recomMONDAYtions #3
happy monday! it's october 24. here's some super cool fun very light reading.
Dear friend—
I've read some Thought Provoking things recently. Here are three:
On bonkers-looking fish and yet another ecosystem we might pillage.
On a national model for sustainable living that actually exists.
On the American South, by a historian and daughter of the region.
"These spectacular deep-sea creatures live in a potential mining hot spot," by Benji Jones for Vox.
As I've written about before, I love ocean shit. I watched ocean documentaries for like three weeks straight during the pandemic until finally I asked my partner to watch yet another and he said ... "Can we not? Some of these fish are ... creepy."
My friend, it did not even occur to me that these things could be creepy (sorry Alex!). I love watching fish. I am a "Coral Reef Aquarium With Underwater Sounds For 10 Hours" kind of gal. I love turtles and seahorses and eels and little squids and cuttlefish that change colors and jellyfish that bounce along the current of crystal-clear cerulean water. And I am morbidly fascinated with the wild, alien creatures that live far below the usual purview of human divers.
I recently read this article from Vox that shares photos of several of such creatures, some with names still warm off the printer, they are so brand-spanking-new to human awareness. They reside in the deepest sea between Mexico and Hawaii, and they're featured in this article because we've only just discovered them and they're already in danger from human activity.
In this deepest sea between Mexico and Hawaii, sea explorers have found polymetallic nodules. These are naturally formed rocks of metals like cobalt, manganese, and nickel. These metals might sound familiar because they are essential components in everything from semi-conductors to batteries to solar panels—in essence, everything we will need to to transition our energy system to renewable electricity. And to feed the rapacious appetite of a world increasingly digitizing and smart-ifying everything.
These nodules are just chilling on the sea floor. Like pearls in clams, they've accreted around a speck of dirt or stone. But similar to oil, they've formed over thousands of years—and we may be headed toward a future where, like oil, all those thousands of years of nature doing its thing are gone in an instant.
A few nascent companies see these nodules as easy pickings, especially compared to land mining for these materials. Such mining has so far led to horrifying environmental destruction and human rights abuses. Children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are sifting through dirt to find cobalt as we speak.
As our energy transition, our electrification of everything, and our hunger for consumer electronics grows, these metals will become increasingly in demand, increasingly valuable.
But researchers have found that such mining disturbs these deep-sea ecosystems, full of life we haven’t even identified and classified yet. This life may even depend on the nodules, as many are only found attached to them.
All this to say, it is a hard reminder that humankind’s relationship with nature, and the balance of the planet generally, can't be solved with the flip of a switch, a transition to renewable energy, though that's certainly important. If we (those in high-income countries) are to raise quality of life for others and escape the calamity we've planted for everyone, we need to do more—or rather, do less.
What's driving the demand of cobalt et al., driving the tradeoff between toxic and bloody mining vs. biome-destroying nodule-plucking, is a world in which a few million people need four cars and every single product Apple has ever pushed and a new refrigerator that speaks to them and keeps their shopping lists.
A world where our governments are more likely to spend billions on widening highways than building up public transit, a world with a financial system that prioritizes growth at any cost, including energy-hungry bitcoin mining, algorithmic trading that requires huge data centers, and incentives to those who move fastest and break the most.
“What Does Sustainable Living Look Like? Maybe Like Uruguay.” Noah Gallagher Shannon for NYTimes.
This article confronts this issue, what Shannon terms as “the paradox at the heart of climate change.” They cite economist Robert Mendelsohn, who put it along these lines: “The problem of the future is how to create a 19th-century carbon footprint without backsliding into a 19th-century standard of living.”
For solutions, Shannon turns to Uruguay. The country, they report, has a per-capita carbon footprint of about 4.5 tons, in throwing distance of the 2 tons per person that Earthlings must reach to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming (we in America are at about 20). At the same time, Uruguay has a low poverty rate and a large middle class. It’s got some of the strongest political rights and civil liberties on its continent.
Shannon attributes the country’s high standard of living and low carbon footprint first to a national project that allowed 98% of the country’s electricity grid to be powered by renewable energy. Getting there was not without its hiccups, its downsides, its complications, but the program has done what it was meant to do—get the country off fossil fuels and lower its carbon emissions.
