning, right? Because it's hot out there.

Speaker1: [00:36:55] Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I feel like if you were thinking about how you somehow convert that Caribbean encounter into something pedagogical, if you reminded people that really what they're there for is just the sun and the beauty, right? I don't know. Maybe there's some way you could take away from that.

Speaker3: [00:37:11] A sense that wherever the optimist.

Speaker1: [00:37:14] Ok, so this brings me to my next question, which was how much do people care about or concerned with as a matter of daily life, things like sea level rise in the Caribbean? Is this a big issue? Because I mean, other parts of the world, I know it's a big issue with small island nations, but I know there's also a lot of differences in the Caribbean of terrain.

Speaker4: [00:37:31] Yeah. So some some islands in the Caribbean are incredibly projected to, you know, have extreme cases of sea level rise. But many islands are not because of the complicated movement of water. You know, as I think also has been mentioned earlier, you know, sea level rise is a very uneven would be and is a very uneven event. And so there are not many islands in the Caribbean are not as vulnerable. And this is all you know these these indexes of vulnerability are also highly suspect. But as not as vulnerable as certain islands in the Pacific, for example, or island nations are large enough that they would be able to adapt or they have enough islands that are, you know, that would be quote unquote safe, that they would internally move people. So, you know, the absolutely displacement is an issue. Coastal development is an issue. The cost of living, I think, is going to be a huge issue. It's already high. It's going to get much, much higher as you know, adaptation, you know, people have to pay for that, you know, to be able to maintain lives in these places. So it's part of the conversation, but it's not yet at the level of, oh, we need to make agreements with other nations to move our our citizenry. Ok. It's not at the level of this is a topic that is discussed in Parliament, and I'm talking about the Bahamas now and any kind of regular way that also varies throughout the Caribbean region. I think in some countries that it's more of a public and political topic than it is in the Bahamas. But the Bahamas is so concerned with its tourism product and the maintenance of that tourism product above all else that it's that its relationship to climate change is still really underdeveloped in terms and also what the national response to that is going. To me, it's really underdeveloped,

Speaker3: [00:39:30] So you're not seeing this on the front page of the newspaper

Speaker4: [00:39:33] Today. Hardly, hardly ever. I wouldn't say never, but hardly.

Speaker3: [00:39:36] Wow, that's really interesting. I would have thought differently. I would have thought that it's, you know, every other day, there's some discussion about sea level rise.

Speaker4: [00:39:43] But that doesn't mean that discussion isn't there right now. And there are brilliant organizations in the Bahamas, brilliant groups of private citizens and NGOs that are working tirelessly day and night to try to make this a conversation to get this conversation, especially into schools, to get teachers educated when it comes to not only climate change, but also, you know, the unique island technologies that they have in the in the region. So I think these things are all changing also. You see, even you'll see it even in the mega resorts now that on their face are not, there's no sign that, you know, climate change exists or that global change of any kind is happening because of course, it's not their brand. But when you start talking to the engineers and designers and people who are kind of taking over the running of these developments as they age, they're concerned they have become concerned with how are we disposing of our waste? How can we become more energy efficient? What's happening with our water because it's so expensive for them to deal with these things in part, and also because they are trying to attract a different kind of traveler now who is younger, the millennials? If that is, you know, a category that we can can at least agree that people call for taking millennials down, they're taking their words down to the promise. They're going to the Fyre Festival. Yeah, they care. You know, they're they're horrified when they see Styrofoam containers horrified like, this is what we're in a third world country. They're Styrofoam. And this is something that at least the tourism apparatus of the Bahamas is aware of and that they know they're not on trend anymore if they're not dealing with this in some, to some visible

Speaker3: [00:41:29] Degree, not on trend

Speaker4: [00:41:31] On trend. So you're not going to see it in the main page of these websites, but you might see start now seeing links to, you know, our sustainability, maybe off to the side

Speaker1: [00:41:42] Or in the great literature of the tourism

Speaker3: [00:41:44] Association. Absolutely right. Because that discourse has been taken up in the United States, in the hotel industry.

