Writing and the Environment

Discussing thoughts and ideas surrounding the environmental crisis and its relationship with literature

[writingandthenvironment]

Lives of Animals

For our presentations, I chose to focus on the subject of animals, and to look at J.M Coetzee’s Lives of Animals, as I thought it had some interesting discussion points.

“Though I have no reason to believe that you have at the forefront of your minds what is being done to animals at the moment in production facilities” - pg 19

What’s interesting about Coetzee is that his protagonist Costello mirrors him in his authorship, but also allows Coetzee to express his strong opinions and feelings on animal cruelty through the medium of fiction. Instead of telling a story about humans and using animals as metaphors or anthropomorphising them in order for a story to be told about humans, he directly speaks on behalf of the animals.

In one section, Costello does compare animal cruelty to the Holocaust which is essentially a metaphor, but not to emphasise a human tragedy, but an attempt to highlight the cruelty that many animals have suffered and still suffer. Understandably this can cause incredible discussion, which we had in class, which leads me to question whether humans and animals can ever be equal, as it seems there will always be people who disagree.

In previous posts I have spoken about speciesism, anthropomorphism and eco criticism, but it is still relevant here. Why are humans so fearful in giving animals an equal status?

Is it that humans as a collective fear that they are not the most intelligent species? Is it possible for evolution to still be taking place, and one day, could future animals become equal to humanity?

They’re all interesting questions that arose as a discussion from Coetzee’s novel, making it an interesting read and an even more interesting discussion topic.

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Walking Route

8oC, 11am. The walk begins when leaving my house. I passed two roads of houses, a typically suburban street until I met the main road that links the town to the forest pictured below 

The traffic alongside the path to the forest overpowers any natural noises, and all that can be heard are cars and talking. The path leads to a car park that has an entrance to Epping Forest.

Immediately upon entering the forest you are greeted with a trodden down path that although looks natural is probably a product of the amount of people that have walked across it. Runners and dog walkers pass, and there is fresh horse manure on the path to let us know there must be horses near by. 

As we get deeper into the forest, the mud on the path becomes more squelchy and the sound of the traffic begins to die out, and the sounds of birds high up in the trees can be heard. There was a group of about 20 cyclists that passed me on the path including parents and children.

Although I could no longer hear the traffic, I could still hear aeroplanes above that reminded me that we were still just a few miles from London. As I carried on walking there were shallow bodies of water that seemed to be collected rain water that had turned into a small marsh or pond.

After passing more dog walkers, I came across more signs of animals but didn’t actually see them. Rabbit droppings lay out on the path in front of me until we reached a car park.

Once we passed the car park that was beginning to fll with cars and cyclists and crossed more mud we came across our neighbour walking his dog. We chatted for about 15 minutes then carried on our walk.

As you can see from the picture, the terrain got very muddy, and I had to keep moving about in order to avoid getting stuck. I walked a bit further to begin coming back round to where I entered the forest, and the golf course that borders the forest appeared in my view.

A sure sign that I was almost at the end of my walk, I carried on walking towards my starting point and exited the forest.

As I left the forest and carried on walking down the original path that I had started on, I was surprised to see four shetland ponies carrying children exiting a drive way of one of the houses I passed.

After that surprise, I was back on the pavement and it was a straight walk all the way back to my house.

[writingandthenvironment]

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Have you ever read a book that is so uncomfortable that it is almost fascinating? Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake did just that.

A dystopian, or as Atwood put it herself, a speculative fiction, that focusses on the life of Snowman, our protagonist, one of the last remaining humans as we know them. We follow Snowman as he navigates through this dystopian world that he lives in alongside the genetically modified humans - the crakers.

What I find most uncomfortable about this book is the raw subjects it covers. Of course theres the genetic modification of humans, but additionally, the changing tenses to his past where we learn about his childhood and the companies profiting off of animals. The world that we are introduced to as Snowman’s childhood is still something of dystopia, yet, it is not too far from the world we live in today. The idea that it is not too far from the truth may have made it more of an uncomfortable read, as it was so close to home, yet quite horrifying at the same time.

