College of Arts and Sciences
April 22nd, 2021, Virtual Meeting
On the afternoon of April 22nd I attended “Pale Blue Dot”: History of Our Environment presentation organized by the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio State to commemorate Earth Day. The presentation included a panel of Kip Curtis, Jennifer Eaglin, and Bart Elmore moderated by Nicholas Breyfogle, all professors and researchers within the Department of History. The questions asked by Professor Breyfogle were largely centered around the history of Earth Day itself, how environmental movements form, and how to continue fighting for environmental justice beyond Earth Day in 2021.
Initially, the focus of the conversation lied among domestic dynamics and environmental policy. Professor Elmore recapped legislative progress made in the United States in the ’70s and ’80s to address harmful chemicals, clean air, and other environmental problems that were being discovered and addressed as the science needed to detect them was just being developed. After domestic-focused conversation, Professor Eaglin jumped in to lend her expertise in an international context. Parallel to the developments made in the ’70s in the US, she brought up the planned transformation from fossil fuels to ethanol gas that took place in Brazil after the oil shocks. I had learned about the sociopolitical history of Brazil in the 1970s, but I had never heard about this planned transformation to ethanol, something that has deepened my understanding of environmental history within an international context. In less than ten years, 40% of all fuel for cars in Brazil was ethanol, a fact mentioned to demonstrate how massive the scale was that the transformation took place on.
The rapid transformation engaged all other speakers to speak on the challenge of teaching environmental history and science, topics that often lend themselves to fatalistic thinking when looking at unsustainable rates of fossil fuel consumption, and consumption in general. At this point, Professor Elmore introduced “scavenger capitalism” to describe the influence of fossil fuels on all products of consumption in our daily lives. However, the mood wasn’t down for long, as each presenter soon affirmed the importance of justice in all realms of society as the foundation for any movement for environmental justice. Whether it be the environmentalists rappelling down the Hetch Hetchy, those like Greta Thunburg, or the immeasurable networks of activists fighting for racial justice, the presenters stressed that the only way to secure environmental justice is to organize into political action, both at the community and federal levels. In all of these cases, cross-generational activism is the home for hope for not only the environmentalists on the panel, but for those fighting for justice across the Earth. To end the conversation, Professor Elmore addressed an affirmation to all of the attendees by saying, “you’re a pebble. You might not feel like you’re doing anything, but you are”.