Post 54.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, I had a number of, what I now call, climate refugees in my schools in Pittsburgh. These were the children of families displaced from New Orleans, who had lost their homes and were being housed temporarily in Pittsburgh. Two students, for instance, played in my orchestra at Woolslair Elementary. Woolslair was, at the time, fairly diverse. Taking a guess, the racial make-up was maybe 45% White, 45% African American, and 10% Middle Eastern or Southeast Asian. Taking in two additional African American students didn't change the overall diversity of my ensemble much, since my orchestra then represented the school's diversity pretty well (which I had since heard is irregular in school music; as most ensembles are Whiter than the school population). Should I refer to these students as climate refugees?

What is a climate refugee? Is the phrase "climate refugee" appropriate? Certainly my students were displaced by climate change. The Union of Concerned Scientists has discussed the link between increasingly destructive hurricanes and climate change. But what is a refugee? Dictionary.com defines refugee as "a person who flees for refuge or safety, especially to a foreign country, as in time of political upheaval, war, etc." My students were definitely persons fleeing for refuge and safety, though not to a foreign country and not in a time of political upheaval, however bad the Bush years were. There was a lot of pain in the African American community, especially for the folk who were left behind by an ineffective Republican federal government. (see image of Katrina victims on a house roof). As Kanye said it, "A lot of the people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way, and they've given them permission to go down and shoot us." But my students didn't have to flee Katrina to find themselves in concentration camps, or killed crossing the border, as refugees from El Salvador and other nations have in recent months.

Eve Andrews defines climate refugees. Here are 10 important points:

1. Calling those displaced by climate change "refugees" relays the sense of urgency that is due.
2. It is supported by the fact that millions are being displaced by this global emergency.
3. But the term "refugee" has, in recent years, increased xenophobia in the Global North.
4. These richer, mostly White, countries have contributed the most to the climate crisis.
5. But politicians have used climate displacement to push for protectionist policies, such as building border walls, and military action.
6. The scale of the problem is overwhelming: In 2017 over 60% of displacements (18 million humans) were due to natural disasters, many of those were connected to climate change.
7. The World Bank estimates there will be 150 million climate refugees by 2050.
8. In most case, climate refugees haven't been able to claim asylum as refugees because of the wording of the law.
9. Some have gained refugee status by using climate change as a "risk multiplier." Climate  catastrophes increase war and other suffering.
10. Alternatively, some experts suggest dropping the term "refugee," and to just aim to help people displaced by climate change, avoiding the problems with using the word "refugee" under international and national laws.

So, what does it mean for teachers? I cannot have been the only teacher to receive people displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. My climate refugees quickly became friends with other African American students, sharing a cultural language that was familiar to me as a teacher. Integration of these children was fairly painless from what I could tell. How well did it work in less diverse schools though? As a music teacher, I told students they could talk to me about it privately, or even during class if they wanted to. I didn't initiate class discussion around it though, trying to avoid exacerbating pain for my students who were suffering from ecological and political challenges beyond their control. As always, I'm not sure I did the best I could do. If you have pedagogical suggestions, leave them in the comments.

DJS

Post 53.

Climate change is one ecological challenge, among many, we face in 2019. The ecological crises intersect with other injustices. So it is nice to hear Climate Change discussed in the first Democratic primary debate, after this concern was ignored by politicians and the media in 2016. Millions of people are currently forced to choose between starving to death and becoming climate refugees, or as these suffering souls are called in the Global North, “illegal immigrants.” In an article on “Climate Apartheid,” UN Special Reporter Philip Alston suggests the wealthy will “pay to escape overheating, hunger, and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer.” (See image of e-waste workers). This should be considered in its full truth—the global poor are mostly not responsible for climate change (under 100 companies produce 66% of greenhouse emissions), suffer the most when it happens, and are being left behind or villainized by the worst climate offenders. In our imbalanced economic system, twenty-six individual billionaires have as much wealth as 50% of the world’s population, 3.765 billion humans. This is morally offensive and ecologically unsustainable. And why do billionaires disproportionately want policies that exacerbate climate change? The reduced GDP of poor nations have been an economic boon for wealthy nations. The world’s poorest nations have experienced a 17 - 31% decrease in wealth, while the richest nations are 10% richer due to climate change. And the richest individuals are richer than ever where the poor in even the richest country the world has ever known (the U.S. stock market is higher than ever) suffer from flooding, impure water, hunger, and overheating.

