coe077_schneidermayerson.mp3

Speaker1: [00:00:24] Welcome back cultures of energy, folk listeners,

Speaker2: [00:00:28] That's not very inspiring. That sounds distracted and like, Oh,

Speaker3: [00:00:30] Sorry, you're not. Oh, sorry. Ok, let me try again. Welcome back cultures of energy listeners. We're so glad to have you with us. We really are

Speaker2: [00:00:40] All ranked at about a six, six or seven.

Speaker3: [00:00:43] Ok, I was distracted by a small mechanical item on the shelf over there, which is an old Nokia cell phone

Speaker2: [00:00:49] Reading from Reykjavik and Iceland.

Speaker3: [00:00:52] Oh right, Reykjavik.

Speaker2: [00:00:53] So we are. We have a terrific episode for you today. A terrific conversation with Matthew Schneider Meyerson, who is an assistant professor of environmental studies at the Yale and UC Campus in Singapore. And you probably remember Matthew because he was a postdoctoral fellow at Sense here at Rice or at our where rice where we normally are. Yes. And I remember things. I want to talk about his book Peak Oil and some of his more current research projects, right? But before we get that, we're going to introduce a new segment which is called Cultures of Energy Cold Case File.

Speaker3: [00:01:26] Yeah. What's the cover up? And we begin our saga in Hope Maine.

Speaker2: [00:01:32] Yeah. Well, let's let's do a little background. I mean, OK. I found this new story.

Speaker3: [00:01:36] It is called hope.

Speaker2: [00:01:37] It is. I found this news story, maybe like a week ago, and I sent it to Simone because we have an ongoing conversation. I think we've had on the podcast, too about my raccoon phobia. Yes. And so I'm and she's like, Raccoons are fine. Like, what are you freaking out about raccoons for? What's wrong with you? And so every time I can find a story about a raccoon attack, I always send it to her.

Speaker1: [00:01:57] Anything? Yes, anything negative about a raccoon. Dominick finds

Speaker2: [00:02:01] It smear. Campaign smear. Yeah.

Speaker3: [00:02:03] Do you even have a T-shirt with a picture of a raccoon and then a kind of Crayola crayon that's scratched it out violently?

Speaker2: [00:02:12] It's the article of clothing I'm most proud to own. True. So anything embezzlement story is like anything that makes raccoons look bad offshoring their insects or whatever. Inbreeding, inbreeding, anything that makes them look bad. I'm there. So this is a story that was like honey to my honey.

Speaker3: [00:02:29] Ok, honey, it's supposed to say honey to your pot, but I don't even know that expression.

Speaker2: [00:02:33] Honey to my Tumblr. That's like Winnie the Pooh. Ok, so the story is called, and I'm going to read it because I think it got out a little bit. And The Washington Post picked it up in some other outlets picked it up. But I still think it's like a relatively unknown story. It's called Mainer, meaning somebody from Maine, the state of Maine attacked by rabid raccoon drowns it in puddle. They don't bury the lead. You got to give

Speaker3: [00:02:55] Them that it's all there.

Speaker2: [00:02:57] But here's the story, and I'm going to read the story because it's not too long and then we're going to talk about it. But one thing I'd like people to bear in mind is I'm reading the story is that as we began to think about this story, we uncovered further layers of meaning and we're calling it a cold case because we think there is more to the story. There may even be a cover up. I think there could be there could be a cover up in the story. Ok, so this comes to us from the Bangor Daily News of Bangor, Maine, and it's written by Alex A. Christo and the Biden staff. And here's what it is Hope Maine Hope Maine While jogging on a familiar, overgrown, wooded trail near her home on a recent warm afternoon, Rachel Borch thought to herself quote, What a beautiful day. Little did she know she was about to be attacked by a rabid raccoon. She would end up killing with her bare hands, bare hands. In the midst of appreciating the weather and scenery, she looked ahead and noticed a raccoon, obstructing the narrow footpath, burying its tiny teeth, tiny teeth. Suddenly, it began quote bounding toward her porch, recalled Wednesday afternoon during an interview at her home on Hatchet Mountain Road in hope. Don't have this serious OK. I knew instantly it had to be rabid, said George, who remembers ripping out her headphones and dropping her phone on the ground. What felt like a split second later, the furry animal was at her feet. Borch said she was quote dancing around it, trying to figure out what to do. Imagine the Tasmanian devil, she said. It was terrifying. The path was too narrow for Borch to run past the raccoon, which had begun lunging at her with adrenaline pumping. Borch suspended her disbelief. I knew it was going to bite me, she said, figuring she would have the greatest ability to defend herself if she used her hands to hold it down, she decided that probably would be the best.

Speaker3: [00:04:31] Yeah, there's a type

Speaker2: [00:04:31] Of Typekit that probably would be the best place for the aggressive. I think her thumb that her thumb would be the best place for the aggressive animal to latch on. The raccoon sank its teeth into gorgeous thumb and quote wouldn't let go. It's paws were scratching her arms and legs wildly as Borch screamed and cried. In a matter of seconds, Borch, who could not unhinge the raccoons jaw to shake it off her hand, noticed that when she had dropped her phone, it had fallen into a puddle in the path and was fully submerged. I didn't think I could strangle the raccoon with my bare hand, she remembers thinking. But holding it underwater might do the trick. Connecting the dots quickly, borch down on her knees, drag the still biting raccoon, which was scratching frantically at her arms and hands into the puddle. With my thumb in its mouth, I just pushed its head down into the muck, Borch said. With the animal belly up, she held its head underwater. It was still struggling and clawing at my arms. It wouldn't let go my thumb, she said. Board said she held it there for what felt like an eternity until finally. He had stopped struggling and put its arms sort of fell to its side, a chest still heaving, really slowly hyperventilating and in hysterics, she pulled her thumb out of the racoons mouth and then I just bolted as fast as I could through the underbrush, she said, portray members looking back once to see if the raccoon had started chasing her again.

Speaker2: [00:05:37] It felt like Stephen King's pet cemetery, she said. That's a pretty great. Taking her shoes off because they were soaked, Borgia ran the three quarters of a mile back to her home porch, who was screaming, unsure of how rabies affects humans. Remembering thinking, Oh God, what if I just start foaming at the mouth and can't find my way back? She met her mother, Elizabeth, at home, and together they drove immediately to the Pen Bay Medical Center. The dead raccoon was retrieved by Bhatia's dad, who packed it into a taste of the wild dog food bag and handed it over to the Maine Warden Service Hope. Animal Control Officer Heidi Blood confirmed Wednesday that the dead raccoon later tested positive for rabies by the Maine Center for Disease Control. Not to scare people, Blood said, but where there's one infected, there's typically another. It's important to quote, let folks know that just because there's one infected and it's gone now doesn't mean the risk isn't still there, she said.

Speaker2: [00:06:24] Infected animals typically start showing signs within two weeks, Blood said. Humans can start exhibiting symptoms within a few weeks, she said, but often it takes a few months. Scary stuff, Blood said. The number one thing we try to remind people is that it's 100 percent fatal if it goes untreated. Porches has received six shots so far, including the rabies vaccine and the immunoglobulin and tetanus infections injection. She is slated to receive her last injection this weekend. Quote If there hadn't been water on the ground, I don't know what I would have done, Board said of the drowning of drowning the animal. It really was just dumb luck. I've never killed an animal with my bare hands. I'm a vegetarian. It was self-defense. Her advice for others who find themselves facing a rabid animal, Borch said she has none. I always thought of raccoons as this cuddly, cute forest animal, she said. I just will never look at them the same way. Yeah. Wow, OK, so story. I know that took a little longer to read than I thought, but I thought it's important to have that background. Simone, how what were some of the thoughts that you had as we began to analyze this story to probe it?