The other half of the story, Shannon says, is simply the culture of keeping, mending, repairing, and reusing. Keeping old couches and passing them down through a family; repairing broken bikes instead of tossing them and buying a new one. Shannon’s portrayal reminded me of stories of our Depression-era grandmothers washing cling wrap to use it again, or saving bacon fat to use as cooking grease in another dish.
This way of life has become so unfamiliar to many of us, I think. It has certainly become unfamiliar to me—or at least, not instinctive. I have to constantly question myself and hold myself accountable if I want to reduce and reuse. If I do not keep my lizard brain in check, I will buy things I don’t need and fill my house with plastic water bottles because I can’t be assed to refill the Brita.
This article did raise one question for me. In the international climate space, we often compare the carbon footprints of people in different countries, as does Shannon in this article. U.S.: 20 tons. Uruguay: 4.5 tons.
But that measurement, per-capita, sure sounds like an average. And the U.S. has some pretty wild outliers, like megastars and CEOs that go to brunch on private jets. Does the average middle-class American really have a carbon footprint of 20 tons, or is our average super skewed thanks to our proliferation of billionaires?
Not to say that we don’t need society-wide change away from materialism, consumerism, the cult of convenience, etc., but I wonder if what makes this challenge seem so insurmountable (lowering 20 tons to 2) perhaps isn’t as challenging if we simply eat the rich, lol.
I’m also wary of making an assessment on a country through the lens of an NYTimes reporter, and would be curious to read more from Uruguayans, especially regarding the tumultuous historical and political context of their transition.
But what drew me to the piece is that it shows something we rarely see in the discourse around climate change—livable solutions, models for what works, the social and political and economic decisions, and their outcomes in real life.
South To America, by Imani Perry
Taking a hard swerve on subject matter!
Imani Perry’s South to America is one of the most beautiful nonfiction books I've read in a while. In 18 essays, each focused in a different state or subregion, Perry threads her own experiences with what she knows as a historian to illuminate the South, and how its social/political/historical dynamics come to bear on the rest of the country.
She argues that we (the national discourse) shouldn't write off the South as a backwater, as a region beyond hope, because (1) in doing so we miss the richness of Black culture and history there, the way the Black South has shaped Black life and American life even beyond its key role in the Civil Rights movement, and (2) by dismissing the South, we often dismiss parts of wider American culture that did not evaporate after the Civil War or Jim Crow, but that still remain in our national identity and inheritance today.
But beyond any greater message or thesis, I think this book first and foremost wants to share things that have been hidden or forgotten. It shares what Perry has seen and thought with an audience unfamiliar with those sights and thoughts. And in the process, she creates a work meant to resonate with a perhaps separate audience that shares her passion for such sights and thoughts.
I loved Perry's insights on language, religion, inheritance. I loved the way she intertwined so many facets of the region so seamlessly. Hidden pockets of slavery and colonial history; the feel and vibrations of Black cities like Memphis and Atlanta; reverberations of Black art; legacies of and experiences in historically Black colleges and universities; the food and the climate and the smells and the sounds of the South.
I loved how she reproduces conversations and relationships with loved ones. Her affection for them sings on the page, and it is wrapped up in so much—respect, history, reverence, deep understanding, loving. Loving that perhaps doesn't always come from spending lots of time with folks, but rather from a shared experience, past, and hopes.
Perry's book also contains glimpses into Black activism deeper into and beyond the Civil Rights movement. Perry’s personal relationships Black activism/ists, through her parents’ work and then her own work, shows the oft-unseen parts of it. For example: Perry as a child writing to and calling prison inmates, either because they were colleagues or friends of her parents, or because that was just part of abolition work—connecting incarcerated folks with the outside world, helping them materially or just helping them remember their humanity.
South to America is wide-ranging, immersive, expansive, meandering in the best way. As a result, to be quite honest, I would be hard-pressed to recall more than 10 of its anecdotes or stories off the top of my head.
But that's not an indictment of the book—rather it's an invitation for another read, or reading slowly, or engaging more with the text. Perry will intertwine seven historical moments with a few family anecdotes and references to her own travels, paired with her searing analysis. Thus, you may have two choices with this book—to read it "casually" and let all the beauty of the language, the course of history and emotion run through you—or you can read it slowly, carefully, a pen in hand to gather every surprising fact or propulsive idea Perry introduces.
I may go back and do the latter. But my friend, the former is a beautiful and insightful experience all on its own.
Thanks for reading, be back soon,
—mia xx