The Various Cultural Narratives Surrounding the Climate Paradigm by Sofia Tas-Castro

Thesis

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:04:30 UTC

While most Americans regard the Climate paradigm as something that is strictly scientific, they ignore the cultural narratives perpetuating its ideas. Eco-Fascists rely on white supremacist ideas in combination with surface level environmental strategists to create their narrative, Environmental Justice groups and supporters utilize various forms of literature to spread information and ideologies rooted in facts and evidence.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:06:46 UTC

In her article Eco-Fascism: The Ideology Marrying Environmentalism and White Supremacy Thriving Online, Sarah Manavis introduces her readers to Eco-Fascism and the main points of its ideologies. However, what makes her article noteworthy is her demonstration of how eco-fascists create their cultural narrative through the combination of environmental ideologies such as Veganism and reducing the use of single-use plastics with anti-semitism and white supremacy. She details how Eco-Facists are in love with Norse mythology because they believe the Gods represent their “aesthetic” and their goals (Manavis, pg. 6). Her interview with an eco-fascist gives a primary source into the beliefs of the group and serves to highlight the ridiculousness and baselessness of their beliefs through the member’s refusal to state which country they are from and the lack of discussion of the displacement of Native Americans. Eco-Fascists created the cultural narrative through the online discussion on platforms such as X and Reddit that other cultures and peoples are to blame for the world’s destruction when in reality it is bigger corporations that are the main contributor to the increase in the world’s temperature.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:07:47 UTC

As Manavis pointed out, Dan, the interviewed Eco-Fascist, refused to acknowledge his own home country and the displacement of Native Americans. By including these hypocritical actions in her article, Manavis is illustrating some of the contradictions of Eco-Fascists. This example alludes to how even though Eco-Fascists want to preserve the origins of white peoples, they refuse to accept the origins of the people that actually inhabited the land they are standing on. If they were to follow their own rules about people going back to where they “originally” came from, then they would have to leave the very country they are trying to purify and mixed peoples would never have a home because their origins would have them belonging to multiple places. Furthermore, the actions Eco-Fascists use in combination with their white-supremacist ideals ignore the fact that climate change, no matter the land a person occupies, affects the entire planet. Eugenics will not get rid of the irreversible damage that has already been done such as the extinction of certain species. Manavis uses her article to illustrate that Eco-Fascism is simply a tool to disguise white supremacy so that racists can create a “moral” standpoint that they can hide behind when they are attacked for their destructive beliefs.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:08:22 UTC

Eco-Fascism is the movement where its members believe that certain people, mostly White Anglo-Saxons, are entitled to certain resources and are not to be blamed for the Climate Change Crisis. It takes its white supremacist ideology from Nazi Germany and the eugenics study of early conservationist leaders such as Madison Grant and Theodore Roosevelt. The main belief is that minority peoples are responsible for the decimation of the environment and the only way to preserve the Earth is to eradicate them or to guide them back to where they “originally came from”.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:09:56 UTC

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Environmental Justice groups rely on a different set of beliefs to create their cultural narrative about climate change. Their main belief is that everyone, no matter their race or socioeconomic status, should share the benefits of a healthy environment equally. These groups and participants spread ideas such as reducing the use of fossil fuels, transitioning to renewable energy sources, and protecting communities deemed vulnerable through their susceptibility to harm from climate change. Their main belief is that big fossil fuel companies are the ones responsible for climate change and the destruction of communities such as those of indigenous peoples, urban, rural, and coastal communities.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:11:38 UTC

In her article No One is a Virus: On American Eco-Fascism, April Anson refutes the eco-fascist, nihilistic, idea that the eradication of human beings is what will solve the climate crisis. She describes how this idea reduces the blame society puts on big, fossil fuel corporations and redirects it to the regular civilian. One example she gives is how society holds the debate “arguing over whether driving less will save the planet” (Anson, pg. 6). While civilians are partly to blame for the crisis, (after all, everyone produces carbon emissions and greenhouse gasses), they are not the main contributors. Driving less, while reducing carbon emissions, is not the main contributor to the increase in greenhouse gasses leading to climate change. By pointing out these inconsistencies, Anson highlights a bigger concern: corporations want to place the blame on anyone other than themselves because it will allow them to continue using resources and living the way they already are. The historical responsibility Anson wishes to address will end their privileged way of life and highlights their vulnerability to the crisis they have created.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:12:57 UTC