Speaker3: [00:07:22] Well, one one question I had is why you would instinctively are the first thing that you would do if you encounter a scary burying its little teeth for an animal in the forest, creature in your path that you would stick your hands down by its mouth and offer up your thumb as something for it to latch onto. It sounds really odd to me because I think if I encountered a ferocious looking raccoon in front of me, I mean, she's already running. Like, I think I would jump over it, I think, or I might freak out, you know, turn tail and run the other way. Right. So just run back from whence you came or at worst, I mean, I definitely wouldn't put my hands down there, but I would probably kick it right. I mean, she's got her running shoes on and stuff like, if there's a little animal down there that look like it might attack, I guess I would give it a boot. We could see had to.

Speaker2: [00:08:13] I could. I had the same thought. And again, this was meant to be more grist for my propaganda mill. But then as I began to look at the story more closely, not everything added up. Ok, yes. First of all, what I would have done is turn around and run screaming. So I'm no hero here vaulting. It would have been a really cool kind of badass move to be like, Oh, here it's going to try to bite me. I'm just going to jump over it and keep going.

Speaker3: [00:08:35] Yeah, fine, because they're not very tall.

Speaker2: [00:08:37] I can totally see if I was my back was up against a wall trying to kick it. The one thing I cannot ever see in a million years is reaching down and putting my thumb into its mouth and saying, Bite this because this is how I'm going to manage you, right? And meanwhile, I'm going to drown you in that puddle over there.

Speaker3: [00:08:53] Here, here is my opposable thumb. The one thing that makes makes us humans distinct and superior to all the all of God's creatures. Here is my thumb. Yeah, take my thumb and knock on it with those tiny little teeth. It's just it's it's it's crazy behavior. Maybe she was a little bit rabid before she even began this project. Ok, now, but here's my theory. All right,

Speaker2: [00:09:13] Let's get to your

Speaker3: [00:09:14] Theory. The theory, my theory is, is when we don't hear about this particular piece of technology until later, and she sees her phone fall totally submerged in the puddle, right? So this is what happened. She's got her earphones on. She's running along. She can't hear anything. She comes around the corner. There's a lot of brush. She sees a raccoon. She freaks out. The phone drops into the puddle. She drops her phone. You know, the earphones come out, too. And then she's confronted with this rabid raccoon. Yeah, which is and she reaches down to get her phone because she's like, Oh, fuck, my phone's going to be ruined because it's in the water, right? And she doesn't want to destroy her. Whatever $500 iPhone, right? The most precious, you know, more precious than a thumb obvious, more precious than a thumb. So she goes to get the phone and the animal grabs on to her

Speaker2: [00:10:03] Thumb because, among other things, throwing a phone down in the raccoon community is an aggression symbol. Yeah, I think also putting your hand out because she had to reach out towards the raccoon, and it probably was like, that's it. Like, I'm already a little crazy because of the rabies. And now this creature is reaching its hand toward me. That's it. I'm going to get it right.

Speaker3: [00:10:21] So the company thought it was going to be

Speaker2: [00:10:23] Strange, and it mentions how she's on her knees in the mud and the only way you would be on your knees in the mud is if you're down there trying to grab something out of the mud. So I think your story is right. She drops her phone accidentally. She goes down to get it. The raccoon interprets this as a threat or an aggression act, bites her thumb

Speaker3: [00:10:38] And are just an opportunity

Speaker2: [00:10:39] Because and now, like everything that's being made to sound as though she came up with this brilliant thought of like, Oh, now that it's in the now that I've got it, I've got it right where I want it with my thumb is out now I'm going to submerge that raccoons out underwater and drown it. No, I mean, I mean, that's I'm sure that's what she did. But she was with one hand to her phone, which tried to like, hold the raccoon off,

Speaker3: [00:11:02] Holding down a little until its arms quick, flailing in the mud. Because I think the other thing is that this isn't the section of the Bangor Daily news. It's called like quick thinking or something like that.

Speaker2: [00:11:13] Well, that was part of the Kiron before quick

Speaker3: [00:11:16] Thinking something like, yeah, so it's it's it's a little suspicious. Yeah.

Speaker2: [00:11:22] Prop full props to Alex Cousteau and the Biden staff for writing a gripping tale because the level of detail in here is amazing, and that was something else that we loved about this story. First of all, I'm pretty sure Heidi Blood is a made up name. It's not a real name, but it's like, what other name would you want to warn you about, like rabies than somebody named Heidi?

Speaker3: [00:11:41] Well, yeah, Heidi Blood, yes. And giving us a warning about rabies. And then she actually lives in the town of hatchet.

Speaker2: [00:11:47] And the thing that you said you love the best was about the dad,

Speaker3: [00:11:50] Though Bhatia's dad, who went and got the dead body and then packed it into the taste of the wild dog food

Speaker2: [00:11:57] Bag. Very specific information like how did they that that required some detective work?

Speaker3: [00:12:02] It's a really interesting choice. A bag to you. Think you just grab like a hefty garbage bag and go pick up the dead animal? But I'm glad he went and got it.

Speaker4: [00:12:11] That is all about recycling. He's not going to use a new bag.

Speaker2: [00:12:14] Yeah, he's not going to ruin a perfectly new, good new garbage bag to use it. Kind of used dog.

Speaker3: [00:12:19] Hopefully, there wasn't dog food in there that they then later gave to the dog. Can you get rabies through eating dog food?

Speaker2: [00:12:24] I don't know. I think, yeah, you can get rabies through touching a dog food bag.

Speaker3: [00:12:28] But so here's my other theory OK, I think the theory about trying to retrieve to save the fallen cell phone, right? I think that's the I think that's the truth here. Sorry. Sorry, guys. Yeah. Sorry, Rachel. I mean, I don't mean to to call into question you.

Speaker4: [00:12:44] We've seen the video and she seems like a

Speaker3: [00:12:45] She seems like a very yeah.

Speaker2: [00:12:47] But we also don't want to sugarcoat a possible cover up that I think Alex Oquist on the media and staff realize at some point that maybe somebody will put the pieces together. Yeah. And so they added some further levels of detail. And that's why I love at the very end, you know, kind of burying it deep down, she's a vegetarian, so she's not a person who would kill an animal with her bare hands to save her cell phone under most circumstances.

Speaker3: [00:13:08] Yeah, it was self-defense, she says. Yeah, I it was really dumb luck. I've never killed an animal with my bare hands. Well, yeah, I can't say that I have either. And listen, but she's a vegetarian, and that was an important data point.

Speaker2: [00:13:20] And as you know, like to my mind, every, you know, dead raccoon, another angel is singing, and I know that's going to be unpopular in this podcast when I say it.

Speaker3: [00:13:28] Well, scared to death raccoon. I think that they ran this story through their sort of internal PETA filter. Right, right. They were concerned about how this might come off as this brutal attack of humans against the raccoon community, the world of raccoons. But so here's the other thing, you know, and I also love

Speaker2: [00:13:45] The fact that because she's from Maine, the reference point is Stephen King's novel.