I could compare the tone to Memory of Water, as I made a similar comment when reading that, about the harsh similarities that this dystopian world had with our own world. Despite the similarities, Atwood’s novel was still slightly more uncomfortable.

I found the subject of the child pornography hard to digest, however, if the intention was to shock and disturb readers, then Atwood did extraordinarily well. By bringing in a not only illegal act, but an act that is so disturbing and frightening to most people and normalise it within a dystopian world, our worlds collide. As there are people in our world that are involved in the same acts as Snowman and Crake, it makes their humanness easier to understand, the only difference is their reactions to it compared to ours. As our reactions would be disgust and ultimately jail, this completely differs to Atwood’s dystopian world where Snowman actually falls in love with the girl who is in fact Oryx.

As the title is named after the girl, it makes the situation extremely important and pivotal to their novel, and evidently, is an important part of the dystopian world that Atwood has created in this novel. 

I think the most important part of the novel from an eco-critical perspective is the genetic modification of humans and animals in the novel, as obviously it is against the natural progression of living things, as humans and animals are part of nature.

[writingandthenvironment]

Nature as an Inspiration

As many of you know, I am a massive fan of SpringWatch (and Autumn and Winter Watch!) and luckily for everyone, WinterWatch began again this week and has given me some food for thought while I’ve been unwell.

In a section of episode four, Martin Hughes-Games linked into a short piece of footage captured by one of their wildlife photographers, Sophie Darlington. The footage that was then played could have been a short film as not only was it her footage that she captured, but her friends brought out the ‘lyric’ of the landscape.

The film was beautiful, filming the variety of birds within the landscape of sedgemoor alongside everything else that was going on in the moor too, including the the rivers, the grass and even a train. I really loved the concept of adding the train and discussing it within the lyric as just another modern part of the moor. It wasn’t described as good or bad. It was just there. Everything that was filmed was just there too, not just the train. Everything lived side by side in the moor and that was captured beautifully by film and lyric.

Once the film finished, we were taken back to Micheala Stratton and Martin to discuss the nations favourite nature book. Michaela began the link by discussing how Nature has a brilliant way of inspiring almost everybody, in whatever creative path they take. She spoke about her own experiences with dance, while Martin spoke about books.

I thought more about the research I did for me presentation, and about humanities relationship with nature and the environment. Although in most instances ‘nature must be read humanly to be read at all’, that is not always negative. The film that we were shown and the nature book - the winning one by presenter Chris Packham, told us personal stories about relationships with nature. Chris Packham has asperges, and his book Fingers in the Sparkle Jar was inspired by his film Asperges and Me, telling the story of his childhood and ongoing relationship with nature and how much it has helped him. 

Here it is clear that nature is being read humanly, but that is only because that is the only way that humans can interpret nature, through what we have experienced ourselves. Obviously there are mixed opinions and ongoing studies, but I think it is a very interesting concept to look at the love of wildlife and how it can inspire, and further to that, incite a change in humanities behaviour towards nature and how we can read nature, but also how we can then also make a difference.

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“Nature must be read humanly to be read at all”

For my American Literature module, I had to write a 2000 word journal using at least 2 of my core texts.

As I am already doing the Writing and The Environment module, I thought that incorporating what I had learnt there would combine Walden by Henry David Thoreau and some poetry by Robert Frost, questioning the relationship between humanity and the environment. 

In my research, I came across some very interesting ideas, one of them being Peter Singer’s essay on Speciesism and Moral Status. I had learned a bit about Peter Singer in A Level Ethics, and thought he would be an interesting person to research on behalf of the religious side of my argument.

Although I was right and Peter Singer did question religion a lot within his essay, especially Pope John Paull II’s Evangelium Vitae, he also had an interesting independent argument on the status of humans versus animals.