Although direct articles are a great way for Environmental Justice leaders and participants to spread their logic, some take more artistic approaches. For example, poets utilize background, the social and biographical histories that inform a writer’s intention, to influence how they approach the climate crisis in their work. Some poets may take a more direct approach by explicitly describing atrocities like landfills or the lack of wildlife, while others may take on a more personal route to describe how climate change has affected their lives like how the landscapes they once enjoyed are no longer the same. An example of a goal poets have when creating work is their desire to destroy the dualism concept that nature and humanity are separate.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:13:33 UTC

In her poem The Killing of the Trees, Lucille Clifton employs direct imagery for the destruction of wildlife and metaphorical examples of how vulnerable communities are being affected by this destruction. She begins with describing how the trees fall “with a sound almost like flaking” and the leaves “fluttered themselves and died” (Clifton, Lines 2-4). Vivid imagery like this allows the reader to picture the destruction in their heads and evokes a sense of melancholy at the death of nature. These feelings spur them on to regard the acts as something that needs to be stopped. Clifton later describes an “old warrior” who “was a chief” and “was a tree” (lines 16 and 26). The old warrior is a Native American man who is one with nature as he is not destroying the trees, but is raising his arm “blessing” (line 18). By mentioning the lack of dualism this man has with nature, Clifton is raising awareness to how the climate crisis is not only destroying everyone’s connection to nature, reducing humanity to beasts trying to control an environment they are a part of, but how it erases the history of the Native Americans and their relationships to the land. Through mixing direct and indirect writing, Clifton is creating a cultural narrative similar to the Environmental Justice one, that explains how the climate crisis not only affects people on a safety level, but also on a cultural level through the destruction of this valuable connection.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:14:20 UTC

Jenny Offil is a known nature writer, specifically for her work Weather. The main intention she has for the work is for it to serve as a controlling metaphor for climate anxiety. The speaker of her writing is herself through a single narrative voice and she uses the precarity of her everyday experiences to highlight the crisis and her own anxieties surrounding it. By relying on her personal experiences, she allows the reader to connect with her on a more personal level and also detail how “hero” stories are not accurate depictions of ways to solve the climate change crisis. Her use of humor and self-deprecation/sarcasm makes her work a piece of satire that examines questions about climate change people can be too afraid to ask in this day and age.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:15:09 UTC

Jenny Offill in her work Weather utilizes the stream of consciousness form to illustrate the climate anxiety caused by the climate change crisis. Throughout the novel, she makes offhanded comments about how she is preparing for “doomstead” by describing how she needs “arable land, a water source, access to a train line” (Offill, pg. 194). One of the key factors of climate anxiety is how people feel the need to prepare for the upcoming doom and that if they aren’t then they will die. Offill also utilizes questions throughout her work to examine ideas such as how climate change is an emergency because “normal operations cannot continue and immediate action is required so as to prevent a disaster” (196). Offill intersperses these types of thoughts in order to draw attention to the crisis itself and how it is making regular people more scared about a future they are not responsible for creating. She is appealing to the Environmental Justice cultural narrative that climate change affects everyone because of this anxiety and that it is a world-wide emergency that does not spare anyone because of race or ethnic identity.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:15:57 UTC

Serving as allegories for the current climate crisis and the disasters imperialism and capitalism can cause on various environments, the Avatar movies, specifically Avatar: The Way of Water, demonstrate these motifs through the Na’Vi people’s fight to preserve their sustainable way of living against the “Sky People” from Earth. In Avatar: The Way of Water directed by James Cameron, the Sky People are hunting for a liquid substance from the Tulkan animals that supposedly prevents people from aging. As they search and fight with the Na’Vi near the coastline and in the oceans of Pandora, they are destroying the world full of the resources they so wish to have.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:19:21 UTC

Avatar: The Way of Water is an allegory because the world of Pandora, the Na’vi people, and the Sky People are meant to serve as symbols for the Indigenous people of the United States fighting for their land that European colonizers fight to industrialize and colonize. The storyline of the movie is similar to the displacement story of the Indigenous peoples and through this fictional setting, allows Cameron to explore themes of environmentalism and climate change without directly challenging people’s political views. If he were to have used modern day examples, the film would not have been as appealing because nowadays, people are so divided on the climate issue, whether they get their information from fake or real news, that it would have polarized the population and decreased the revenue and number of viewers of the film.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:20:17 UTC

