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Princess Mononoke utilizes direct symbolism to represent different agents involved in the interplay between humans and the environment. There is strong representation of dualism between nature and culture; nature is represented by Wilderness, through forest gods, animals, and the forest itself, while culture is represented by human civilization as strongly exemplified by Lady Eboshi's Iron Town. Lady Eboshi is the direct embodiment of industrial greed and exploitation of natural resources at the expense of the Wilderness. The iron ball found in Nago, a boar demon, is representative of the direct consequence of human harm on the wilderness, resulting from Lady Eboshi's greed. When Lady Eboshi beheads the Nightwalker/Forest Spirit and it begins to decay everything in its path, this is a further exaggerated and vivid representation of the consequences of human exploitation. There are various perspectives on the human/environment relations which are represented in Princess Mononoke; for example, the ape tribe and boar tribe have philosophies which share a theme of extremism, that they must "kill the humans to save the forest". The wolf tribe, led by Moro, presents a perspective advocating for the separation of human culture and wilderness. San initially seeks retribution for environmental destruction by attempting to kill Lady Eboshi, but when tensions and the capabilities of Iron Town intensify, San tries to veer the other animal tribes away from conflict to prevent the destruction of the entire forest altogether. The wide range of characters of Princess Mononoke and the differences in how they choose to engage with the relationship between human culture and the "purity" of Wilderness (if they believe such purity exists) demonstrate the spectrum of roles and attitudes that people in our world choose to enact or embody.

Princess Mononoke provides a very literal and fantastical interpretation of human industrial impact on the environment represented by different parties; there are those who are complicit in harmful means of production at the expense of those who have to suffer from environmental degradation. The animal tribes represent those who are affected "downstream" by the actions of human civilization, namely, Lady Eboshi's Iron Town. In terms of conveying environmental representation to an audience, Miyazaki is values pursuing a more vibrant and symbolic approach to appealing to the audience as opposed to valuing realism in the way that Offill does in Weather.

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Environmental Injustice: "Some people live more downstream than others"

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Environmental Injustice: "Some people live more downstream than others"

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Environmental injustice is where there exists a statistically significant tendency of particular groups of people to disproportionately experience the effects of ecological contamination, usually due to existing social inequalities or policies which target these demographics. Take environmental racism for example; there have been many instances in which intended or unintended actions have affected, or disadvantaged individuals, groups, or communities based on race or color.

Vulnerable communities who are situated in areas that can be “capitalized off of” or where there exists some precedent where they can be taken advantage of because they do not have the resources to resist or fight back against the oppressor. Slow violence is often to the benefit of those with the influence, resources, and power to profit from exploiting these communities, whether aware of it or not. We can also discuss this in terms of value dualities in the real world; the oppressor typically values profit or efficiency over the lives of those affected downstream.

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Environmental literature utilizes the idea of value dualisms or systems, whether authors are communicating what to value to their audience, or how they incorporate this system in their writing in itself. Some authors like Muir choose to subvert expectations and reverse values through the romantic reversal of the Wilderness paradigm, while others like Kimmerer and Carson are critical of the value system itself and how we choose to allocate value, e.g. interconnectedness in ecology. Some authors like use a value dualism involving certain modes of environmental representation over others based on what is perceived as impactful to handle literary challenges, e.g., crisis of realism and derangements of scale. Miyazaki values conveying a message through fantastical and emotional means, as opposed to Offill who values realistic representations. Value dualisms are formative to both the substance and representation of environmental literature.

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One leading value dualism that persists across all paradigms of environmental representation is the notion of purity versus impurity. This can manifest in a variety of ways, from the romantic ideals of Wilderness as a "divine retreat" from human civilization with its modern industrialism and economic activity, to a desire to purge "undesirable" groups of people in the name of preventing overpopulation and saving the Earth. Arguments of literary environmentalism frame different aspects to value about nature: one aspect is the beauty of nature and the solace afforded of a "pure" environment. Some people value an "intrinsic worth" of nature. Others value nature for its utility, which emphasizes the importance of nature as resources for sustaining human life.