Speaker3: [00:13:49] Yeah, that's pretty. I just think it's just kind of perfect.

Speaker2: [00:13:51] It's so wonderful. It just shows you that, like, you know, Stephen King has got saturated into the local culture.

Speaker3: [00:13:56] You know,

Speaker2: [00:13:56] Every bad thing that happens like this is a huge I would have said,

Speaker3: [00:13:59] This is a Cujo.

Speaker2: [00:14:00] Oh, right, good you into that right. Rabid dog attack, right?

Speaker3: [00:14:04] Yeah, true. Well, maybe Stephen King. All right. A little. Maybe he'll write a little story about this. But so here's here's the other thing is that I don't know if it was here. It was in the story, but there was a related story about a guy in Maine who was bitten by a rabid fox in a parking lot, right? So he was going to his car and there was this little gray fox. Oh, there it is. And so, you know, he he's about to get into his car, I guess, and they sees this little gray fox and he gets bitten by it. And then I'm sort of like, how does a grown man who's, you know, maybe six feet tall or so? Let's just say, you know, get his hand all the way down by this little gray fox, except that he was going to pet it. That is. I saw it. It was cute. It was a fluffy grey fox. And he's like, Oh, look at this. Look at this tame, friendly fox, right? It's like, Oh, it's or maybe it's a funny looking dog. And so he went, I mean, this is the other cold case, right? He went to go pet the fox and then the Fox bit him right because it was rabid. And so that happened. It could have been that Rachel could have tried to pet that raccoon, too.

Speaker2: [00:15:10] She could. Oh my God, yes. So that would be. And then the

Speaker3: [00:15:12] Tiny teeth would be a made up story that occurred to her later

Speaker2: [00:15:17] Like, Oh my god, this cute little raccoon, let me stop.

Speaker3: [00:15:19] And oh, look, let's just say.

Speaker2: [00:15:21] They're a seven, and she's got her cell phone in one hand. He reaches down.

Speaker3: [00:15:24] I know she was trying to do a selfie with her in the raccoon.

Speaker2: [00:15:27] Oh my God.

Speaker3: [00:15:28] During the selfie shot, he beat her thumb.

Speaker2: [00:15:31] Oh boy, that's too perfect.

Speaker3: [00:15:32] This is really. And then she

Speaker2: [00:15:34] Drops her phone and she's on the ground raccoon

Speaker3: [00:15:37] In her. That's the bloody truth

Speaker2: [00:15:38] Right there, God. Ok, so we've really in fact, we've broken through new levels of analysis. Just in this podcast. We've been talking about it. So anyway, folks, that's it. For cold case files on the Cultures of Energy podcast, we will be profiling one rabid animal attack in Maine per week for the rest of the summer, just to kind of keep things

Speaker3: [00:15:57] Interesting to keep them coming. Let's let's hope that that raccoon got around. And yeah, so anyway, I get his rabies far and wide.

Speaker2: [00:16:03] I would say, if you've got a good if you've got a news story where you think it doesn't all add up. We're on the case like we're at any kind of animal attack story where you

Speaker3: [00:16:12] Think, especially if it involves a dead raccoon,

Speaker2: [00:16:15] But please send a lot of details we want to know, like what type of dog food the exact brand of dog food bag that the animal's carcass was transported away. But anyway, with that, I think we should turn to Matthew. This has been fun, though.

Speaker1: [00:16:26] Yes. Go, Matthew. Welcome back to the Cultures of Energy podcast, we are here with the fabulous and the wonderful post Houstonian now.

Speaker4: [00:16:53] Well, I like that

Speaker1: [00:16:55] Post you, Estonian Matthew Schneider, Marissa and hi Matthew.

Speaker5: [00:17:00] Hi, how are you doing? Good. Great to be here. I'm a regular listener of the podcast, so it's particularly exciting to be speaking with you.

Speaker1: [00:17:07] Oh, nice incorporation of y'all too.

Speaker4: [00:17:10] Yeah, that was good.

Speaker5: [00:17:11] Excellent.

Speaker1: [00:17:11] I've kept something very smooth, very smooth.

Speaker4: [00:17:14] I was going to say that, like Matthew decided that Houston was not, you know, steamy and hot and humid enough for him. So he found the place in the world where. And you said, let's throw in a little little wildfire smoke from a brush burning over in Malaysia and Indonesia. Sorry. Let's hear a little of that in there into the mix, too. My God. We're going to get back to that and your feelings about the particulate matter in your atmosphere. But in recognition of your work and wanted to congratulate you for your book that came out not so long ago, called peak oil, apocalyptic environmentalism and libertarian political culture at the University of Chicago press a fine press if we do say so ourselves. Really interesting study of a phenomenon called peak ism that was going very strong when Simone and I first got interested in energy and environment research back in the mid 2000s. Matthew, do you want to remind folks who may have tuned out peak ism a little bit in the past few years about what its tenets were? Who is into this stuff and what was it about the mid 2000s that made it its heyday?

Speaker5: [00:18:18] Sure. Yeah, I think that's a good start. So it's kind of easy to forget now. I think we're probably 10 years after the sort of heyday of peak ism, but from approximately twenty five to twenty ten peak oil, which is sort of the, you know, the threat of of petroleum or fossil fuel depletion in general was something that was sort of a fringe concern, but was actually a pretty mainstream anxiety. And this was caused by sort of oil being brought to the fore of American concerns by the rising prices of petroleum itself, which which tripled from about 2004 to 2010 10, as well as climate change, of course. And then, of course, the Iraq War, which, you know, most of us, including myself, thought was partially motivated by geopolitical petrol concerns. So in the late 2000s, you know, peak oil, the threat of energy depletion was a pretty popular subject. The Washington Post, USA Today, L.A. Times, Time Magazine, NPR, Fox News. Really, every, every, every sort of center of media you can imagine all devoted feature stories to the threat of peak oil and your times ran six feature articles about the peak oil subculture itself. And in 2009, OP Art Graphic in the New York Times, peak oil was actually portrayed as the greatest natural national fear of 2007. Wow. So, you know, my book is a study of sort of avowed die hard people for whom the threat of energy depletion was not just sort of a passing concern, but actually formed a central tenet of what I call following Michael Thomas show their ecological identity. But it actually spread much further than that. In fact, I think it was really pretty, you know, pretty widespread on the environmental left, including many scholars. So, for example, in the twenty thirteen meeting of Ously the Association for the Study of Literature Environment, which you know many of your readers would be familiar with. I'm sorry, listeners.

Speaker4: [00:20:22] People read the liner notes, too, though I think that's part of the whole artistic experience. It works, yeah.

Speaker5: [00:20:28] So at the at the ously meeting in 2013, Antonio Judge was a fantastic energy and environmental journalist. Asked how many in the audience are probably 800 people had been concerned about the threat of peak oil and every hand that I could see went up. So this wasn't something that was just sort of located in a small group of fringe people who were misguided and wrong. It was actually pretty widespread. And if you look back at most of the sort of the kind of major texts of the energy humanities canon that were written before twenty thirteen or so, including books like Timothy Mitchell's Carbon Democracy, you know, they see oil depletion as a pretty major concern. Of course, you know, just sort of four short years later, things have changed.