This small extract from the beginning of an argument introduces the reader to the concept of there being a hierarchy between humans and animals and question why that is and how we as humans can break that, or if we can.

It is very interesting to note that a very large quantity of nature writers can’t seem to break the stigma of anthropomorphic behaviour. Despite nature writers such as Frost and Thoreau clearly having a deep love and appreciation of nature, they cannot break out of this hierarchy that Peter Singer suggests.

The idea of a status between humans and animals is a very interesting concept, one that is not really spoken about, but is clearly prevalent in our society, and has been for thousands of years, which we know from the writings of the bible and the belief that humans had dominion over the earth.

For a contemporary society, it is our jobs as humans to try and raise awareness of the dangers of this hierarchy, not just for animals, but nature as well. It is also in the interest of humans to attempt to see past the status that we seem to have given ourselves, as it is healthier to view the world as a place for all living things, not just when it benefits humanity. 

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Lost Species

Tigers are one of the worlds most beloved animals, and yet are also an endangered species. 

I am a massive fan of cats, and knew that I wanted to research some exceptionally big, wild cats for the post on ‘Lost Species’.

As an endangered species, there are around 3900 tigers left in the wild, including all the sub-species, which is down from 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th Century. 

The piece that I have decided to look at is one of ten paintings that Andy Warhol created. Tiger, in his series Endangered Species, was painted in 1983 as a response to the decreasing numbers of a variety of species of animals, one of them being tigers.

The series of paintings “were a result of a conversation about ecological issues between Warhol and art dealers Ronald and Frayda Feldman”, and are extremely important when looking at the environmental culture of the time as society were just becoming aware of environmental and ecological issues as well as socio-economic ones. 

The painting itself is a continuation of Warhol’s style, and creates a relationship between the celebrities he paints and these endangered animals. I think it is interesting that he paints them in the same style, as it may suggest that the ecological issues are just as important as the celebrity culture that had arisen in the 80s.

I think the eyes in this picture are the most striking detail of the painting. The painting as a whole is drenched in deep reds and oranges, colours that are associated with danger and death, foreshadowing the deaths of many tigers, and eventually their extinction. However, the eyes create a brilliant contrast. Blue often represents life, which is an interesting choice for the eyes. My interpretation of the use of blue for the eyes suggests that the Tiger is still alive and there’s still a small chance that it could be rescued, despite the amount of death that appears to be associated with it.

Warhol’s choice of the eyes is also interesting, as immediately I was reminded of Shakespeare’s famous quote regarding the eyes being the window to the soul. So, is it just merely a coincidence that Warhol chooses the eyes to represent the life that the Tiger’s still have? I like to interpret it as a clever connection to Shakespeare to comment on their life as endangered animals.

To this day, Tigers are still endangered, however, their numbers have increased in recent years due to conservation programmes, and charities such as WWF continue to spread awareness and raising money for endangered species such as the tiger.

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Aggreko

At work on Wednesday evening when we were in the final hour of our evening shift, the conversation conveniently turned to Aggreko and the ways in which they supply energy, and how incredible, yet scary the company is.

I had never even heard of the company before my colleague began explaining what they do, and after going home and doing some research of my own, found out that they are the biggest temporary supplier of energy in the world.

Aggreko have been supplying temporary energy worldwide since the 1950s, and after reading their website saw the project as a very dystopian concept. Although they state that health, safety and the environment are their top priorities, I found it difficult to believe that this could be possible due to the enormous amounts of gas and diesel that they use.  After learning so much about the crisis that the world is currently facing, that we are running out of these fuels, it worried me to read about the amount that they must be using, especially as it’s only for temporary measures such as Glastonbury Music Festival.

I was also told about the good projects that Aggreko do, giving money to charities and communities around the world and supplying them with energy.

On their website, Aggreko do state that they are using as much excess natural gas to fuel their generators, and are also looking into the future and are developing renewable energy, which counter acts the damage that the use of diesel and gas does to the environment. 