Speaker4: [00:41:51] Absolutely. Yeah. So there's a hospital, a larger hospitality discourse and the the powers that be in the Bahamas. The Ministry of Tourism is one of the most powerful ministries in the in the cabinet. So they're very much they attend these conferences. They send people around the world to these to all of the meetings so that there's definitely a growing awareness of it. But it's not mainstream, right? So, so part of I have to in my own writing, I have to remind myself that the people that I talked to and the people, the meetings that I attend, the the things that I pay attention to while they're extremely loud and obvious to me and to this particular community, there's they're not public in this in a general sense, and I have to think about that one of these strange tensions like to me, this is an Anthropocene tension when you have to when you're your industry is selling a perfect product and the destination as a perfect kind of place. But there's also these prevailing trends to acknowledge our relationship to Earth systems. How do you I mean, this is a horrible I wouldn't want this job to try to navigate this in a way that is in any shape or form, ethically responsible, you know, right? I mean, that's a huge task for for some of these, these hotel companies.

Speaker3: [00:43:17] So they're not really engaged with the question of sea level rise. But are there concerns about storms, for example, and hurricanes? Yeah.

Speaker4: [00:43:26] So they just had a hurricane, Hurricane Matthew in October of twenty sixteen that hit the capital of the Bahamas. And that was a major, major event. And I was not there and I was watching from afar and I was horrified at the kinds of I mean, there was not loss of life, which was incredible, but there was destruction of property. You know, I have personal friends who lost the roof on their home, just incredibly intense trees down everywhere. Place still looks like it had a really bad haircut. Oh my God. And so and I was wondering, as I would, you know, is this going to change the conversation? You know, it hit the Hurricanes, hit the Bahamas almost annually, but you know, some of the lesser populated islands and people deal with it. But it hit the capital where the majority of the population resides, where all the politicians are. And will this change the conversation? And so far, and now this is what may of twenty seventeen. The answer is not really. Ok, yeah, not really. So it hasn't

Speaker1: [00:44:27] Had the Hurricane Sandy effect, in other

Speaker4: [00:44:28] Words, no. And because this was kind of like a once in a hundred year storm to hit the capital

Speaker3: [00:44:36] That capital based on the last hundred years of history, but the next hundred years or so?

Speaker4: [00:44:41] Exactly. If Nassau gets a hurricane this year or next year, yeah, that would, I think, change the conversation. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker3: [00:44:49] Yes. Because of course, this idea of the, you know, the hundred year the five hundred year hurricane is is a kind of an oxymoron now because that's based on past precedent and the future is going to look very different. I have a I have a question and I don't know if this is something that can be answered or not. And then we'll move on to coral coral. Ok, I'll ask it real quick, and you can just say you can just say no. Ok. Do you notice any difference in terms of how Caribbean nations are behaving politically or socially vis-a-vis the environment or energy? That seems to be tied to their colonial past that is due to Spanish colonial nation states and the Caribbean versus French versus English kind of approach these questions differently. Are those patterns that you see?

Speaker4: [00:45:42] That's a great question and one that I I don't know enough about, particularly the French context. I don't know enough to answer that, but because Caribbean scholars and not all of us, but many of us, we have our linguistic barriers, you know, so as an English speaking anthropologist, I am interested in the English speaking Caribbean. And these are artificial boundaries that shouldn't exist, but that that's something that I actually I actually cannot. I can't tell you the answer to that. But if you got a group of you had a group of Caribbean us together, we could put that together.

Speaker3: [00:46:18] Yeah. No, that would be that could be worth doing paper for a set of papers. It's a good research question. Yeah. So now shall we talk about this other cool thing that Emily is working on? Let's talk about Coral. Tell us the three things that coral is.