An approach to ecology must always take into account the economic system and the multiple crises we face. Many technological solutions to climate change would worsen other ecological crises—e.g., water pollution, plastic waste, e-waste, and species collapse. And some would absolutely destroy the lives of the poor around the planet. For instance Geoengineering schemes to “fix” climate change by blocking the sun will cause increased desertification and decreased crop yields, worsening both world hunger and the number of climate refugees. But they are suggested, even if only by fringe scientists, because they provide the most opportunity for profit by a small group of billionaires.

An approach to ecology, then, must also be intersectional. Poor brown, white, and black people are hurt the most by the effects of climate change. This is especially the case for people living in the Global South, who after becoming climate refugees are dehumanized by media and politicians in the Global North, put in concentration camps, arrested, or killed. Women have long been among the most impacted by the results of pollution and climate change; and have been on the forefront of intersectional & ecological activism. As activist Judi Bari said, “You cannot seriously address the destruction of wilderness without addressing the society that is destroying it.” And climate justice movements must include LGBTQ+ folk. Noah Goodwin writes, “LGBTQ people are already on the margins of society and that marginalization doubles when we look at queer youth. In shelters, LGBTQ people often face danger, which pushes  them more to the streets; meanwhile, LGBTQ-specific homeless shelters often don’t receive enough funding to fully support their population. Making a change isn’t optional—it’s a necessity. In order to protect our community from the disastrous effects of climate change, we need to do more.” Goodwin then calls for LGBTQ groups to use their years of experience organizing to turn their attention to climate justice.

Though I don't identify as LGBTQ, nor am I a woman, nor brown, nor black, I long for what Judi Bari longed for—for groups working together to address the multifaceted challenges we face on this planet, challenges that have their roots in a specific destructive society. Acting together.
 
 DJS

Post 52.

"There's a world of pleasure in contrarianism." ~ Wendell Berry

June has been a month of travel for me and my family. Of fuel burned for a conference and a vacation. Of tough, personal choices to do something a slightly harder way. To drive instead of fly. To burn slightly less. Less of that ancient sunlight that has been gifted to our generation by our geologic ancestors. But driving, I still burned fuel. Was that fuel seized from the deep sea? From an offshore drill leaking that poisonous black gold, never-seen, into the Gulf of Mexico? Was it transported through pipelines that both waste the labor of truck drivers (one of the few middle class jobs still available to the less educated) and spilled into the soil of farms? Or was that oil taken from the Canadian tar sands? Did it release 15% more CO2 than other extraction methods? Did it use up more fresh water in being refined? Even while children go hungry and thirsty in my home state? My commonwealth that has earned an "F" for our response to lead in school drinking water. Did I do anything great by driving to Ontario for the philosophy conference, and then to Florida for vacation? No. But I did less harm than if I had taken an airplane.

A big old alligator sits in the everglades eating fish as the near-daily summer rains fall. The fish, and therefore the alligator, need clean water that flows from further north in the state. Where poisonous farming practices endanger the entire everglades ecosystem. When we educate we make choices that, on one hand, sustain the environment and, on the other, increase ecological literacy. My 4-year old son takes his role as a Junior Park Ranger seriously. At the Everglades Shark Valley Visitor Center, he teaches another young child about alligators. And he warns them about the Burmese Python, an invasive species that park workers are attempting to remove. He has been concerned about the challenge since watching The Great Swamp Search on his favorite show. Octonauts. There he learned about invasive species out-competing and preying on native species. On the tram tour, he learns learns more about efforts to remove the pythons. He also learns that the endangered snail kite is evolving longer beaks to eat the invasive apple snails that have displaced the native snails they evolved to eat. Not all invasive species remain bad for the ecosystem. Mother Earth can find a new balance.

In our capitalist system there are no perfect choices for us teaching for ecological literacy. Cultivating eco-literacy, or any education really, can be at odds with refusing to use much oil. To living entirely sustainably. We make imperfect choices. At the conference in Ontario, I talked about making music education into a sustainable and regenerative permaculture. But were the few people who attended my presentation enough? Did I change enough minds to make a difference? To offset the costs of driving? I also published two peer-reviewed articles in June. In Music Educators Journal, Vincent Bates and I published the lead article, providing a "guide" for saving the planet through music education. In TOPICS for Music Education Praxis, I challenge waste, material and metaphorical, in popular music education. This is a contrarian act. It goes against the grain of music education's scholarly discourse. Even if it is a consideration for many music teachers already. But is this work enough?