Those who benefit from these dualisms are those who construct them; rarely will whole groups of people be self-critical of the type of ideologies that they perpetuate. There is a distinction between eco-fascism originating from Neo-Nazi ideologies versus the romantic ideas which led to environmental preservation movements and national landmarks; but both stem from a Eugenics view where the notion of purity motivated many early conservation organizations.

The romantic reversal of the Wilderness ideology takes a less aggressive approach to embody to attain purity, where nature is seen as a divine retreat from the perils of impure urbanization. During the romantic period, only the upper class, who could afford to go out and treat nature as a means to vacation, was able to write and represent nature as an idyllic, picturesque place separate from modern society. This was not a readily accessible perspective that lower classes could have; people who actually worked the land didn't need to view it as a nature separate from themselves. Purity was seen as an untouchable ideal, so far removed from the people who attempt to pursue it.

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In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson introduced the science of ecology which influenced the modern environmental movement in the US and began the broad representational shift from a wilderness paradigm to an ecology paradigm. The Wilderness paradigm portrays nature and human civilization as separate spheres where the "pure and untouched" outdoors is seen as a romantic retreat from industrialism and economic modernity. Carson uses Silent Spring to challenge the duality of nature and civilization by calling attention to how human action is inherently connected to the natural environment, deconstructing the idea of a value dualism where nature and civilization are mutually exclusive entities.

Human-made dangerous chemicals like DDT affect the world around us and in turn can harm ourselves. Carson notes that one of "the most sinister features of DDT" is the way they are passed on from organism to organism through food chain links; hay with trace amounts of DDT fed to cows result in it turn up in the milk produced in the amount of about 3 parts per million, but in butter made from this milk the concentration may run to 65 parts per million. "Through such a process of transfer, what started out as a very small amount of DDT may end as a heavy concentration..." (Carson 21). Through this chain of events, this demonstrates the way we treat our environment is related to how the environment will treat us; nature and culture are not distinct.

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Terry Tempest Williams's The Clan of One-Breasted Women

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Terry Tempest Williams's The Clan of One-Breasted Women

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Terry Tempest Williams, her family, and others who lived in sparsely populated regions of Utah, were impacted by federal nuclear testing as global tensions ran high. Williams was raised to be complicit in this state of the world. "For many years, I have done just that---listened, observed, and quietly formed my own opinions, in a culture that rarely asks questions because it has all the answers. But one by one, I have watched the women in my family die common, heroic deaths. We sat in waiting rooms hoping for good news, but always receiving the bad. I cared for them, bathed their scarred bodies, and kept their secrets. I watched beautiful women become as bald as Cytoxan, cisplatin, and Adriamycin were injected into their veins. I held their forehead as they vomited green-black bile, and I shot them with morphine when the pain became inhuman. In the end, I witnessed their last peaceful breaths, becoming a midwife to the rebirth of their souls" (Williams 286). Williams's perspective of how nuclear testing impacted her family and lineage is similar to that of the animal tribes which reside in the Wilderness; someone has to take action or to find retribution for the detrimental impact which oppressive forces were responsible for. As someone who is disproportionately affected by the downstream effects of nuclear testing, she acknowledges how being complicit in allowing this to happen affects human lives. As Williams states, "the price of obedience has become too high" (286). Through her writing, Williams frames a value dualism where the federal government as claiming to value progress and technological development, in fact more so than the lives of those who live in "virtually uninhabited areas".

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In The Yosemite, Muir uses empirical descriptions of size and scale to capture a sense of divinity in the wilderness: "The most famous and accessible of these cañon valleys, and also the one that presents their most striking and sublime features on the grandest scale, is the Yosemite, situated in the basin of the Merced River at an elevation of 4000 feet above the level of the sea. It is about seven long, half a mile to a mile wide, and they are so sheer in front, and so compactly and harmoniously arranged on a level floor, that the Valley, comprehensively seen, looks like an immense hall or temple lighted from above... " (Muir 1).