Speaker4: [00:46:34] Well, people say scientists, some scientists say, and observers say that coral is animal, vegetable and mineral. Coral is animal because there's a tiny living organism that is the coral creature. But coral pulls calcium or calcium carbonate out of the ocean out of the seawater it. It's dissolved in seawater. But but coral bodies can can convert that into their exoskeletons, which is the coral structure that we actually see when we see coral. And then these these organisms and these structures have symbiotic relationships with algae, which grow on anything. Well, coral like to live in shallow places because of this relationship with algae they need. Then the algae need a certain level of sunlight, and they live within these coral structures. And they say that's how coral structures get their colors. Actually, because of

Speaker3: [00:47:33] These

Speaker4: [00:47:34] Coral organisms living with with different kinds of algae and different kinds of coral live with different kinds of algae, but algae can also kill coral. So if fish are not cleaning coral structures, certain species of fish are not eating the algae at a at a reasonable rate. Then the algae can can smother the coral. It's all very complicated and wonderful.

Speaker1: [00:47:55] Yeah, and I'm going to ask another.

Speaker4: [00:47:57] Just I know no ecologists are allowed to listen to me. Explain algae of this. Ecologists go, Yeah, fast forward for about five minutes.

Speaker1: [00:48:07] I also the two things we hear the most about. Maybe, if any, insight you know, specialized or not, you can give in to the. We hear about acidification and we obviously hear about bleaching. So. So is this basically about the system coming into imbalance? In other words, there you know, the algae are allowed to get too aggressive or there's not enough carbonate being.

Speaker4: [00:48:32] Well, I think ocean out of yes. So ocean acidification means that I think coral bodies, coral structures are literally dissolving like or they can't or they can't be formed in the first place because because you need a particular a particular balance, I suppose, is the right word or. Yeah, for for the for that to work. And then I think bleaching happens when coral bodies let go of algae or they die or they retreat or something. And all you're left with is just the naked shell of the. Yeah.

Speaker1: [00:49:12] And coral like the bones in a way, the skeleton.

Speaker4: [00:49:15] It's a skeleton. It's literally a skeleton. And that can happen for a variety of stressors. It can happen because of water temperature changes too quickly or too extreme. It becomes too extreme one way or the other. And that happens. It can happen because of storm. Events it can happen because of human tourist, particularly treatment of coral by too much excessive touching. Right, right, right, right. Sunscreen is apparently really bad for coral. If you're really greasy in the water, though, to what extent that actually causes, like extreme bleaching, I think is minimal, but it's not good. These are all things that my scientist colleagues try to explain to me. But bleach but coral can recover. Bleached coral can recover depending on the percentage of bleaching and depending on the reasons for the bleaching. So coral is also apparently incredibly resilient, which is also why many people are fascinated with coral because it's animal, vegetable, mineral, because it's so sensitive to conditions and changes and conditions, especially rapid changes and conditions, but also because it can overcome to a great degree these changes if changes revert back or if they can adjust and adapt.

Speaker1: [00:50:28] You know, I heard somebody say recently, and I can't remember who somebody was saying that coral is one of these sentinel species

Speaker3: [00:50:37] And they are talking that you're talking to some genius. So brilliant.

Speaker1: [00:50:42] It was a really brilliant woman.

Speaker4: [00:50:43] Yeah, and beautiful. Yeah. Right?

Speaker3: [00:50:46] It was.

Speaker1: [00:50:47] It was her name.

Speaker3: [00:50:49] Well, it can be some mad and chatting the Cheyenne Cheyenne.

Speaker4: [00:50:54] Yeah, Cheyenne Howell

Speaker1: [00:50:56] At the restaurant. Did you hear that? We came up and presented her card and we're like, Cheyenne, I am really.

Speaker4: [00:51:03] That's a brave attempt. It was cute. Yes.

Speaker1: [00:51:06] Anyway, I'm setting you up to ask that question, actually.

Speaker3: [00:51:09] Oh, well, we were just talking yesterday about these kind of centennial characters. Let's call them for the Anthropocene or climate change. And we began with the polar bears maybe 10 to 15 years ago. You know, the entire discourse was sort of pivot around the image of the polar bear on the ice floe, especially if it's a mama and a baby. That's particularly tragic, and that evoked a lot of reaction and empathy from people, understandably, because how can you not love a polar bear that's in the Arctic? Now, more recently, over the last, say, five years or so, it's really been very much about glaciers, right? So like in the New York Times today, there's like a three part thing on Antarctica, right? And we're hearing about Larsen B and Larsen C, and we're hearing about Greenland and Arctic and glaciers in the Himalayan glaciers. Well, because they were like, they're hard core snow people. You don't have to be frivolous. Claim they're all sons and sons. Like all these glaciologists are all sons and sons because they grow up in that environment. It's just it's a central part of their identity. Yeah. So we hear about that. And so it's been glaciers like as the kind of image or the totem, the totem entity of the Anthropocene. But now it's really becoming coral. They're like the sentinels,

Speaker1: [00:52:25] Especially the bleaching of the Great Barrier.