Speaker4: [00:21:13] Yeah, they have. And I mean, that's a great, great introduction to it, you know, Matthew, but I have to say and you know, this is to in some ways to maybe jump to later in the chat later in the book, particularly Chapter five, where you talk about the the racial and gender dynamics of the movement a bit. I mean, ever since twenty sixteen, I feel as though maybe peak ism itself hasn't come back, but there's something about the phenomenon. You're describing this social and political phenomenon that really is resonant with kind of contemporary populism, with the anxieties of white masculinity. With this, this kind of fear of, you know, depletion of vitality. I mean, do you do you feel that too? I mean, I know you've been abroad for a bit now, but can you feel that in the U.S. political context now that there's something of like peak isms DNA there in the mix?

Speaker5: [00:22:02] Yeah, I think so. I have been abroad, but sadly I can still read the news very seldom get away from it, no matter how hard I try. Right. And there's this strange sort of parallel with with with Trump's view about his own energy level is you guys are probably aware he doesn't exercise because she's worried that it'll deplete his own energy. You know, I've been thinking a lot about this sort of relationship between Trump and the sort of libertarian political culture that I'm describing in the book and in the chapter that you mentioned. You know what I'm sort of looking at is why so many guests were white men. Right? We're sort of puzzled me because these people are really avowed leftists, right? The vast majority consider themselves leftists. They're more socialist or anarchists than there were conservatives. And so the way I think about is that Trump is sort of promising his base a world in which his people, meaning white people and white men in particular, would be back on top if only the rules and regulations designed to help the weak were were no longer present. Right. And so I wouldn't call Trump a libertarian, and I don't think he has any ideology beyond his own self aggrandizement. But I think this idea actually dovetails with what I argue about the racial and gender dimensions of people's visions of the future. And in many of these visions, which I sort of pull out through through online forum post, but you can also see in some books that actually became popular, particularly James Howard councillors world made by hand. In many of these visions, they were pretty regressive gender roles. There's increased racial strife and there's even, you know, racial segregation or an argument that there's going to be sort of a return to slavery.

Speaker5: [00:23:38] And the argument in these visions, and I think the argument in a lot of post-apocalyptic visions, I mean, if you look at sort of a lot of zombie scenarios, for example, is that the resourceful white man will become a virile will sort of escape the strictures of his emasculating office job and will become a real leader again. And this is what I'm calling retro sexuality, which is sort of a a gender model that is looking backwards right to a time when when masculinity was not just something that was ornamental, but actually had sort of a functional purpose in terms of labor and the ability to inflict violence. I think libertarianism often promises sort of a false meritocracy, which is what you see in some of these peak oil fantasies, as well as in lots of sort of post-apocalyptic fictions and zombie scenarios. And, you know, perhaps in some of the sort of ideas of Trump and his supporters and this kind of fantasy, the strongest and the most self-reliant folks end up at the top of the heap in the kind of competitive world that economists have often portrayed and perhaps helped bring into being. And it just sort of going back to your question in my attempt to understand why so many were white men, I couldn't help but tie the popularity of this fantasy to the fact that most artists, despite their leftist politics, were white men in a time of economic uncertainty and decreasing racial and gender privilege. I would very much doubt that many of these folks voted for Trump, but I think one of the claims that I'm making is that some economic, political and social anxieties really transcend traditional political boundaries. Yeah, no,

Speaker4: [00:25:09] I think that's really clear.

Speaker1: [00:25:10] Well, I also just have to tell my handsome co-hosts here that I will. Still, I was told of him, even in his ornamental masculinity.

Speaker4: [00:25:19] Totally OK with that. I'm trying to embrace it. I'm like a Christmas tree.

Speaker1: [00:25:22] I'm just I love. I love that ornamental masculinity.

Speaker4: [00:25:24] I'm symbolic and phallic, but also just ornamental.

Speaker1: [00:25:27] Ok, well, you said that. Not me. Yeah, OK. But anyway, Matthew, this is this is really wonderful. I want to think a little bit further about some elements that you've mentioned coming out of the biggest movement, and that is the sort of apocalyptic nature or perhaps structure to the vision of the ideology of the people with whom you spoke and postings that you read. So I know that you've been thinking quite a lot about the Anthropocene, you know, by any other name or by many names writ large. And so I wonder if you can walk us through what you see as the relationship between a kind of set of Anthropocene apocalypses or millenarian approaches and what you saw and and her? During your research with the guests, are there parallels? Are they co-evolved? What do you see a relationship between those two things or are they pretty distinct kinds of trajectories?

Speaker5: [00:26:25] Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I was able to get sort of a lot of rich data from this work because I did a survey of about fifteen hundred people and and some of them took about two or three hours to sort of fill out the survey. And then I did some ethnographic research, transition towns and and oil conferences. So I got to talk to a lot of folks. You know, what I saw from from from this movement was a kind of a kind of very neoliberal social movement. And it's one in which people don't really have the faith that actual sort of traditional social movements can can deliver a better world. And so in some ways, it's sort of post Anthropocene through wishful thinking. They're sort of the the hope that sort of the American way of life, you know, the fossil fueled American way of life would would simply sort of trip over its own ecological limits. And that's kind of a way of thinking that's obviously going back to people like Mike Malpass himself. But then also to what some historians have called the Malthusian moment in the nineteen seventies, you know, thinking of the population bomb and limits to growth. And you know, I think of this sometimes in terms of the movie battery not included batteries. You guys know that movie.

Speaker3: [00:27:40] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker5: [00:27:41] Yeah. So it's this, you know, this movie for some, some listeners aren't familiar. This movie where you know, there's this small apartment building that is sort of obstructing the construction of a skyscraper, and the residents are really not able to sort of organize themselves. And then all of a sudden, these sort of strange little flying saucers come in and they're very cute and make R2-D2 sounds. And somehow, through this sort of outside stimulus, they're able to come together and fight the greedy real estate developers. It's actually sort of appropriate movie for the age of Trump, right? Mm hmm. Right. And so I think that's what I saw here. And I think what surprised me was that these folks were not they were definitely thinking of sort of ideal Anthropocene futures. I mean, this was a little bit before the term Anthropocene was was being used. But I think there was also sort of a a a kind of realpolitik that was interesting. So I think sometimes when we're we're thinking of sort of utopian futures, we'd certainly like to to imagine they can be sort of both environmentally progressive and sustainable, but also have sort of all of the things that we tend to appreciate about liberal democratic society, right? And these folks were sort of saying that might not be popular. It might not be possible, rather, which is kind of a downer was sort of, I think, depressing to a lot of them. And sort of the emotional dynamics of really engaging with with energy depletion and climate change is one of the things that I talk about a lot. But so I thought that was sort of interesting and that there was a view that really you might not be able to have it all.

Speaker4: [00:29:15] Yeah. And even that was kind of experience as a sort of trauma in a way, right? That recognition that, you know, actually this situation that we've lived during the 20th century or much of the 20th century and part of the 21st century is simply unsustainable, at least in terms of the current mix of of of fuel sources. So, you know, Matthew, we have talked about this a bit before. I mean, I've had a little contact with the transition culture movement in Houston. It's not super big, but they're very interesting people involved in it. A lot of people who formerly worked in energy who kind of had a had a shift that I could only describe as a kind of spiritual awakening. And that's kind of where I wanted to go with. The next question was to ask you what I was talking to them. They said a lot of their work really focuses on what I would describe as pastoral care. I mean, getting people to kind of come to terms with that recognition that you were just talking about, that this is unsustainable, that we can't have it all. And that is so much the antithesis of the kind of, you know, you know, the kind of, you know, ever since Reagan, we've been living this kind of, you know, we live in a world without limits. We can live in a world of total growth. And I mean, that's incredibly seductive. And I think another aspect of Trumpism is it's in a weird way, a return to that cornucopia and fantasy from the 1980s that we can just have it all. So did you sense that to I mean, did you sense there was a kind of pastoralism or for lack of a better word, a kind of religious or spiritual inclination among the folks who were working with because I would imagine a lot of them would probably describe themselves as hardcore secular. It wasn't exactly a new agey kind of touchy feely movement, right?