Muir compares natural landforms to temples and divine elaborate manmade structures, alluding to ideas of the sublime and nature as divine: "But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life. Some lean back in majestic repose; others, absolutely sheer or nearly so for thousands of feet, advance beyond their companions in thoughtful attitudes, [...] Awful in stern, immovable majesty, how softly these rocks are adorned, and how fine and reassuring the company they keep: their feet among beautiful groves and meadows..." (Muir 1). With the context of the romantic reversal of values between nature and civilization, this exemplifies how nature is valued as a divine retreat as opposed to participating in industrialization at the time. Muir alludes to the Wildness paradigm, emphasizing a duality between nature as solace versus the burdens of human civilization.

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In Kimmerer's "Learning the Grammar of Animacy", she highlights how language has inherent cultural values embedded (or not embedded) within itself. During Kimmerer's Potawatomi language class, she discovers that while there are several words for "thank you", there is no word for "please". In Potawatomi culture, food is established as a communal experience. Additional words to indicate politeness were not necessary because politeness was already so culturally ingrained. Her teacher Justin Neely explains that "it was simply a cultural given that one was asking respectfully" (Kimmerer 52). This demonstrates how social constructs such as language affects the way Kimmerer represents her relationship with nature.

The Wilderness paradigm is also perpetuated through missionaries pinning this linguistic nuance as "further evidence of crude manners" (Kimmerer 52). Native Americans were not only perceived as closer to nature, but also as "savages" because their social structures and civilizations do not adhere to those that the missionaries were accustomed to, enforcing the duality of Native Americans immersed in nature versus "modern" human civilization. However, Kimmerer deconstructs this duality in the sense that because language is a tool to mediate relationship with the environment, societal structures are inherently intertwined with the way we represent the world around us.

Kimmerer draws a distinction between the verb-based language of the Potawatomi and the noun-based English language. Attributing animacy or vitality to an aspect of our environment allows us to treat it as another person, worthy of respect and dignity. Referring to a bay as a noun in itself holds different significance compared to a verb that means "to be a bay". Kimmerer describes how the "living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers" (Kimmerer 55). The English language implicitly gives us permission to regard any non-human aspect of the environment as an "it"; devoid of any ability to be or to do anything, whereas the Potawatomi language embeds a sense of human interconnectedness with nature in itself. "Water, land, and even a day, the language [is] a mirror for seeing the animacy of the world", demonstrating how our relationship with nature is formed by cultural experience (Kimmerer 55).

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"I believe that both the state and the state's citizens have the right to use all means necessary to save the environment, including murder and sabotage, [...] Murder is okay in this case, as combating climate change is sure to save more lives than it could ever hypothetically destroy" (Manavis 1).

Manavis details attributes of the eco-fascist community and what they believe is the best corrective course of action to save the planet: the elimination of multiculturalism. Manavis notes that ecofascists utilize environmental preservation as a facade to justify violence towards marginalized groups who are deemed a "threat" to overpopulating white bioregions: "Multiculturalism is, of course, a bête noire for eco-fascists. Many argue, like the far-right generally, that opposing multiculturalism is a way to respect a specific heritage. But eco-fascists have a further preoccupation: multiculturalism (and in turn, overpopulation of certain 'white' areas), they claim, is destroying the planet" (9). This demonstrates how eco-fascists follow a cultural narrative where they claim to value purity and preservation against "unnecessary" lives, by eliminating people of other races and ethnicities to preserve one's own. They view purity as something to be achieved through preserving utility, namely, through reducing the human population relying on natural resources to survive. "'Pride for one's race, culture, and bioregion is a crucial part of eco-fascism,' Dan says. 'Races with a culture of disrespect for the dignity of animals and nature are indeed viewed by most as inferior and vile. Who would be okay with such traits?' Dan does not elaborate on which races he was referring to, or how Western European abattoirs and chicken factory farms fitted into this viewpoint" (Manavis 9). Manavis exemplifies how eco-fascists create an "us versus them" duality where they value particular lives over others and take extreme measures to enforce their vision. "'We want our homeland to ourselves,' [Dan] says" (Manavis 9).