Speaker4: [00:52:27] The Great Barrier Reef bleaching event, I think, really brought that home because it's such a giant tourist destination. Also, I think people were visiting and and not allowed to to go to certain sites or they were seeing, you know, they were seeing the bleaching. There was an article, a news article published, I think, yeah, last year where the I think it was, the Australian Ministry of Tourism said, look kind of like Phuket, come and see the bleached coral. It's amazing. Like it's really dramatic. You might as well don't. But whatever you do, don't not come. Yeah, exactly. Don't stop flying, you know, thousands of miles to experience this, but come and see the bleached coral, which I thought was particularly amazing as a certain kind of Anthropocene tourism product, you know? Right, right. Acres of bleached

Speaker3: [00:53:18] Coral. Well, and there's you know, there's something similar. Yeah. Devastation tourism. And I guess, yeah, something similar is happening in Iceland as well. And Greenland, where people are coming to be, you know, see the glaciers before they're gone.

Speaker4: [00:53:35] Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's the same tourism.

Speaker1: [00:53:37] Mm hmm. So I mean, what is your work related to? I mean, how how is your research project evolved to absorb coral into your anthropological interests?

Speaker4: [00:53:45] Well, I'm fascinated about how coral is becoming a site for it's always been in the Bahamas and these island regions. It's always been a tourist attraction for a very long time, you know, scuba diving, snorkeling. You can go out and see coral, but particularly in the Bahamas, there is a new plate. Everyone go there immediately. There's a new site called the Sir Nicholas Nuttall Sculpture Garden, and it is basically an attempt to tell the story of Coral to educate the public about coral through underwater sculpture, and also to remove tourists from actual coral sites so that they can be underwater and dive and snorkel and do all that. Not necessarily harm. Living reefs, which are, you know, particularly fragile, but. And there's the educational component built in kind of explain what the stressors are on the local coral ecology. So I've been very interested. It's a it's only been in existence for maybe two, two years, three years at the most. But it is located and I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this because this is a politically sensitive issue. And in that part of the Bahamas, right wing politicians also. So fast forward, but it is located right next to the pier that I was mentioning earlier where the nasty oil comes in. And the government has claimed in the past that there is no oil leaking from the pier. And yet, on many days of the year, tourists cannot go visit the site because there's too much oil in the water and it comes in these tiny little globules and it gets in your mask and it gets on your skin and it gets in your swimsuit and it's just gross. And a friend of mine, you know, manages this site and she's out there every week and she says, you know, her starting to affect her health to the degree that she's had to kind of change her diet. She's had to change so much of her lifestyle just to kind of get kind of toxins out of her system because

Speaker3: [00:55:48] It's petroleum exposure.

Speaker4: [00:55:50] Exactly. And she says it affected her thyroid. It is affecting her mood, you know, medically documented all levels of, you know, of problems, but she's still doing it, which is what I'm amazed that she's still goes out and manages this site on a weekly basis. And they have a they have a coral nursery there. Also as part this is also key is part of their demonstration of how people can rehabilitate coral environments and how especially divers can be involved. You can not take coral restoration courses, dive courses. You can get a certification for this. So how to clean coral nurseries, how to plant coral fragments? And this is driven by the tourism industry and needs the tourism industry this. This mode of education and demonstration wouldn't be effective if there wasn't a tourist. A group of interested individuals who are paying and that's also key. They're paying for this experience, they're paying for these certifications and that money goes into funding rehabilitation efforts so that they're utilizing this tourism as the engine in the same way that a lot of eco tourism has. But it's particularly focused on coral coral restoration, coral education. I've been thinking about it in the sense of like caring for coral, developing a sense of care for these coral communities so

Speaker3: [00:57:11] They can actually get certified to sort of reproduce coral in the wild.