Speaker5: [00:30:46] Yeah, I think that's very much true. So these people did describe themselves as atheists. But I do think people sort of did function as a kind of spirituality. It was definitely sort of something that guided their belief system and they had sort of a similar sense of conversion. So they would sort of describe the transition as sort of being one that made them peak oil aware. And they would describe it in very much the same way that sort of. And wave feminists would describe becoming aware of patriarchy sort of the click of awareness. And so I think there is that sense of sort of pastoral care and a sort of the consciousness change being the first thing that's that's needed. And of course, that's a very difficult thing. And so one of the things that I focus on is sort of the social marginalization that that they dealt with. You know, I do I do talk about the transition initiative a little bit and I'm supportive of it. I mean, I think it's it's a fantastic thing. I sort of look at a couple of examples of it in the U.S. and what I found was that sort of people were not as active as sort of some of the media reports coming out of this sort of initial burst of transition activity in the late 2000s reported.

Speaker5: [00:31:55] So I found that people were doing some really fantastic things. You know, community gardens and sort of having these these meetings where they talk about the great reskilling, sort of rebuilding the skills that have been lost over the 20th century. And, you know, maybe in the long term, that's what we really need. I've been sort of thinking with Eric Isadore, and I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with his work, but he sort of talks about the inevitability of of collapse and therefore that our role is really, you know, not to necessarily stave it off, but actually to make sure that what is rebuilt is better. It's very much in sort of a canticle for Leibowitz kind of way. So perhaps that's really what's needed. Perhaps, as he describes it, a kind of eco missionary movement is what we really need. But, you know, the sort of inner activist in me feels like I also want people to get politically engaged. And so I'm a little disappointed when I don't see that as much as I could. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Speaker1: [00:32:49] Right. It's it's like a crash landing, except let's try and make it as soft a crash landing as we can, right? Right. Let's end up in the canopy rather than than slamming into the side of the mountain. I, you know, I'm glad you brought up activism too, though, about you, because I know that in the past and probably now too, you were involved in the or several maybe climate marches I remember in the one in New York City that was so huge. And I wonder what your reflections are now in terms of the I don't know the effect the utility of of street marching, especially in the wake of the many marches that we've had since basically mid-January without naming any names. But I mean, do you feel like do you feel like kind of that sort of resistance activism has an important role in terms of environmental futures? Or are you thinking differently about those things in retrospect?

Speaker5: [00:33:49] Yeah, that's a great question. I was teaching a class actually this last semester on environmental movements, and so doing the preparation for that really forced me to sort of think about tactics and strategy. I tend to agree with a lot of people who are critical of marches. I tend to think that they require a tremendous amount of energy and might not necessarily have a huge payoff. I mean, I think there are kind of examples of women March Women's March, the day after the inauguration seemed to be really energizing for a lot of people. But I think, you know, tactics have to stay fresh. They have to stay novel, right? It's sort of a tactical battle and you have to innovate. And so you can't really expect things that worked in nineteen sixty three to work in in twenty seventeen. So at the same time, I think they can sort of be a means of communicating with people. I mean, one of the problems that we have is that there is sort of an absence of sort of optimism about any kind of sort of social movement or progressive environmental politics. And so to the extent that that kind of public activism can actually sort of generate optimism, I certainly think it's valuable, but it obviously is not going to accomplish anything on its own right. There has to be sort of a a deep baseline of sort of behind the scenes political engagement going on. And I have to say, you know, the election of Trump has really made me think a lot about sort of what I've been doing in the past. I mean, I've been involved in lots of political campaigns over the last 15 years, but I never really got too deeply involved in electoral politics. I think like a lot of leftists, I tended to see that as something that was kind of square. It didn't have the kind of radical chic that that that protesting had. And that's a real difference between the left and the right. And I wonder if that's something that a lot of leftists really need to reconsider at this point in time.

Speaker1: [00:35:43] Yeah, I think that's it's a great insight. I mean, I was and it's been a few months ago, but listening to an interview with one of the founders of Occupy Wall Street, who's now who's running for mayor and some little tiny town and I don't know, western Washington state or something like that, but he's completely disavowed, you know, sort of occupation tactics and strategies and street marching. And he's completely, you know, bent towards electoral politics now and getting elected local. It's just it's a very different take, but you know, when someone who who who has that kind of a vantage point, I guess on on the activism, it kind of makes you rethink a bit.

Speaker4: [00:36:24] Well, but you could also look at it if

Speaker3: [00:36:26] You want to talk about accommodationist is the other

Speaker4: [00:36:28] Thing. I mean, but if you want to look at a historically like, would progressives and leftists have the kind of electoral or kind of representational democratic chances they would today without the Occupy movement, without Black Lives Matter, right? Without the kind of people taking the streets and doing direct action? I'm not sure they would. I mean, I really do think those movements, even if they didn't quote unquote accomplish a lot of stuff in a visible institutional way, I think they really change the conversation and they inspired a lot of young people. And I do think that I mean, you know, we can we can say with some certainty here in the United States that lots and lots of people are taking electoral, you know, politics really seriously. Now people are running for school boards, people are running for state representative seats, people who've never been in politics. A lot of young scientists are doing it just because of the anti-scientific bent of this administration. So I mean, you know, I think maybe it's cyclical, but and maybe they both have to occur at the same time. But I think there's some kind of symbiotic power there.

Speaker5: [00:37:29] Mm hmm. Absolutely.

Speaker4: [00:37:31] So Matthew, let me before we move on because we have a couple of other things we wanted to touch on with you. I did want to ask you a bit about, you know, in a sense, looking back at this project now from the vantage point of, you know, several years after peak isms, peak isms peak. Sorry. What I found interesting in the book, and especially when you were talking about how surprisingly individualist this movement with these people didn't even attend meetings, a lot of times it was a very kind of individualist, you know, occupation as far as like what you think of as a movement, right? And so do you think it was principally, you know, a reckoning with what we would then come to call the Anthropocene? You know, that kind of concept or that that idea, that phenomenon is really what people were grappling with, you know, was it in some ways a grappling with the aftermath of, you know, three decades of disastrous neoliberal policies, you know, including ones that were, you know, very high energy and averse to alternative fuels and so forth. Or do you think in some ways it's a kind of last desperate performance of that same neo neoliberal individuation? I don't know. I'm kind of torn between trying to sing it as the end of something in the beginning of something. And so I'm curious to hear what your your thoughts about that are with some with some distance now.

Speaker5: [00:38:42] I think that's a fantastic question. I think the answer is both. And so I do think it is sort of the continuation of many decades of neoliberalism and of sort of thinking of problems in terms of these kind of individualist personal way as opposed to as a collective problems. But I also do think that, you know, these folks are particularly interesting looking back now that energy humanities is such a such a huge phenomenon because a lot of the insights that these folks were having were very similar to the way that a lot of us are responding to and describing climate change and the Anthropocene at this point in time. And that's why, despite my criticism of which a lot of them sort of did not necessarily appreciate, especially the ones that didn't actually read the book and just read the description and had some choice responses to me on previous forums that I couldn't help but see. Mm hmm.