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This cultural object reflects how we, as an American society, value the conservation and preservation of national monuments due to their cultural significance. This goes hand in hand with the idea of preservation, where natural spaces need to be protected to maintain their purity, to be left "untouched by humans." The NPCA opposed the “Unleashing American Energy” order by the Interior Secretary, which aims to abolish protections for these national monuments to mine and extract fossil fuels. We see a narrative of a dualism: on one hand, a federal administration values fossil fuels and resources for industrialization and American progress, while on the other hand, a concerned public seeks to preserve purity of natural landscapes for their inherent value, or nationalist symbolism of American heritage. Both parties seek to act in the interest of the United States, but it appears not everyone agrees on what values to prioritize.

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Parks Group Responds to New Order Threatening National Monuments

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“Time and again, millions of people have spoken out in defense of America’s national monuments. Americans do not agree with stripping away their federal protections.” –NPCA’s President and CEO Theresa Pierno

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xAI Supercomputer Impacting Memphis Communities

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xAI Supercomputer Impacting Memphis Communities

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During lecture, we had discussed the idea of environmental injustice and how it perpetuates itself when entities take advantage of natural resources shared by vulnerable communities at their expense. This is a demonstration of valuing efficiency and profit over the lives of marginalized communities and people who experience downstream effects. This article discusses how Elon Musk's new xAI data center located in Memphis, Tennessee impacts local communities. Information about its construction was not disclosed to the City Council, environmental agencies and the Memphis community until the night prior. The limited oversight and rushed nature of this project have allowed xAI to skirt environmental rules, which could impact the surrounding communities. For instance, the company’s on-site methane gas generators currently don’t have permits. Senior attorney Amanda Garcia of the Southern Environmental Law Center note that imposing the same kinds of pollution burdens on communities that industrial sources have been for the past 100 years. Pushback from local groups such as the local nonprofit Memphis Community Against Pollution led to a community forum where the local utility Memphis Light, Gas and Water reassured that residents wouldn't be impacted by xAI water and electricity usage. Memphis Councilwoman Cooper-Sutton says she eventually met with representatives from xAI but still doesn’t have concrete answers about "how this project came about, the timeline of events and why the city of Memphis wasn’t made aware of the deal before it was set" (Kerr). The lack of transparency with local communities and the pace at which the project progressed without regulation continues a precedent for hasty and dangerous implementation in the name of efficiency.

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Down a long, flat road in the industrial zone of South Memphis, a newly occupied factory is humming with activity. It's a low-level white building that spans the length of several football fields. Workers in florescent green vests excavate the surrounding land, and a parade of construction trucks comes and goes. More than a dozen generators steadily burn methane gas.

This part of Memphis, Tenn., is known for its factories and smokestacks. Nearby are a handful of historically Black neighborhoods, where poor air quality has given residents elevated asthma rates and lower life expectancy.

Now, they have a new neighbor: Elon Musk.

He took over the massive factory just a few months ago with the goal of building the "world's largest supercomputer." It's named "Colossus," sharing the title with both a mutant Russian comic book character and a sci-fi movie about a supercomputer that becomes sentient and goes rogue. The name originally comes from the mythical Greek statue "Colossus of Rhodes."

This data center will supply the compute power for Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI. It could be a test case of this technology's groundbreaking advances, and also its unintended consequences. AI requires more electricity to complete even simple tasks compared to typical search queries. In the U.S., about 60% of that electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, which is the primary driver of climate change.

xAI launched in July 2023 with the stated mission to "understand the universe" and a plan to "accelerate human scientific discovery." It says it raised $6 billion in funding in May. Since xAI's arrival in Memphis, flight logs show that Musk's private jet has flown back and forth to the city twice a month.

When the supercomputer gets to full capacity, the local utility says it's going to need a million gallons of water per day and 150 megawatts of electricity - enough to power 100,000 homes per year. Last week, Musk posted on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, that Colossus was brought online over Labor Day weekend, saying "from start to finish, it was done in 122 days."