Speaker4: [00:57:16] And they and they they can do that by tagging along to existing projects. So if you're there at the right time, you can take a certification course. It's like a half day class and then you can go out and dive and participate in some very basic level because they're not going to let you break anything or mess anything up, right? You can participate to some degree in some of the maintenance of the Coral Restoration and Rehabilitation Project, and you're kind of a hopeful thing.

Speaker3: [00:57:45] I don't know.

Speaker4: [00:57:45] That sounds very easy to be cynical about it. For me, I'm I'm really great at being cynical, but but what inspires me and keeps me very engaged in this project is how much the people who are designing it and working with the coral and you know how passionately they care. I mean, in this woman, she's out in petroleum filled water, still knowing everything that you know and she's, you know, she's done her research now. She's like, why? Why am I doing this? And that I find particularly, yeah, I think inspiring to some degree,

Speaker1: [00:58:20] Is that what brought you to Indonesia, too? Was it similar types of initiatives there?

Speaker4: [00:58:24] Yeah. And they're and they're similarly fraught initiatives, too. So. So Coral has led me out of the Bahamas to another archipelagic country, Indonesia, seventeen thousand islands and similar similar problems of coral fragility, small island fragility, issues of energy waste, overconsumption, tourism, hyper tourism in some places. And I'm very interested in a particular project which is testing methods for coral rehabilitation and restoration in small island communities. And but it's a corporate social responsibility project. And so it's similarly relying on private entities and private money and to to be the engine behind what they hope will be kind of a large scale spread of this particular method throughout island regions where they have coral damage because of particularly because of destructive fishing practices. That are relatively common, maybe less common than they used to be, but still relatively prevalent throughout particular regions of the country. And so but that's still again, it's a level of care for coral communities and coral ecologies. And I think also a genuine and sincere care for island communities that are, if not dependent these days, then at least very closely tied to their coral reef ecosystems. And so these are early days working on this project in Indonesia, but I'm trying to kind of follow this kind of the ethic of care that goes into this, but also keeping in mind that it is very much a corporate project, right? Right. And you know, if if the corporate funding and the corporate backing goes away, is there anything left and is, you know, what is the ethical obligation

Speaker3: [01:00:22] And and which are the corporations like company

Speaker4: [01:00:26] Or in this case, it's one company I don't think I'll name them now.

Speaker3: [01:00:31] Sorry, can you name? Can you name the industry? Is it? Is it? Is it food

Speaker4: [01:00:38] Or they work in food? Ok? I can't say that they work in food you put on Mars.

Speaker3: [01:00:44] Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it's interesting, too. And maybe this is actual in terms of the ecological system. And maybe it's not, and maybe you'll find out about this. But it'd be fascinating to hear about the relationship between industrial farming in Indonesia because we hear about palm oil plantations, for example, and how either the kind of farming waste, agricultural waste and runoff might be affecting coral and or how the slashing and burning of forests in order to create those plantations is is impacting the kind of atmosphere.

Speaker4: [01:01:18] I mean, all of this is interrelated. It's absolutely the coral is absolutely tied to these things. The kind of large scale extraction in Indonesia has effects on the marine ecology, whether they're proven or not, you know, demonstrably proven or not. I think it's absolutely the case. There's all kinds of pollution in the sea, all kinds of runoff. I mean, even, you know, industrial plastic production is gets, you know, everything that comes to these small islands comes in plastic, everything right, everything right. And it all goes back into the ocean. It all goes into the ocean. And so everybody is culpable, everybody. All of these industries, especially these multinational companies, are kind of culpable for all of this. These flows of pollution, the kind of just roll around the archipelago and that end up and it all ends up in the ocean. Yeah. And all of it ends up in the ocean. And there's also the politics of human migration that are tied to employment and in these large scale industries as well. So people move from island small islands to the mainland, then they become caught up in the labor practices and labor politics for that complicates what some of these companies are trying to do. So the companies have a vested interest in stabilizing, stabilizing the systems that they profit so much from. And so it's corporate social responsibility in the sense that it, you know, they're doing, they're attempting to do good, but they're also they're doing good for themselves. They're very, I think, very aware of that as well. Yeah.

