This Changes Everything (84 page)

21
. “The Middle of Nowhere,”
This American Life
, December 5, 2003,
http://www.thisamericanlife .org
; Mitra Mobasherat and Ben Brumfield, “Riot on a Tiny Island Highlights Australia Shutting a Door on Asylum,” CNN, July 20, 2013; Rosamond Dobson Rhone, “Nauru,
the Richest Island in the South Seas,”
National Geographic
40 (1921): 571, 585.

22
. Marcus Stephen, “On Nauru, a Sinking Feeling,”
New York Times
, July 18, 2011.

23
. Francis Bacon,
De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum
,
Works
, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Devon Heath, Vol. 4 (London: Longmans Green, 1870), 296.

24
. William Derham,
Physico-Theology: or, A demonstration
of the Being and Attributes of God, from His Works of Creation
(London: Printed for Robinson and Roberts, 1768), 110.

25
. Barbara Freese,
Coal: A Human History
(New York: Penguin, 2004), 44.

26
. Emphasis in original. Many of the sources in this recounting were originally cited in Andreas Malm, “The Origins of Fossil Capital: From Water to Steam in the British Cotton Industry,”
Historical Materialism
21 (2013): 31.

27
. J. R. McCulloch [unsigned], “Babbage on Machinery and Manufactures,”
Edinburgh Review
56 (January 1833): 313–32; François Arago,
Historical Eloge of James Watt,
trans. James Patrick Muirhead (London: J. Murray, 1839), 150.

28
. C. H. Turner,
Proceedings of the Public Meeting Held at Freemasons’ Hall, on the 18th June, 1824, for Erecting a Monument to the Late James Watt
(London:
J. Murray, 1824), pp. 3–4, as cited in Andreas Malm, “Steam: Nineteenth-Century Mechanization and the Power of Capital,” in
Ecology and Power: Struggles over Land and Material Resources in the Past, Present, and Future
, eds. Alf Hornborg, Brett Clark, and Kenneth Hermele (London: Routledge, 2013), 119.

29
. M. A. Alderson,
An Essay on the Nature and Application of Steam: With an Historical Notice
of the Rise and Progressive Improvement of the Steam-Engine
(London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, 1834), 44.

30
. Asa Briggs,
The Power of Steam: An Illustrated History of the World’s Steam Age
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 72.

31
. Jackson J. Spielvogel,
Western Civilization
:
A Brief History
,
Volume II: Since 1500
, 8th ed. (Boston: Wadsworth, 2014), 445.

32
. Herman E. Daly and
Joshua Farley,
Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications
(Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2011), 10.

33
. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, “What’s in a Name? Rivalries and the Birth of Modern Science,” in
Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society
, ed. Bill Bryson (London: Royal Society, 2010), 120.

34
. Ralph Waldo Emerson,
The Conduct of Life
(New
York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1903), 70.

35
. Clive Hamilton, “The Ethical Foundations of Climate Engineering,” in
Climate Change Geoengineering: Philosophical Perspectives, Legal Issues, and Governance Frameworks
, ed. Wil C. G. Burns and Andrew L. Strauss (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 58.

36
. Esperanza Martínez, “The Yasuní—ITT Initiative from a Political Economy and Political Ecology
Perspective,” in Leah Temper et al., “Towards a Post-Oil Civilization: Yasunization and Other Initiatives to Leave Fossil Fuels in the Soil,” EJOLT Report No. 6, May 2013, p. 12.

37
. Jean-Paul Sartre,
Critique of Dialectical Reason
, trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith (London: Verso, 2004), 154; Tim Flannery,
Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet
(New York: Grove), 185.

38
. Karl Marx,
Capital
, Vol. 3, as cited in John Bellamy Foster,
Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), 155.

39
. “Yearly Emissions: 1987,” CAIT database, World Resources Institute,
http://cait.wri.org
; Nicholas Stern,
The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [2006] 2007), 231; Judith Shapiro,
Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics
and the Environment in Revolutionary China
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Mara Hvistendahl, “China’s Three Gorges Dam: An Environmental Catastrophe?”
Scientific American
, March 25, 2008; Will Kennedy and Stephen Bierman, “Free Khodorkovsky to Find Oil Industry Back in State Control,” Bloomberg, December 20, 2013; Tom Metcalf, “Russian Richest Lost $13 Billion as Global Stocks Fell,”
Bloomberg, March 4, 2014.