"Moreover," he added, "it will double in size."

xAI's central focus is a tool called Grok. It's an AI chatbot, similar to ChatGPT, that the company flaunts as "having a sense of humor." Musk has called it the "most fun AI in the world." It has fewer rules than other AI chatbots and has been known for creating controversial deepfake images, such as Mickey Mouse as a Nazi and Kamala Harris in lingerie.

The primary purpose of the Memphis supercomputer is to provide compute power for Grok.

The project has moved at breakneck speed and has been cloaked in mystery and secrecy. Musk has yet to make a public appearance, and officials from the local utility who were briefed on the project signed nondisclosure agreements, according to the utility's spokeswoman. The NDAs were first reported by Forbes. The news dropped on Memphis in a press conference in June that was announced with little notice and caught members of the City Council, environmental agencies and the community off guard.

"We have been deemed by xAI not even valuable enough to have a conversation with," says KeShaun Pearson, who grew up a few miles from the facility and is president of the local nonprofit Memphis Community Against Pollution. "To not even be included in conversations about what is transpiring in our own backyards."

Musk and xAI did not return requests for comment.

The limited oversight and rushed nature of this project have allowed xAI to skirt environmental rules, which could impact the surrounding communities. For instance, the company's on-site methane gas generators currently don't have permits.

"Artificial intelligence may be a cutting-edge technology," says Amanda Garcia, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. "But it's imposing the same kinds of pollution burdens on communities that industrial sources have been for the past 100 years."

"Wow," she says, recalling her feelings that day. "One word. Wow."

Cooper-Sutton wasn't the only one who'd been kept in the dark. Community leaders and other City Council members told NPR they also didn't find out until the night before or day of. Those who were in the loop include the chamber, Memphis Mayor Paul Young and representatives from the local and state utilities.

At first, details were scant. During the June press conference, when a reporter asked where the supercomputer would be located, Townsend said that "due to global security concerns, we are not at liberty to identify the location." He said the project was a "multibillion-dollar investment" in Memphis, and the number of jobs generated and investment specifics were still being calculated by xAI.

A spokeswoman for the chamber declined to answer NPR's questions.

It's since been announced that xAI took over a former manufacturing facility that was run by the company Electrolux. The local utility says xAI will generate 300 jobs; although it's unclear whether these are temporary or permanent. Currently, the company has 37 job listings and the majority are based in California. Data centers are highly automated, so they have few employees. Microsoft, for example, says it employs about 50 workers per facility.

Mayor Young told NPR in an email that xAI has "chosen to go the no-incentive route, which means that they will pay the full amount for property taxes." He said he sees Musk choosing Memphis as an endorsement of its "get-it-done attitude."

"Elon and his team dream big, and we love that," the mayor said. When NPR asked for more information on the project plans, he said, "it is probably best to leave any forward planning discussions related to the overarching vision to Elon and his team."

After community outcry, the local utility (Memphis Light, Gas and Water, or MLGW) issued fact sheets and participated in a community forum. It laid out how much electricity and water xAI will use and says residents won't be impacted. It added that the increase in electricity sales means $500,000 more for Memphis annually. MLGW says it has seven contracts with xAI, including for electricity, water, gas and use of the gas pipeline.

NPR requested these contracts and a spokesperson said to file a public records request. NPR's subsequent public records request was denied on account of not being a citizen of Tennessee.

Cooper-Sutton says she eventually met with representatives from xAI and the chamber, but still doesn't have concrete answers around how this project came about, the timeline of events and why the city of Memphis wasn't made aware of the deal before it was set. She says she asked to meet with Musk, since he's the head of xAI, but is still waiting for that to happen.

"I have an old saying from my grandparents: What it won't get in the wash, it'll take care of in the rinse," she says. "So, if there's any secrets and if there's a dead cat on the line - it'll soon show up."

"Southwest Memphis is ground zero"

One mile from xAI, across a stretch of the Mississippi floodplain and a thicket of towering hardwood forest, is one of Memphis' oldest neighborhoods. It's called Boxtown. The southwest Memphis community was first started in the aftermath of the Civil War by formerly enslaved people. They later built homes from leftover boxcars. Boxtown still houses the oldest church in Memphis.