And then on to Florida for vacation. Our ecological literacy was increased. Especially in our visits to National Parks protected places: Congaree, Everglades, Biscayne, Big Cypress, Timucuan, and even Manassas. But was increased eco-literacy enough to offset our fuel use? Perhaps. I don't think there are easy answers. But music education must be transformed. We must work to transform it, even as the weight of the environmental crises fuels despair. We music teachers and learners need to make choices that are better. That's true for society as a whole. We can start now, perhaps, by being a little contrarian.

DJS

Post 51.

The ecological crises can be overwhelming. Climate change alone can seem insurmountable. And what can I do—one of 7.53 billion Homo sapiens? One idea I’ve heard recently in critical discourse is that climate change is a political, and not a personal, problem that requires political, and not personal, solutions. This type of opinion is usually given by a person who talks about climate change without mentioning other ecological crises (e.g., plastics, e-waste, species collapse, soil loss). This binary way of thinking is mistaken—doing personal work does not in any way preclude or hinder doing political work. Wendell Berry writes:

"If using less energy would be a good idea for the future, that is because it is a good idea. The government could enforce such a saving by rationing fuels, citing the many good reasons, as it did during World War II. If the government should do something so sensible, I would respect it much more than I do. But to wish for good sense from the government only displaces good sense into the future, where it is of no use to anybody and is soon overcome by prophesies of doom. On the contrary, so few as just one of us can save energy right now by self-control, careful thought, and remembering the lost virtue of frugality. Spending less, burning less, traveling less may be a relief."

If Berry is right, it seems obvious that people who are personally polluting might not be the best people to trust on solutions to the challenge. They've put off good sense to an imaginary future, where they can start living well now. Would you trust a mechanic who cannot keep h/is car running?

In my book I suggest both gardening and wilderness for understanding the ecological crises. Gardening involves placing your hands in soil, producing some part of your own food and beauty, and becoming a responsible steward of the place where you live—whether a house on a large lot or a window in an apartment. Gardening is a phenomenal praxis—it is seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched. It is the smallest sphere of our influence—our daily actions. Our habits. Gardening as a metaphor, might involve incorporating solar or wind energy in your house, or choosing to buy a more fuel efficient car, or driving for family vacations more often, and flying less often. Maybe it means walking or riding a bicycle to work. Perhaps we keep a bird feeder, or volunteer at a local park. We talk to our neighbors about what we can do here, now. Just as cultures are diverse, gardening practices are diverse—some people till, others do not; some follow Ruth Stout, or Masanobu Fukuoka; some plant pollinator gardens, and others food gardens. It’s also true that our gardening-as-metaphor choices are various. Some actions are always a good choice, but others are appropriate based on bioregion, or neighborhood, or soil-type. There are different cultural ways to live sustainably and regeneratively. Most of the world's cultures have been ecologically sustainable. Because our gardening praxes are ours, we know them intimately. Gardening, actual and metaphorical, increases our ecological consciousness—our awareness of many diverse ways our ecological place exists.

In contrast, wilderness areas emerge as political ideals and then as policy [Here's a photo I took of Millbrook Marsh, a great example of a local nature area that captures carbon, provides space for non-human animals, and recreation for humans]. When polities—a borough, or state, or nation—set a piece of land aside as wilderness, we necessarily limit our phenomenal experience of that place. Perhaps we limit recreational boats in an area where manatees are negatively impacted, or we protect a stretch of land used by  a migratory cranes. Rather than phenomenal knowledge—and ecological consciousness—wilderness, as actual or metaphorical, depends on scientific knowledge and political effort. We have to be literate of ecological matters to make good political choices—to advocate for the right actions. Many of the solutions to climate change will obviously exacerbate other ecological crises, if we only take a few moments to reflect before acting.

I argue that, in schools and other pedagogical spaces, both are needed—that gardening and wilderness work together for eco-literate pedagogy. We provide phenomenal experiences with nature because these cultivate ecological consciousness. We can draw spiritual sustenance for activism from Mother Earth. We can learn, in a non-scientific way, about the non-human animals we share our place with. We can experience our bioregion. Scientific knowledge is also required if we’re going to conceptualize crises that are harder to experience, such as plastic waste in the oceans, climate change, or deforestation. We can expand our ecological consciousness through artistic and scientific conversations in place. To be ecologically literate means both personal and political action, as we transform unsustainable ways of living, including political and business practices, including dismantling unjust hierarchies in capitalism such as ableism (note the work FDR did to preserve parks and make them accessible), racism, sexism, and classism, and conserve regenerative cultural practices, including diverse farming, storytelling, and musicking.

As a final note, June 11th is a day when environmentalists and anarchists recognize imprisoned activists. You can learn more about people imprisoned at the Crimethinc blog.