40
. ROUGHLY 81 PERCENT: “Stockholm Action Plan for Climate and Energy, 2012–2015: With an Outlook to 2030,” Stockholm Environment and Health Administration, p. 12; MAJORITY STATE-OWNED: “Annual Report on Form 20-F,” Statoil, 2013, p. 117,
http://www.statoil.com
; TAR SANDS: “Oil Sands,” Statoil,
http://www.statoil.com
; ARCTIC: “Large-Scale Arctic Oil and Gas Drilling
Decades Away,” Reuters, November 29, 2013; “Statoil Stepping Up in the Arctic,” Statoil, press release, August 28, 2012; IRAQ: “Iraq,” Our Operations, Annual Report 2011, Statoil,
http://www.statoil.com
; Stephen A. Carney, “Allied Participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom,” Center of Military History, United States Army, 2011,
http://www.history.army.mil
.

41
. Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada
(IPEA) data,
http://www.ipeadata.gov.br
; Mark Weisbrot and Jake Johnston, “Venezuela’s Economic Recovery: Is It Sustainable?” Center for Economic and Policy Research, September 2012, p. 26; “Ecuador Overview,” Ecuador, World Bank,
http://www.worldbank.org
; “Population Below National Poverty Line, Urban, Percentage,” Millienium Development Goals Database, U.N. Data,
http://data.un.org
.

42
. “Bolivia:
Staff Report for the 2013 Article IV Consultation,” International Monetary Fund, February 2014, p. 6.

43
. Luis Hernández Navarro, “Bolivia Has Transformed Itself by Ignoring the Washington Consensus,”
Guardian,
March 21, 2012.

44
. ECUADOR: Nick Miroff, “In Ecuador, Oil Boom Creates Tensions,”
Washington Post
, February 16, 2014; BOLIVIA AND VENEZUELA: Dan Luhnow and José de Córdoba, “Bolivia
Seizes Natural-Gas Fields in a Show of Energy Nationalism,”
Wall Street Journal
, May 2, 2006; ARGENTINA: “Argentine Province Suspends Open-Pit Gold Mining Project Following Protests,” MercoPress, January 31, 2012; “GREEN DESERTS”: “The Green Desert,”
The Economist
, August 6, 2004; BRAZIL: “The Rights and Wrongs of Belo Monte,”
The Economist
, May 4, 2013; RAW RESOURCES: Exports of Primary Products
as Percentage of Total Exports, “Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean,” Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, United Nations, 2012, p. 101; CHINA: Joshua Schneyer and Nicolás Medina Mora Pérez, “Special Report: How China Took Control of an OPEC Country’s Oil,” Reuters, November 26, 2013.

45
. Eduardo Gudynas, “Buen Vivir: Today’s Tomorrow,”
Development
54
(2011): 442–43; Martínez in
Temper et al., “Towards a Post-Oil Civilization,” p.17; Eduardo Gudynas, “The New Extractivism of the 21st Century: Ten Urgent Theses About Extractivism in Relation to Current South American Progressivism,” Americas Program Report, Washington, D.C.: Center for International Policy, January 21, 2010.

46
. Personal interview with Alexis Tsipras, May 23, 2013.

47
. Patricia
Molina, “The ‘Amazon Without Oil’ Campaign: Oil Activity in Mosetén Territory,” in Temper et al., “Towards a Post-Oil Civilization,” p. 75.

48
. William T. Hornaday,
Wild Life Conservation in Theory and Practice
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914), v–vi.

49
. “Who Was John Muir?” Sierra Club,
http://www.sierraclub.org
; John Muir,
The Yosemite
(New York: Century, 1912), 261–62.

50
. Bradford
Torrey, ed.,
The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, September 16, 1851–April 30, 1852
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1906), 165; Aldo Leopold,
A Sand County Almanac
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949), 171; FOOTNOTE: Henry David Thoreau,
Walden
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1910), 393–94.

51
. Leopold,
A Sand Counrty Almanac
, 171; Jay N. Darling to Aldo Leopold, November 20, 1935, Aldo
Leopold Archives, University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.

52
. Rachel Carson,
Silent Spring
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 57, 68, 297.

53
. 
Ibid.
, 297.

54
. Christian Parenti, “ ‘The Limits to Growth’: A Book That Launched a Movement,”
The Nation
, December 5, 2012.

PART II: MAGICAL THINKING

1
. William Barnes and Nils Gilman, “Green Social Democracy or Barbarism: Climate Change and
the End of High Modernism,” in
The Deepening Crisis: Governance Challenges After Neoliberalism
, ed. Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 50.

2
. Christine MacDonald,
Green, Inc.
:
An Environmental Insider Reveals How a Good Cause Has Gone Bad
(Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2008), 236.

CHAPTER 6: FRUITS, NOT ROOTS

1
. Barry Commoner, “A Reporter at Large:
The Environment,”
New Yorker
, June 15, 1987.