Today, it's a leafy neighborhood that has the feel of a tight-knit community. It's sprinkled with modest brick and wood-paneled homes that have tidy yards. Some hang American flags out front; others have charcoal smokers. KeShaun Pearson grew up nearby and has spent a lot of time here.

He's 35 years old, tall and lean. Pearson is also disarmingly friendly, speaking to every stranger he comes across. As he slowly drives through Boxtown, he points things out. There's the community garden and a tiny white house that looks like it could almost be original architecture.

"My grandmother is buried down that road," he says. "God rest her soul." Both of Pearson's grandmothers died of cancer in their 60s and he's convinced it had to do with living in South Memphis.

The cancer rate in South Memphis is four times higher than the national average, according to a ProPublica report. And a 2020 University of Memphis study found the life expectancy here is 10 years lower than other parts of the city. South Memphis also has elevated asthma rates, and the American Lung Association gave it a failing grade for air quality. Experts say this is largely due to the neighborhood's proximity to Memphis' industrial zone.

Down the road from xAI, there's a decommissioned coal plant where the city is still dealing with issues from coal ash, and there's a steel mill, an oil refinery, a wastewater facility and the state's power plant.

It's common for the county health department to issue " code orange " ozone alerts here. This means ozone levels exceed the Environmental Protection Agency's safety standards and sensitive groups, like adults with respiratory issues and children, shouldn't go outside.

"They have a very serious air pollution problem," says Garcia from the Southern Environmental Law Center. "Southwest Memphis is ground zero."

Garcia, Pearson and other environmental justice advocates fear that xAI will add to the pollution burden of this already overburdened community, because of its high demand for energy. They say it's particularly concerning that the project has had little government oversight and the community has been left out of the process.

"It's frustrating because it could be better," Pearson says. "The dissonance of having essentially the future of technology powered by fossil fuels is, you know, it just leaves me speechless."

xAI adds gas generators without a permit

The factory that xAI now inhabits sits on 217 acres of land and has the possibility to add an additional 580 acres. The main building is 785,000 square feet (roughly the size of 13 football fields) and comes with a cooling tower, heavy electrical power feeds and is fully air-conditioned. Phoenix Investors, which is leasing the site to xAI, didn't respond to a request for comment.

Alongside the factory are at least 18 portable methane gas generators, which visibly emit a steady stream of hazy smoke into the air. These turbines help fuel the company's AI.

They started to appear in June and have multiplied over the last couple of months. According to the Southern Environmental Law Center, it's estimated these generators can provide enough electricity to power 50,000 homes. And they have the capacity to emit 130 tons of harmful nitrogen oxides per year, potentially making them a major source of the pollutant in Memphis.

xAI doesn't have air permits for these turbines, according to the Shelby County Health Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The county health department told NPR that it only regulates gas-burning generators if they're in the same location for more than 364 days. "Given the mobile nature of the gas-turbines in question ... [the health department] does not have current permitting authority," a spokeswoman wrote in an email. She said this is the Environmental Protection Agency's jurisdiction.

The Environmental Protection Agency told NPR it hasn't issued air permits for these turbines, but after getting inquiries from media outlets and citizen groups it's "looking into the matter."

LaTricea Adams is from South Memphis and says she was shocked to hear about the generators. She's a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and founder of the nonprofit Young, Gifted & Green.

"Now you have turbines, but you don't have an air permit. Like, in what universe is that acceptable?" she says. "It's like the Spider-Man meme, where everybody's pointing at each other, but the community is who's losing."

This isn't the first time one of Musk's companies didn't have permits for high-emissions machinery.

His spaceship company SpaceX was fined for allegedly discharging industrial wastewater numerous times in Texas without a permit, according to a spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. This was first reported by CNBC. The Boring Co., which is his underground tunneling business, was also fined in Texas for failing to get a permit to discharge industrial stormwater. And his electric car company Tesla was cited by California for 33 air quality violations.