This article about the movie also brings to attention Cameron’s intentions for the movie and the creation of more which is to raise awareness for Environmental Justice. This director states that he is willing to make more movies as long as there is a demand for them and whether this demand is from the audience engaging with the story or from the climate crisis becoming more dangerous, Cameron has ample material and cause to elongate the series. Although Avatar: The Way of Water directly instructs the viewer on who the “good guys” are which is not the case for real life, the film franchise serves as fictional work to accurately represent the cultural narrative of Environmental Justice groups by promoting that a positive connection to nature and sustainable use of resources from lands that do not affect the ways of life of people already living there.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:21:43 UTC

The Lorax, a book written by Dr. Seuss which was later adapted into a film, is another allegory depicting Environmental Justice themes. The main story is about a man named the Once-ler who industrializes a forest run by a creature called the Lorax who “speaks for the trees” in order to make his jacket called a “thneed”. (Dr. Suess). This industrialization then leads to the creation of a society where the environment has been so devastated that trees are non-existent and air has to be purchased. The only depiction of trees in this new society is through paintings and the book ends with a call to action for readers to care about what is going on in the environment and fight against the destruction.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:22:40 UTC

The Lorax is an allegory intended for children, as the author Dr. Suess (or Theodor Geisel) claims it. He was inspired by the destruction of eucalyptus trees in his neighborhood in California to write it. However, to make the allegory appeal to children is a strong rhetorical decision because children are the next generation, and to instill the Environmental Justice ideas of reducing deforestation and caring about wild-life will lead to them making changes when it is their turn to run society. Furthermore, climate change is a world problem and not everyone in the world is able to read at an advanced level. Children’s books can be understood, even solely through the pictures, by almost everyone, meaning the ideas can be spread worldwide as long as they are translated into different languages and the pictures are not censored. The Lorax helps foster the cultural narrative of Environmental Justice through its easy to understand message and its appeal to younger audiences will inspire them to make changes before society can brainwash them into thinking they are they problem.

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:23:38 UTC

Another important thing to note about this work is that Dr. Suess intended for The Lorax to be a fable. Fables are timeless stories that parents tell to their children and then their children spread to theirs. In contrast to the Avatar franchise, The Lorax’s simplicity allows for the message to be more timeless because the chopping of trees is something that will always happen and is something every society can relate to. No matter how privileged a country or society may be, they have experienced deforestation and the negative consequences that come from not having trees or clean air at one point or another. Additionally, the rhyme scheme in the story combined with the bright colors and vivid drawings makes it easily distinguishable among other forms of literature and easy for audiences to remember.

Color Key:

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:24:35 UTC

White: Thesis Statement

Blue: Analysis

Red: Context

Yellow: Citations

Citations

sofiatascastro — 2023-12-09 23:26:20 UTC

Anson, A. (2020, October 21). No one is a virus: On American ecofascism. Environmental History Now. https://envhistnow.com/2020/10/21/no-one-is-the-virus-on-american-ecofascism/

Blair, E. (2021, August 12). “The Lorax” Warned Us 50 Years Ago, But We Didn’t Listen. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/08/12/1026385429/the-lorax-dr-seuss

Fisher-Wirth, A., Street, L.-G., Hass, R., Perez, C. S., & Clifton , L. (2020). The Killing of the Trees. In the Ecopoetry anthology (pp. 213–214). essay, Trinity University Press.

Galindo , Y. (2023, October 12). New Center Addresses Global Climate Change Impacts on Water, Other Resources. UC San Diego Today . https://today.ucsd.edu/story/new-center-addresses-global-climate-change-impacts-on-water-other-resources

IMDb.com. (2022, December 16). Avatar: The way of water. IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1630029/

Manavis, S. (2022, April 4). Eco-fascism: The ideology marrying environmentalism and white supremacy thriving online. New Statesman. https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2018/09/eco-fascism-ideology-marrying-environmentalism-and-white-supremacy

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Offill , J. (2020). Weather. Vintage .

Offill, J. (n.d.). Weather - by Jenny Offill (hardcover). Target. https://www.target.com/p/weather-by-jenny-offill-hardcover/-/A-76506701

Pajdas, L. (2023, March 13). The Complicated History of Norse Mythology in Art. DailyArt Magazine. https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/norse-mythology-in-art/

Richards, L. (2023, August 22). Avatar Inspires Activism: An Environmental Message From the World of Pandora. Impakter. https://impakter.com/avatar-inspires-activism-an-environmental-message-from-pandora/

Seuss, Dr. (n.d.). The Lorax - by dr. Seuss (hardcover). Target. https://www.target.com/p/the-lorax-by-dr-seuss-hardcover/-/A-11340335