Speaker3: [01:03:01] Yeah, they're into sustainability.

Speaker4: [01:03:03] Of course, they're just sustaining their what their company does.

Speaker1: [01:03:08] Yeah. Up to a point where I'll just say, and this is, I mean, because I'm Pollyanna ish about it and I try to be optimistic and at least the long term, because the short term can be pretty bleak. But I think that every time the sustainability practices actually create real encounters and relationships of care, like you were saying, there's always the potential there to destabilize the extractive logics that govern the day, even if it's like a small micro level, and it's just like some people. But any time you can get people to begin to change their relationship to other species and other humans, I think you can. You can take a small step in the right direction. So I don't know. But what I do know is that we're running short on time. Do you want to just say like and we'll have to have this conversation at length later, maybe when you're deep into the project? But do you want to say a little bit about the Block Island project before

Speaker4: [01:03:55] We wrap up? Yeah. So and what is it? In my my, I've become I've become an island specialist almost unintentionally. So my latest my newest island is Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island, and it is home to the nation's first offshore wind turbine wind farm, which is a boutique wind farm of only five large turbines. And I will be out on the water, on the beach, on bicycles, on Block Island this summer and next summer, investigating the relationship. Between the turbines and tourism, coastal and marine recreation,

Speaker1: [01:04:34] You say boutique, I would imagine they're like steam or something.

Speaker4: [01:04:39] Absolutely.

Speaker1: [01:04:41] But they're just regular turbines.

Speaker4: [01:04:42] They're regular turbines. I mean, they're yeah, they're regular turbines. You would you can you recognize them instantly? And I'm very interested to if they're going to become part of the iconic tourist landscape of coastal Rhode Island and New England, or whether or not people are going to decide they hate them. But anecdotally, people don't hate them, you know? It was really quickly, really. Fascinatingly, the Black Island Tourism Council made its summer come to Block Island video and every shot like just didn't like, just stop right before the turbines, so everything cut away right before the turbines. But if you know the site, you know they're right there. They're huge, they're right there. You can't avoid them, but they made them really conscious choice not to include them in any of their media. But what's going to happen next year? You know, they're looking at this summer to see what is the relationship with the tour reaction? What's the reaction? How are people engaging with these turbines? So it's a great opportunity for me and my students to think about engagements with infrastructure, engagements with energy. The manifestation of all of these ideas, it's embodied in these turbines and, you know, built into these turbines. And to what degree are tourists and visitors expecting to have a certain kind of interaction with with these very material objects? And to what degree, what, what, what, what, what will be the quality of that interaction?

Speaker3: [01:06:13] I think they should just paint some really cute, smiling dolphins on each blade. And then it's like dolphins are sort of jumping in and out of the water spins around. Then everyone would be happy.

Speaker4: [01:06:25] Yeah. I mean, people love dolphins,

Speaker3: [01:06:27] Public art dolphins. Everyone loves dolphins.

Speaker1: [01:06:29] Okay, so we're going to come visit you, your block island fieldwork

Speaker4: [01:06:32] At some point. Please do, please do you guys, you can ride bicycles, right?

Speaker3: [01:06:36] Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Speaker4: [01:06:37] Great, great. I'm like, Okay, I'm a bicycle feel.

Speaker3: [01:06:40] I get scared sometimes.

Speaker1: [01:06:42] But near the ocean where a shark could

Speaker2: [01:06:45] Be

Speaker4: [01:06:46] Extra

Speaker1: [01:06:46] Good. Six or whatever.

Speaker3: [01:06:49] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker1: [01:06:51] Shark shark attack shark bikers.

Speaker3: [01:06:53] Yeah, it sounds like a good blockbuster movie. Well, thank you, Amelia. So much fun to take, you guys.

Speaker4: [01:06:59] This is a great break from workshopping.

Speaker3: [01:07:01] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker1: [01:07:03] Ok, but speaking of which, we will be back before

Speaker4: [01:07:05] We get in trouble.

Speaker3: [01:07:06] We're in trouble.