Speaker4: [00:39:34] So were people pissed about the book? I mean, what was was the reaction hostile among the peaks or perspectives?

Speaker5: [00:39:40] I guess what I found is that the people that just read the description and the people that are sort of still vestigial is really just wanted me to affirm that their worldview was absolutely correct. And when when the Amazon description didn't do so, they had some, some interesting responses. One of them said, I hope that he can stay teaching at a university because I don't think he would be much help cleaning fish or working in the garden. Oh, ouch. With this, you know, I'm not great at cleaning fish. But on the other hand, the folks who actually did read it, you know, appreciated the nuance and did seem to recognize themselves in it, which is really what you want when you're sort of doing any kind of ethnographic work sort of just coming back to your question. You know, I do try to recognize the difficulty of the project that these people were engaged in and were engaged in at a time before it was really considered sort of something that was actually imperative. And that's trying to imagine life after oil or after fossil fuels. And obviously, this is something that many scholars and artists and thinkers in the energy humanities orbit are now deeply concerned with.

Speaker5: [00:40:41] You know, just last month, I had the students in my energy humanities class here in Singapore asking if we could read a contemporary novel that showed a positive, plausible and attractive vision of our energy future. And the truth is, I'm not sure that really exists yet, and it's certainly not because people haven't tried, as you guys have discussed on this podcast before. You know, the transition beyond oil is not just going to require economic, technological and infrastructural, but also social and cultural transformations that I think is really beyond most of our. Imaginations and in that light, I think if some piquant visions of the future were biased, as I argue by the kinds of anxieties, fears and hopes that we're in are surprisingly common. I think that they should probably be pardoned for the intimidating scale of this endeavor. And so as a result, you know, I think that this story should be one that we keep in mind as we're trying to imagine post-oil world. And it's one that I don't think you can really just understand from watching Mad Max or reading the novel world made by hand.

Speaker3: [00:41:40] Right, right, right.

Speaker1: [00:41:41] Yeah. I mean, it's funny. It's just, you know, thinking about peak oil and talking with you about it, too, Matthew. I feel a sense of nostalgia in a strange way for, you know, were that it's so right. We're that it true that, you know what, if we had actually reached Peak as the weakest point at that point? And we're actually, you know, sort of on the the downtick of using these fossil fuels. I mean, I know we are in some ways in some parts of the world, but still, there's something sort of grand about the idea that we might have been at a peak where instead of needing the slogan, you know, keep it in the ground, it would have, you know, we would have just been able to say, like, you know, there's none left in the ground, so there's nothing to argue

Speaker4: [00:42:23] About, right? And in that connection, you should. Historically, we want to link up the decline in peak ism with the rise of fracking again.

Speaker1: [00:42:30] Of course, that's what happened.

Speaker4: [00:42:32] Unconventional, you know, hydrocarbon production that that made people begin to think, Oh, you know what, actually? On the one hand, eh, we're not going to run out, but b, it's also not going to save us running out like now. We have to think of a totally different way to get out of this other than the end of supply.

Speaker1: [00:42:45] Right? Yeah. Yeah. Now that's that's what makes it a really interesting question. So I know that, Matthew, you've been working on this other super cool project that I'm not going to get the entire title right, but I know its lone words to live by. That is a kind of lexicon project around the Anthropocene. Can you tell us more about that and and give us the proper title even?

Speaker5: [00:43:09] Sure. So the tentative title is loanwords to live with an eco topi and lexicon, I guess the Anthropocene. And as you guys know, sort of environmental keywords projects have been sort of in vogue. You know, there's the fuel and culture project that I know you discussed recently. And then, of course, cultural anthropology has this fantastic project that Simone I know you've been spearheading, which is wonderful when people should check out if they haven't already sending

Speaker4: [00:43:34] The sugar Raman, keep sending that sugar.

Speaker5: [00:43:36] Thank you, honey. I'm not sure it is great, but I mean, thank you. So this project is a little different in that it's sort of trying to think about words or terms that don't exist in English, but should. So these are terms that would be ecologically productive or eco psychologically, eco spiritually, eco, socially productive. And so they're drawn from speculative fiction from other languages and also from activist subcultures. So they sort of require long descriptions, and I don't want to take out too much time here. But a couple of examples would be an ancient Mayan greeting, which is laksh alaikum, which means that I am another you, which is sort of a wonderful way to to greet someone else and sort of acknowledge the sort of reciprocity that we have someone who's writing about a invented symbol for aquatic Delphine's communication that kind of symbolizes synesthetic, interspecies communications. There's a nice term that's plant time, which is used by herbalist to describe sort of vegetative temporal bodies and human obligations to those ecosystems. So it's trying to think about sort of what what terms would be productive at this point in time in terms of facilitating resistance and also coming up with sort of appropriate goals for environmental action, but also sort of helping using language to help us imagine imagine better futures, which is obviously quite a challenge.

Speaker4: [00:45:06] It's a fascinating project I immediately want to know now. What do dolphins think about the Anthropocene? They're like, Yeah, come on, people get over yourselves, humans. Plus, like sea level rise. This is awesome. More Atlantis for us to frolic.

Speaker1: [00:45:17] Well, everyone knows that dolphins are far superior to humans and always have been.

Speaker5: [00:45:21] Yeah, they're like, they like,

Speaker4: [00:45:22] Bring it on. Just keep melting. Those melting, those polar ice caps doesn't more places for us to hang out. Yeah, yeah. No, it's a terrific it's a terrific project. So is there a timeline for it

Speaker5: [00:45:32] When it's going to come out? Yeah, we're we're talking to publishers now and we're hoping it'll come out next year. And then the thing that I haven't mentioned is that we're actually getting artists to to not necessarily illustrate the sort of represent these terms. So we have 15 different artists from around the world. And then we're going to sort of also in addition to the book, we're going to distribute that artwork as sort of posters and T-shirts and and stickers, potentially.

Speaker1: [00:45:58] Terrific. Yeah. And that's totally cool. And that is actually a very nice Segway to a project that that you initiated here in Houston. The false fossilised project had its own set. Still does have its own set of cool posters and stickers, and we

Speaker4: [00:46:14] Are keeping it alive here, I mean, the artists are, but we're also trying to help it sense in terms of, you know, keeping the the the funding and the love flowing towards fossilize. Houston. But it is a really terrific project. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? We'll put a link to it in the in the liner notes, too, but to their website. But do you want to tell us a little bit about the origin

Speaker5: [00:46:32] Of that project? Sure. So the origin? Well, let me just first describe the project. So it's a public climate art project that I co-founded in 2015 when I was at sent along with the anthropologist and artist Lina Dib and teacher and artist Tony Day. And in the first year, the sort of first iteration of the project, we commissioned 13 Houston artists and really amazing, fantastic people like Daniel Angelou, Natasha Godwin, Regina AGU, two Young Choi. We commissioned them to create visual representations of species that are expected to go extinct within the next half century. And then these images, which also had an expected date of extinction. A link to our website and a quick tagline sort of interpolating the viewer as both a Houstonian and individual actor. These were distributed throughout the city. So within just a couple of months, our team of volunteers put up about 500 lawn signs, a thousand posters and 10000 stickers, mostly in places that you wouldn't really expect them, such as the urinal in the bathroom of your favorite bar. Yeah, I've seen I've

Speaker4: [00:47:40] Seen them there. I have seen them in bars. Yes, I have.