I thought it was a really interesting and relevant conversation, and was interested in doing my own research, especially as I was unaware of the company itself, and was told that now I knew about it, I’d see their logo everywhere! 

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Coal

After doing a lot of research on the crisis involving Coal, I thought it was important to include it in my blog.

I personally focussed on Coal and Visibility, and was immediately reminded of the film Pride when looking at how visible the issues surrounding coal are.

Pride is the most recent piece of media and literature that relates to the visibility of coal and the socio/economic problems behind it. It details the collaboration between LGSM and Miners, two minority groups that were ‘bullied by the government’. The fact that this film was released in 2014 – 30 years after the beginning of the miners strike shows how important it is to our culture and history.

The history behind Pride is extremely important to understand when looking at the crisis of coal, and how it shaped our culture in Britain. Between 1984-85, there was a miners strike against pit closures, a decision made by Thatcher. At its height, the strike involved 142,000 mineworkers. The number of person-days of work lost to the strike was over 26,000,000, making it the largest since the 1926 general strike. The strike gave the working class people a voice against the Conservatives who were closing mines - putting millions of people out of work. That voice didn’t just come out of the strike itself, but much of it through literature and eventually film.

There was a variety of contemporary literature that came out of the mining strike such as Jean Gittens Striking Stuff, which shows the impact that the strike had on the families of the miners, and what would happen if they lost their jobs due to pit closures.

Another poem infamously about the striking miners, is V by Tony Harrison that gives a glum and depressing outlook for the miners. There’s a lot of mention of decaying and death, which was a potential future that the mining families were looking at.

Of course, modern day visibility also includes Billy Elliot – a film and musical that only stopped running until last year which shows its place in modern society. Although it is solely about a young boy's dream, the backbone to the story is the love his family have for him and the support they have despite their own struggles during the mining strike. One of the most moving parts of the film is when Billy’s father returns to mining in order to be able to send Billy to school. The emotion is all behind the mining strikes and the desperation those families felt for money to even survive.

I really enjoyed delving deeper into the history behind Coal, and am looking forward to presenting our findings to our seminar group this Wednesday.

[writingandthenvironment]

Energy Diary

Wednesday 8th November: 

Bus travel between university, work and home - fuel

Phone, Computers, Tills at work - plastic

Air Con, Heating, Water

Taxi

Thursday 9th November:

Phone charger

Food Delivery - petrol

Bath - Water

Friday 10th November:

Bus travel, Car driving - fuel

Nandos and - gas, heating, lighting

Saturday 11th November:

Bus to work - fuel

Tills, coffee machines, fridges, freezers at work - plastic, light pollution

Sunday 12th November:

(Same as Saturday)

Monday 13th November:

Breakfast out - gas, electricity, heating

Bus to university - fuel

Laptop, Phone - plastic and electricity

Tuesday 14th November:

Bus to uni - fuel

Laptop, phone - plastic and electricity 

NB: used every day -

Hob, cooker, TV, fairy lights, speaker, shower, kettle. heater, toilet, candles (fire)

[writingandthenvironment]

Memory of Water

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta is a speculative fiction novel set in a dystopian future. The premise of the story is that the lack of water (the melted ice is contaminated due to global warming) creates a war. China controls Europe, and the main protagonist, Noria, is aiming to become a tea maker like her father.

Although I didn’t particularly enjoy this novel, I can appreciate the importance of it from a geographical, and environmental aspect. The very real descriptions create a dystopian setting that is all too real and potentially a look into the near future. The importance of understanding global warming, and why we need to look after our environment are fictionalised in this novel, however, can scare us into action. Preserving and conserving our earths water, and in this case, the water quality, is extremely important to our earth and the future of life on earth itself. Although it may not end up as dystopian as Memory of Water, the idea that something as we see as dystopian now, could be a reality in the future.