"There's a way to do this right," says Adams. "I don't think that all is lost, but it's going to take all of the powers that be to be more transparent and make this mutually beneficial."

Artificial intelligence puts a strain on the grid

On a sweltering August day, KeShaun Pearson drives down the flat road to xAI. As he pulls up, he points across the street to a multibuilding power plant owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority. This is the state utility that ultimately has to approve xAI's power plan.

Typically, data centers the size of xAI have to wait years before they can get on the grid, according to a report by Bloomberg. That's because utilities need to ensure that the facilities won't strain the grid for residents and other customers.

xAI has already gotten the go-ahead for 50 megawatts of electricity from MLGW. But it's requesting 100 megawatts more - enough to power tens of thousands of homes - and for that, xAI needs Tennessee Valley Authority's approval.

A spokesman for the utility says it's reviewing xAI's electricity demands and is waiting for more information from the company.

Musk says xAI has already dealt with "power fluctuation issues." During an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman last month, he said that training his AI necessitates quick bursts of 10 and 20 megawatts of electricity and "the electrical system freaks out about that."

Water is another issue for xAI. Data centers use massive amounts of water to cool their servers; xAI says it will need 1 million gallons of water a day, which is about 3% of the total capacity of the local wellfield, according to the nonprofit Protect Our Aquifer. This is the same wellfield that provides drinking water to residents.

"It would put stress on the wellfield," says Scott Schoefernacker, science director for Protect Our Aquifer. He adds that "a lot of the water is just being used as cooling and it evaporates."

MLGW is adamant that xAI won't impact the grid or water availability. It also says it's in talks with the company to build a gray water plant to use treated wastewater for cooling, along with the installation of large-scale batteries for electricity storage.

Several tech companies, including Google and Microsoft, have started using renewable energy sources at their data centers but still mostly rely on fossil fuels. According to the Bloomberg report, one of the reasons for that is because AI's demand for energy is so high that renewable energy suppliers can't keep up.

After watching xAI's buzzing construction activity for a while, Pearson starts up the car and drives back through the industrial zone. He points to a dense forest in the distance where 50-foot-tall trees, hanging with vines, tower over the landscape. He explains that this is T.O. Fuller State Park and that it was the first state park east of the Mississippi for Black people.

Now, he says, it's impossible to enjoy because of all of the pollution from nearby factories.

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How Memphis became a battleground over Elon Musk's xAI supercomputer

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A massive project headed by Elon Musk in Memphis, Tenn., to power AI has moved at breakneck speed. But it's stirring controversy around pollution emissions. The EPA says it's looking into it.

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Conveying the scale of large problems such as climate catastrophe and dealing with the crisis of realism are prominent challenges which environmental writers face. To tackle both of these, writers will employ zooming and aggregating techniques. Zooming involves toggling back and forth between global processes and local effects to concretely represent vast climate changes and how they impact individuals at the local scale. Aggregation gathers multiple examples of concrete “zooming” to create an overall picture of the global problem. These means of representation seek to represent the larger problems that we may not see in our day-to-day lives. Writers may choose to use these strategies to represent the climate crisis if they value realism over fantastical representation of human interaction with the environment.

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Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. London, Penguin Books, 27 Sept. 1962.

Kerr, Dara. "How Memphis became a battleground over Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer". KUOW, NPR Network, 11 Sept. 2024. https://m.kuow.org/stories/how-memphis-became-a-battleground-over-elon-musk-s-xai-supercomputer.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. 2013.

Manavis, Sarah. "Eco-fascism: The Ideology Marrying Environmentalism and White Supremacy Thriving Online". New Stateman, 21 Sept. 2018.

Miyazaki, Hayao. Princess Mononoke. Studio Ghibli, 1997.

Muir, John. The Yosemite. The Century Company, 1912.

Offill, Jenny. Weather. Alfred A. Knopf, 2020.

"Parks Group Responds to New Order Threatening National Monuments". National Parks Conservation Association, 4 Feb. 2025, www.npca.org/articles/6713-parks-group-responds-to-new-order-threatening-national-monuments.