Speaker1: [00:47:43] So I still see that show there. Every time I go to the toilet at tacos, a go go shout out.

Speaker5: [00:47:51] I'm glad that my legacy lives on in the bedroom. Yes. And so the sort of origin for the project was really just the experience of being at center for two years and being exposed to so many incredible examples of energy and environmental art. It really made me want to get involved somehow, and instead of doing something like curating a gallery exhibition, which is fantastic. I thought that this kind of work really needed to move out of galleries and digital spaces where its reach is somewhat limited and to sort of move into the streets. And so our hope in putting these images out there was not so much like the Clockwork Orange, right? It's not really the way that art works, but that the repeated reminders that our images would provide, especially when people are exposed to this issue, when they least expect it would contribute just a little bit to a sort of heightened intellectual and very much affective awareness about climate change and the sixth extinction. And this is very much a project that's aimed at at Houstonians, right? Right. I mean, as perhaps some readers know, Houston is the energy capital of the world. It's got 5000 oil and gas companies. Probably half the city works for them in some way. And so we're trying to sort of reach these people that are inside, maybe reach some decision makers, maybe reach their children, maybe reach their friends and to try to push them to reconsider normative but obviously collectively destructive behaviors.

Speaker4: [00:49:15] Yeah. And what's interesting about it is it's kind of like the kind of gorilla aspect to it because I think a lot of you know, people probably underestimate how much we sponge up, you know, what's in our peripheral vision. That's a mixed metaphor. Sorry, but I mean, you know this. You know what we may be seeing out of the corner of our eyes sometimes can come to influence our intuitions and understandings of things. And that's my experience of these like stickers, especially you just like see them out of the corner of your eye, like in a bathroom or stuck to a bar somewhere, or like a kind of forgotten side street.

Speaker1: [00:49:48] But they stand out because they're cool little pieces of art. Yeah. So you want to run

Speaker4: [00:49:52] In, you want to look at them, and then you have that kind of unsettling moment of recognizing what it's about and you're like, Fuck OK, so what do I do with that? And for some people like us, it might be a different experience than it is for other people. I do remember your Facebook page getting a couple of like, Why the fuck are you putting stickers on my car, right? There's a couple of those responses, right?

Speaker5: [00:50:11] Really, not everybody. Not everybody was overjoyed with the project. But, you know, I'm willing to risk a momentary unpopularity.

Speaker1: [00:50:22] Yeah, yeah. No, it's it's definitely worth it. And and I like the title of it too fossilised because it both evokes, yeah, the fossilization, the sixth sixth extinction, the death of species in the Anthropocene. But it also sort of provokes the human viewer to ask the question whether they are a fossil, whether they are, you know, inert sediments, you know, non-objective human form, or whether they actually are a dynamic person who is willing to make a change in one way or another. It kind of asks you like, are you a are you a fossilized entity or are you still able to sort of, you know, wake up and smell the

Speaker3: [00:51:06] Coffee and make some changes? Cool.

Speaker1: [00:51:09] Yeah. So, yeah.

Speaker5: [00:51:11] And I was. Part of the motivation for me also came from the experience of a friend of mine in Houston, who was a petroleum geologist for Shell for seven years before actually being tasked to do exploration in the Arctic and then quitting and becoming an environmental activist now actually and a and a Buddhist chaplain. Wow. So I tend to think that that kind of empathy for for other people as well as non-human creatures is always something that's kind of latent, but it tends to be sort of dulled by routine and by by cultural norms and of course, the perverse incentives of neoliberal capitalism. So we were trying to sort of just do a small little bit to activate it.

Speaker1: [00:51:50] Yeah. No. And I think it had that it had that effect.

Speaker4: [00:51:53] Speaking of perverse capitalism, maybe we should talk about where you're living these days. Yeah.

Speaker1: [00:51:59] Shall we talk about Singapore?

Speaker4: [00:52:00] I want to talk about Singapore because we

Speaker1: [00:52:02] Read this interesting.

Speaker4: [00:52:03] I want to. We're going to do a little teaser for an article that you have coming out in the journal Resilience. Shout out to friend of the Pod Stephanie Lim, manager editor of that journal. It's called Some Islands Will Rise Singapore and the Anthropocene a great title, but also a really great piece. And you send it to us and we want to chat with you a little bit about some of the things you talk about in it.

Speaker1: [00:52:24] Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a lot of there's a lot of ways to take it. I mean, I think it'd be interesting to talk about eco authoritarianism, which you mentioned in the article. And I mean, I don't even think we need to define it as sort of is what it says it is, right? I mean, you know, kind of ecologically based authoritarian governmental forms and populations that that follow in the wake. And as you point out, the kind of the paradigm for this generally and the popular imaginary is China, right? Able to exercise these huge projects like Three Gorges, you know, because of the direct control of of government over these kinds of projects and populations,

Speaker4: [00:53:05] Three Gorges wasn't exactly an eco project. It wasn't pitched as an eco project.

Speaker1: [00:53:09] Well, was it? I mean,

Speaker3: [00:53:12] It was mostly a

Speaker1: [00:53:13] It was mostly an energy project, but now it's being touted as, you know, having such a huge impact sort of retrospective.

Speaker4: [00:53:20] Well, Matthew, tell us, tell us

Speaker1: [00:53:23] About it, about, yeah, in Singapore.

Speaker5: [00:53:25] Well, so I do talk about Singapore as a sort of potential exemplar of future eco authoritarianism, insofar as it's a very small state, it's a tiny island nation that really only has one level of government. It only has. It has one party that's been in control since independence in nineteen sixty five. And so that that the government really has the ability to do whatever it wants. And so it's kind of this amazing example where the entire sort of every instantiation or manifestation of nature or of sort of techno nature on the island has been deliberately sort of engineered and manufactured. So every sort of blade of grass or patch of grass on the island is being sort of, you know, has an entry on a database somewhere and is being monitored for the appropriate shade of green. I sort of started thinking about eco authoritarianism after reading a fantastic sort of short sci fi story by Naomi Rescue's and Erik and Conway, which is called The Collapse of Western Civilization A View from the Future. And it's it's a it's a sort of cautionary tale. I think it was intended as a cautionary tale, at least, and it's told by a Chinese historian of the twenty fourth century that's describing how Western civilization fell over the course of the twenty first century.

Speaker5: [00:54:49] And in this story, you know, China is really the only place that survives because as a more authoritarian state and had the ability to to adapt very quickly. And Singapore definitely has that ability. So most of the island now is is sort of ringed by concrete. I think about 80 percent of the island is ringed by concrete and to prevent sea level rise. They're moving highways already. They're discussing things like floating buildings or sort of putting populations in caverns. And obviously, as some as some listeners might know, the island has also grown tremendously. The Singapore is twenty five percent larger than it was in the early nineteen sixties, and that's an obviously stark contrast to every other island nation in the world, which are generally very poor places that are losing land. So Singapore is growing quickly, and it sort of is one way of thinking through the potential for eco authoritarianism because Singapore is sort of what's known as an illiberal democracy. It doesn't have the same sort of rights to the freedom to protest or the same sort of free speech or free assembly. And it's something that I think environmental humanities thinkers and energy humanities thinkers need to be considering a lot more because as I mentioned earlier, I think we'd like to think that we can have it both ways, but especially now, you know, looking at the Trump is going to pull out.