What was particularly interesting about this novel was the perspective it was written from. Although it was written from the perspective of a teenager, it doesn’t include many of the tropes of typical YA fiction. Although it doesn’t include the tropes of YA fiction, it does also solely focus on the teenager’s (more naive) perspective rather than the consequences of the war and the lack of water. This perspective creates an atmosphere that suggests the water crisis isn’t as important as it may actually be in this dystopian world. 

Although I didn’t particularly fall in love with the book or the characters, I did enjoy the discussion that it creates.

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Oil on Water

The book Oil on Water by Helon Habila is an interesting eco critical novel following the journey of a journalist in the devastated Nigeria Delta. The purity of the descriptions of the environment that surrounds both Rufus and Zaq create a devastating image of the damaged environment, encapsulating the idea of the damage fuel can create.

Alongside reading this novel, I also watched the BBCs Blue Planet 2. In the second episode that aired this week, we were introduced to the Brine Pool in The Gulf of Mexico. Although the main focus of the section was on the Brine Pool, the location links perfectly to the novel, reminding us of this generations biggest oil spill.

In 2010, BP had a leak as their oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. I still remember the event happening and it being described as the worst oil spill in history. Below are some facts regarding the oil spill and the results it has had on the environment.

As it is clear to see, the BP oil spill of 2010 has had some devastating effects, and although was heavily reported in the media at the time, is not spoken about as often as it needs to be. The horrific loss of life and damage to the environment after the oil spill was unforgivable, and has had very similar resulting factors to the disaster of the Niger Delta.

Habila’s novel highlights the importance of the environment and how we must look after it by focusing on the opinion of one journalist. Although Rufus believes the most interesting story to report is the kidnapping, he completely dismisses what is going on around him, reflecting modern society and how we as humans react to an environmental crisis. Today’s news tomorrow’s chip paper, some might say. However, it is the gap in the narrative and the obvious elephant in the room, the crisis of the Niger Delta, that should be reported that goes unnoticed by Rufus. This deliberate and intended dismissal of the environment creates a reaction from the reader - an active one. The reader realised the damage that has been done and wishes for Rufus to pick up on its importance. Although we do not know Habila’s definite intention, we can assume that it may have been to enforce some kind of action, and to be aware of the dismissal of environmental crises surrounding us every day.

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Life’s a beach: why are we so drawn to the ocean? | Intrepid Travel Blog - The Journal

The beach is the salty engine that drives global tourism. But why? What draws us to the ocean?

“First, we love water. Water attracts us: rivers, ponds, rainstorms, coastlines - even puddles - have an undeniable sensual charisma. Waters hold great spiritual meaning across cultures; they gather stories, identities and memories. For many of us, water possesses spirit.”

A quote from Cecilia Chen, Janine McLeod, and Astrida Neimanis 'Introduction', in Thinking With Water intrigued me, making me think about my own relationship with water. 

Over the summer, on holiday, I had a chance to swim in the sea alone, and I spent some of that time appreciating the feeling of complete tranquility that it gave me, all whilst being able to enjoy the beauty of the country’s landscape around me. I remember one specific moment where I asked myself why I, and many others who were swimming around me, enjoyed and found peace whilst being in the water, when the current that was below me had killed so many others. I was reminded of the story of a child who was killed in the sea on his holiday in Cornwall in 1978, which was turned into the book The Day That Went Missing, and decided to search why so many of us enjoy something that can cause tragedies. 

I came across the article linked to this post, and although it doesn’t necessarily post any original scientific facts, gives us an outline to the answer of why we as humans love the water with reference to the book The Naked Ape by Zoologist Desmond Morris. In the article, we are told that as primal homo sapiens, we lived by the sea, evolving in a way that meant we had less hair and a fish based diet. Scientists agree that the fish based diet lead to our ability to retain information and through the process of natural selection become literate beings.

As well as the science, the article gives another perspective of loving the ocean and why it resinates with so many of us, ending purely on the fact that it is just beautiful and should be enjoyed for what it is, without question.