2
. Eric Pooley,
The Climate War
(New York: Hyperion, 2010), 351–52.

3
. Valgene W. Lehmann, “Attwater’s Prairie Chicken—Its Life History and Management,”
North American Fauna
57, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of the Interior, 1941, pp. 6–7; “Attwater’s Prairie-Chicken Recovery Plan,” Second Revision, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2010,
p. 5.

4
. “Texas Milestones,” The Nature Conservancy,
http://www.nature.org
.

5
. Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, “How a Bid to Save a Species Came to Grief,”
Washington Post
, May 5, 2003; “Texas City Prairie Preserve,” Nature Conservancy,
http://www.nature.org
, version saved by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine on February 8, 2013,
http://web.archive.org
.

6
. Richard C. Haut et al., “Living
in Harmony—Gas Production and the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken,” prepared for presentation at the Society of Petroleum Engineers Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, Florence, Italy, September 19–22, 2010, pp. 5, 10; Oil and Gas Lease, Nature Conservancy of Texas, Inc. to Galveston Bay Resources, Inc., March 11, 1999, South 1,057 Acres; Stephens and Ottaway, “How a Bid to Save a Species Came
to Grief”; personal interview with Aaron Tjelmeland, April 15, 2013.

7
. Janet Wilson, “Wildlife Shares Nest with Profit,”
Los Angeles Times
, August 20, 2002; Stephens and Ottaway, “How a Bid to Save a Species Came to Grief.”

8
. 
Ibid.

9
. 
Ibid.

10
. 
Ibid.

11
. “Nature Conservancy Changes,”
Living on Earth
, Public Radio International, June 20, 2003.

12
. Personal email communications with Vanessa
Martin, associate director of marketing and communications, Texas chapter, The Nature Conservancy, May 16 and 21 and June 24, 2013.

13
. Outside of the original 1999 well and its replacement well drilled on the same pad in 2007, an additional two wells were drilled under Nature Conservancy leases, both in 2001: a gas well that was plugged and abandoned in 2004, and another well that turned out
to be a dry hole. Haut et al., “Living in Harmony,” p. 5; personal email communications with Vanessa Martin, April 24 and May 16, 2013.

14
. Oil and Gas Lease, Nature Conservancy of Texas, Inc. to Galveston Bay Resources, Inc., pp. 3–5; Martin email communications, May 21 and June 24, 2013; “Attwater’s Prairie Chicken Background,” The Nature Conservancy, provided on April 24, 2013, p. 3; personal
interview with James Petterson, July 31, 2014.

15
. NOVEMBER 2012: Personal email communication with Mike Morrow, wildlife biologist, Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, April 17, 2013; “NONE THAT WE KNOW ABOUT”: Tjelmeland interview, April 15, 2013; “BIGGEST” AND THIRTY-FIVE COUNTRIES: D.T. Max, “Green is Good,”
The New Yorker
, May 12, 2014; MEMBERS: “About Us: Learn More About
the Nature Conservancy,” Nature Conservancy,
http://www.nature.org
; ASSETS: “Consolidated Financial Statements,” Nature Conservancy, June 30, 2013, p. 3; MILLIONS: Stephens and Ottaway, “How a Bid to Save a Species Came to Grief”; WEBSITE: “Texas City Prairie Preserve,” Nature Conservancy,
http://www.nature.org
.

16
. DONATIONS FROM SHELL AND BP TO CF, CI, AND TNC, AND FROM AEP TO CF: Christine
MacDonald,
Green, Inc.
:
An Environmental Insider Reveals How a Good Cause Has Gone Bad
(Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2008), 25; SUPPORT FROM AEP TO TNC:
Ibid.
, 139; WWF AND SHELL: Alexis Schwarzenbach,
Saving the World’s Wildlife: WWF—The First 50 Years
(London: Profile, 2011), 145–48, 271; “The Gamba Complex—Our Solutions,” World Wildlife Fund Global,
http://wwf.panda.org
; WRI AND SHELL FOUNDATION:
“WRI’s Strategic Relationships,” World Resources Institute,
http://www.wri.org
; CI PARTNERHSIPS: “Corporate Partners,” Conservation International,
http://www.conservation.org
; $2 MILLION: Joe Stephens, “Nature Conservancy Faces Potential Backlash from Ties with BP,”
Washington Post
, May 24, 2010; FOOTNOTE: “Undercover with Conservation International” (video), Don’t Panic, May 8, 2011; Tom Zeller
Jr., “Conservation International Duped by Militant Greenwash Pitch,” Huffington Post, May 17, 2011; Peter Seligmann, “Partnerships for the Planet: Why We Must Engage Corporations,” Huffington Post, May 19, 2011.