Speaker5: [00:56:12] The Paris accord, you know, democracy is not necessarily looking that great. Or at least, you know, certain Western democracies. So certainly a troubling thoughts, but I think it's something that we need to be considering more. Of course, the sort of flip side of this is that Singapore is actually one of the least sustainable places in the world. So looking at it as any kind of Eco Place is a is an odd move, and this is actually very much against the sort of public reputation. So, you know, I don't know if you guys have seen the recent Planet Earth two series David Attenborough series. No. So the last, it's a sort of a follow up to the first Planet Earth and in the last episode, which is based on cities, it ends with this sort of soaring example of Singapore as the model of the city, which is living in harmony with nature, which is sort of true in some ways. So in the early 1960s, Singapore decided that it was going to become very green and sort of it had this crazy tree planting campaign that started in nineteen sixty three with 10000 trees planted on a single day.

Speaker5: [00:57:17] And then I think from about 1970 to nineteen ninety two five million trees and shrubs were planted on this very small island. But this was sort of done because of public relations, very much because it was sort of a neoliberal imperative. They knew they needed to attract outside funding and to attract sort of what they call foreign talent sometimes. And so, for example, some of the most beautiful places in Singapore is the path the road from the highway, which is ringed by these beautiful trees because they knew that that was something that visitors would remember right at the same time. Singapore is dependent on very carbon intensive industries, so it sort of has no natural resources on one hand, but it's also very nicely geographically positioned. And so it's one of, I think it's the largest transshipment point in the world with these massive container terminals that are really unlike anything I've ever seen. And currently, Singapore sort of gets off the hook because the UNFCCC guidelines don't actually count shipping and aviation. And so if marine bunker fuel were actually included in its emissions profile, Singapore would have a per capita carbon emissions that's five times higher than the United States.

Speaker1: [00:58:32] Whoa. Isn't that incredible? I mean, but they're not counting those emissions, exactly. But if they were to do that, but even even beyond the bunker fuel right there, are they a little bit of Singapore's a little bit ahead of the United States? Did you say seventh in the world

Speaker5: [00:58:49] Or yeah, I think seventh in the world as a the last

Speaker1: [00:58:51] Account. So that's that's in terms of per capita. So it's really stunning. And one of the points that you make, which I think is really important, is that there's a strange way in which Singapore literally is now. It will be in the future, probably this kind of island in the storm as it's surrounded by all these other nation states that are very nearby, that are very vulnerable to to climatic change, right? Like the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh. I mean, these are, you know, near near by nation states that are going to be really adversely affected. And yet Singapore is really building up its resistance through these sea walls and also by doubling down on the fossil fuel industry. Because you mentioned that there's quite a lot of petroleum investment and corporate headquarters and centers on these little manmade islands for ExxonMobil.

Speaker3: [00:59:43] And yep,

Speaker1: [00:59:45] So it's it's it's a really disturbing and yet fascinating case, I think, and this question of the kind of eco authoritarianism or what Isabel Stingiest calls the command and control sort of ecological approach to all things difficult in the climate is something that you say is really under theorised. And I think it's something that we do need to think more about and talk more about and probably theorize more. So it's a really important point to make you know how how democratic or illiberal structures can create certain sets of dynamics that are not possible in others and what those juxtapositions produce, right?

Speaker5: [01:00:25] Mm hmm. But it doesn't guarantee those.

Speaker4: [01:00:28] I mean, because obviously we could point to a thousand cases where illiberal political structures are actually doubling down on fossil fuels or, you know, nuclear energy or something else. So. So what do you what do you think it is about Singapore specifically in its history that led it into this particular? I mean, and again, like point taken that there's a lot of greenwashing going on, but to think that they have a kind of eco political mission of some kind seems to be an interesting point as well.

Speaker5: [01:00:52] Yeah, that's a good question. I think part of it was sort of instantiated just by the personality of Lee Kuan Yew, who had spent time in Oxford and sort of loved walking in the gardens and sort of love this idea of turning Singapore into a garden city. Hmm. So I think that is part of it. But I think also, you know, Singapore is a country. That after independence, it's very was sort of constantly being threatened. And so there's always a sense that it is on the edge of crisis and the crisis can be described as sort of, you know, not having any access to fresh water. And so the country has developed a sort of amazing capability to to import fresh water and also to to to recycle wastewater into this amazing euphemism called new water. Right. So I think this idea that it's sort of always on the edge of crisis means that Singaporeans are potentially sort of more willing to cede power over to the government to do what it thinks is best. It's very much a sort of a technocratic faith in the government. And if there's another way of thinking this, which is that the government has sort of deliberately sort of engineered a population that's more willing to think in that in that way. But either way, I think it's sort of the sense that the country is on the edge of dissolution or on the edge of crisis that has sort of given the government power to do what it sees fit.

Speaker4: [01:02:15] So maybe as a last question, tell us. I mean, we miss you here in Houston, Matthew, greatly. Obviously, we've just been running through all the important new wonderful projects you got involved with while you were here. But I also think it's kind of cool to have somebody teaching energy humanities in Singapore, and I'm sure you're the first person to do that. So I'm just curious about any reflections on that. I mean, how what is what is it to teach energy or environmental humanities in a place like Singapore as opposed to, you know, say it, rice?

Speaker5: [01:02:43] It is certainly different. And I think, you know, one of the things that I've sort of become more aware of is just how North American or European centered so much of the work and not just energy humanities, but environmental humanities more broadly is a lot of sort of my my standby texts all of a sudden didn't seem quite so relevant because they were all talking about, you know, the U.S. and the nineteen fifties. And so I think there's definitely as energy humanities is becoming such an established field. You know, I think there's the need for people to do work that's more focused on on other parts of the world and in particular, Asia. So I think that's sort of a major thing that's come out of teaching here. And also, you know, there's this sort of obviously Singapore is a very technocratic sort of science and engineering focused place. So it's certainly been interesting to teach energy and environmental issues from a humanistic perspective, which I think is unfamiliar to a lot of Singaporean students. Although the students at Yale and UC College tend to be much more sort of forward thinking and and adventurous. So it's definitely been an interesting experience, and I think, you know, I would sort of use the question as a as a call for for scholars to try to look for petro cultures beyond North America and Europe as much as possible.

Speaker4: [01:03:58] Hear, hear, that sounds great. No great call. Yeah, call to action.

Speaker1: [01:04:02] That's great. That's a that's a good finding. That's a good learning moment there.

Speaker4: [01:04:06] Well, Matthew, because of our enormous time zone shift, it's late at night here in Houston. It's early morning. You probably got to go climb a super tree, you know, something like that, what you describe as super trees, which are like trees that other trees fit inside of. I don't really know what they are, but they sound really cool.

Speaker3: [01:04:24] They got purple hair.

Speaker4: [01:04:25] Yeah. So maybe someday we'll come to Singapore and see the super trees. But listen, man, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It was really wonderful to talk to catch up, and it sounds like warts and all. There's some really fascinating stuff happening in Singapore right now.

Speaker5: [01:04:40] Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. This was really a pleasure.

Speaker1: [01:04:43] Cool. Thanks. Bye. Matthew.