Williams, Terry T. "The Clan of One-Breasted Women." Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Vintage Books, 2001.

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Essentialism is the belief that social categories of people naturally possess certain intrinsic qualities, dispositions, behaviors, or physical characteristics. If someone deviates from the expectation of the social group or doesn't necessarily identify with a label or status which society expects them to, then they may be labelled as "unnatural". These deviations can be used to justify inequality; for example, stating that black people are naturally inferior or even subhuman was used as justification for slavery, women are of a domestic nature was used as justification to deny women voting rights. The ideology of essentialism tends to permeate in the way that we create value dualities or systems by categorizing different people with distinct features, which can be used to perpetuate harmful narratives to justify other immoral actions or systems.

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Unmediated Representation of Nature and Epistemological Standpoints

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Unmediated Representation of Nature and Epistemological Standpoints

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During lecture, we had discussed the distinction between ontology and epistemology, as well as how authors have utilized different epistemological perspectives to frame their writing. The question of epistemology is "how do we know what we know about the world?" Some authors, like Muir and Thoreau, attempt to write from an "objective" and "unmediated" perspective, implicitly claiming that what they observe is what exists. One problem discussed with trying to write in an "unmediated" fashion about nature and the environment is that language is a means in itself to deliver these ideas. Representation of nature and the environment can never truly be unmediated, no matter how objective we try to be. Within language itself are techniques that authors, speakers, and writers employ to convey their perspective on any topic. Authors deliberate over the way they choose to address their topics through word choice, form, structure, analogies, and other tools. Some authors like Muir employ the use of value dualisms to convey a cultural narrative of what we should value, while authors like Offill use value dualisms to inform their writing style and delivery. Even others like Carson and Kimmerer deconstruct value dualisms to call attention to interconnection between the two aspects.

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Human action impacts our environment just as it can, in turn, impact us. Ecology focuses on the idea of interconnectedness and how nature and culture are not mutually exclusive spheres, but can influence one another in ways that may not be as obvious.

Ecological authenticity is the idea that the self-absorbed ego gets in the way of true environmental consciousness, which must be attuned to interconnections. This complicates the value dualism between identifying with your individual self as opposed to the collective ecosystem. But there is still a distinction being made: regardless of whether you call this duality your "self" self versus your "ecological" self, this is yet another way of drawing a distinction between “nature” and “civilization”. This may have implications that one's social identity is “less real” than biological identity. Even when attempting to deconstruct a value dualism or system, we need to acknowledge the presence of some value structure.

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As discussed in lecture, Jenny Offill writes Weather where climate itself acts as a backdrop to which human experiences unfold; it is not as prominent of an idea as much as human experiences and interactions are. The role of climate is more subtle, in that Offill's novel focuses on the attitudes and experiences around climate change awareness as opposed to more "direct" consequences traditionally expressed in environmental literature, such as greenhouse gases and carbon emissions. Instead of tackling the grand problem of climate change as a whole, Offill takes a more grounded approach, following the day of day life of a librarian tasked with handling the inbox of her former professor and mentor Sylvia. Telling the story of climate anxiety through the lens of an individual is helpful to ground the audience in realism as opposed to describing grand arcs or general blanket statements about climate experiences; in her own writing, Offill values realism and relatability as opposed using fantastical representations of climate change like Miyazaki does.

Offill uses bits and pieces of diverse media external to Lizzie's experience to construct the world around her and understand other people's insights about how they experience climate anxiety. One person writes in fervor: "Some Jews saw walls being built around the ghetto and thought they still had time. Don't be fooled by everyone else's calm. Get out even when nobody is even considering it yet. When you look at 2060, southern Argentina might be a good place for your children since it's close to the Antarctic peninsula, the place where the survivor colonies will be built" (Offill 88). This reflects a sense of dread and precarity that people are harboring in response to the rise of climate change awareness. Dispersing media throughout the main story circles back to the idea of aggregation, where bits and pieces of diverse experiences are pooled together in one, centralized in one place. This strategy of structurally aggregating different media helps to connect common themes while acknowledging the breadth and diversity of experiences with climate change.