DJS

Post 50.

Latours' book, now less than $10 on Kindle, provides an interesting way to think about the ecological situation we find ourselves in. He ends his book with a self-placing. Its important to start with this, since his placement as a European thinker helps me understand how this book may influence eco-literate music pedagogy. In particular, in relation to my project on teaching for eco-literacy, Latour’s theory may provide a useful way to conceive eco-literate music pedagogy for European music educators. “Down to earth” involves 40 short chapters. I’ll begin with some important quotes, including the chapter number; and follow that quote with a personal reflection:
   
2. “There is no planet suited for globalization” And people today find themselves “deprived of land.” This is an important point, and one that Ivan Illich pointed out half a century ago. If globalization is development, as defined for the Global North, attaining it means destruction of the planet. And the actuality of the history we are looking at, means we are more deprived of land than in previous generations, actual places where we have an extended relationship.
           
3. “The new universality consists in feeling that the ground is in the process of giving way.” Climate refugees, and those of us who have, in recent generations, arrived in cities for employment, find ourselves in the same places due to the process of globalization, which uproots. Latour concludes, “But then is no one at home any longer? No, as a matter of fact.” In this statement Latour thinks that it is both impossible to attach onself to “a particular patch of soil” or the “global world.” I agree on the second, but disagree on the first since many people are relocalizing, through backyard gardening, urban farming, permaculture practices, ecofeminist actions, etc.
           
4. “All resistance to globalization will be immediately deemed illegitimate.” And hence, the name Luddite becomes a dirty word, though nobody knows why.
           
5. “The elites have been so thoroughly convinced that there would be no future life for everyone that they have decided to get rid of all the burdens of solidarity as fast as possible—hence deregulation; they have decided that a sort of gilded fortress would have to be built for those (a small percentage) who would be able to make it through—hence the explosion of inequalities; and they have decided that, to conceal the crass selfishness of such a flight out of the shared world, they would have to reject absolutely the threat at the origin of this headlong flight—hence the denial of climate change.” Here Latour identifies the three parts leading up to the bourgeoisie giving up on participating in global survival.
           
6. Journalists (and university professors) decry poor Trump voters and their “alternative reality.” “But this is to forget that this ‘people’ has been coldly betrayed by those who have given up the idea of actually pursuing the modernization of the planet with everyone, because they knew, before everyone else, that such modernization was impossible.” There is no reason to be surprised our outraged that uneducated, poor people voted for Trump in the US, or for Brexit in the UK, or for Doug Ford in Canada. They were already being betrayed.
           
7. Many also decry the poor as unintelligent. “If the key to the current situation cannot be found in a lack of cognitive abilities, it has to be sought in the form of the world to which those very abilities are applied.” “What had to be abandoned in order to modernize was the Local.”
           
8. Climate denial politics. “This movement defines the first government totally oriented toward the ecological question—but backwards, negatively, through rejection!” In the U.S., the Republicans are the only ones admitting climate change in its fullness—but only admitted to reject keeping the planet inhabitable for all.
           
9. “Neither the Global nor the Local has any lasting material existence.” In this I disagree with. I recommend a return to the local. But, I can understand, from the perspective of Europe (where Local is misconstrued as National) with the history of movements such as “blood and soil.” When an American thinks “back to the earth,” we think Jimmy Carter and John Denver; and when Europeans think “back to the earth” they think Hitler. A different terminology, here, is likely needed for American and European conceptions of eco-literate music pedagogy. Hence postmodernism.
           
12. “Ecology is not the name of a party, or even of something to worry about; it is a call for a change of direction: Toward the Terrestrial!” In this Latour conceives of the Terrestrial as Lovelockian—that is the Gaia Hypothesis (which I use to conceive of eco-literate music pedagogy).
           
14. French Zadists: “We are not defending nature, we are nature defending itself.” This is the basic truth of ecology—we are relationships. It is our species being (even Marx recognized this much!)
           
17. “Everything that concerns you resides in the miniscule Critical Zone.” In this critique of globalism, Latour points out that much of the globe isn’t related to humans.
           
20. “If the nation-state has long been the vector of modernization leading away from the old affiliations, it is now nothing more than another name for the Local. It is no longer the name of the inhabitable world.” “Europe knows the fragility of its tenure in global space.” “Smallness is not an option.” And here’s where we disagree. Smallness is not only an option for me, but the best option. I have a certain sphere of influence. It is not in National or Global policy (I know few national or global policymakers), which is out of my agency.
 
DJS