Pandoras Promise Oz Tour Oct2

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Pandoras Promise Oz Tour Oct2 The aTomic bomb and melTdowns like Fukushima have made nuclear power synonymous wiTh global disasTer. buT whaT iF we’ve goT nuclear power wrong? Pandora’s Promise premiered at the Sundance Film ABOUT THE DIRECTOR – Multi-award-winning, Oscar- Festival in January 2013 where it received critical nominated and Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker, and popular acclaim. The film asks whether the one Robert Stone (Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, 2004; technology we fear most could save our planet from a Oswald’s Ghost, 2007; Earth Days, 2009), has over the climate catastrophe, while providing the energy needed last 25 years, developed a steady international reputation to lift billions of people in the developing world out of with a range of unique and critically acclaimed feature- poverty. In his controversial new film, Academy-Award® documentaries about American history, pop-culture, the nominated director, Robert Stone, tells the intensely mass media and the environment. Owen Gleiberman personal stories of environmentalists and energy experts (Entertainment Weekly) has called Stone ‘the most under- who have undergone a radical conversion from being celebrated great documentary filmmaker in America,’ fiercely anti to strongly pro-nuclear energy, risking their having directed ‘two of the most explosively insightful careers and reputations in the process. documentaries of the last decade.’ Stone exposes this controversy within the environmental movement head-on with stories of defection by heavy TOUR DATES weights including Stewart Brand, Richard Rhodes, Robert Stone will be attending Q&A sessions at the following Gwyneth Cravens, Mark Lynas and Michael Shellenberger. Australian screenings: Undaunted and fearlessly independent, Pandora’s MElBOURnE: October 8th Classic Cinema, Elsternwick Promise is a landmark work that is forever changing the ADElAIDE: October 9th Mercury Cinema, Morphett St conversation about the myths and science behind this deeply emotional and polarising issue. Perth: October 10th Luna Palace Cinemas, Nedlands Hobart: October 10th State Cinema, Elizabeth St * CAnBERRA: October 11th The Arc Cinema, McCoy Circuit SyDnEy: October 12th & 13th Hoyts, Moore Park BRISBAnE: October 14th Bemac Cinema, Kangaroo Point * Robert Stone will not be attending Hobart screening.
Recommended publications
  • Mark Lynas's Lecture to Oxford Farming Conference, January 3, 2013
    Mark Lynas’s Lecture to Oxford Farming Conference, January 3, 2013 Reprinted from: (with video) http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/lecture‐to‐oxford‐farming‐conference‐3‐january‐2013/ I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti‐GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment. As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter‐productive path. I now regret it completely. So I guess you’ll be wondering – what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist. When I first heard about Monsanto’s GM soya I knew exactly what I thought. Here was a big American corporation with a nasty track record, putting something new and experimental into our food without telling us. Mixing genes between species seemed to be about as unnatural as you can get – here was humankind acquiring too much technological power; something was bound to go horribly wrong. These genes would spread like some kind of living pollution. It was the stuff of nightmares. These fears spread like wildfire, and within a few years GM was essentially banned in Europe, and our worries were exported by NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to Africa, India and the rest of Asia, where GM is still banned today.
    [Show full text]
  • "An Ecomodernist Manifesto." (PDF)
    MOD ERNI ST MOD ERNI ST BY JOHN ASAFU-ADJAYE CHRISTOPHER FOREMAN RACHEL PRITZKER LINUS BLOMQVIST DAVID KEITH JOYASHREE ROY STEWART BRAND MARTIN LEWIS MARK SAGOFF BARRY BROOK MARK LYNAS MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER RUTH DEFRIES TED NORDHAUS ROBERT STONE ERLE ELLIS ROGER PIELKE, JR PETER TEAGUE APRIL 2015 • WWW.ECOMODERNISM.ORG AUTHORS JOHN ASAFU-ADJAYE is an BARRY BROOK, an ecologist associate professor of economics at the and modeller, is professor of environ - University of Queensland in Brisbane, mental sustainability at the University Australia. His research interests are of Tasmania. He has published three in the areas of natural resource and books, over 250 refereed papers, and environmental economics, specifically in is a highly cited researcher. His work fo - energy and climate change economics. cuses on environmental change and synergies of human interactions with the biosphere. He is a BreakthroughSenior Fellow (2012). LINUS BLOMQVIST is Director of Conservation at the Breakthrough In - RUTH DEFRIE S is Denning Family stitute and a member of the Breakthrough Professor of Sustainable Development Advisory Board. His current research fo - at Columbia University. Her research cuses on how technological progress is examines human transformation of the decoupling humanity’s environmental landscape and its consequences for footprint from economic growth, and the implications of climate , biodiversity, and ecosystem this process for conservation theory and practice. services . Her most recent book is The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis . STEWART BRAN D is cofounder ERLE ELLIS is an environmental of Revive & Restore, The Long Now scientist at the University of Maryland, Foundation, The WELL, Global Business Baltimore County, and a leading theorist Network, and founder/editor of the Whole of what scientists now describe as Earth Catalog .
    [Show full text]
  • Destabilizing Environmentalism: Epiphanal Change and the Emergence of Pro-Nuclear Environmentalism
    Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning ISSN: 1523-908X (Print) 1522-7200 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjoe20 Destabilizing Environmentalism: Epiphanal Change and the Emergence of Pro-Nuclear Environmentalism Caroline McCalman & Steve Connelly To cite this article: Caroline McCalman & Steve Connelly (2015): Destabilizing Environmentalism: Epiphanal Change and the Emergence of Pro-Nuclear Environmentalism, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, DOI: 10.1080/1523908X.2015.1119675 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2015.1119675 © 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. Published online: 22 Dec 2015. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 472 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cjoe20 Download by: [Royal Hallamshire Hospital] Date: 05 August 2016, At: 01:38 Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2015.1119675 Destabilizing Environmentalism: Epiphanal Change and the Emergence of Pro-Nuclear Environmentalism Caroline McCalman & Steve Connelly Department of Urban Studies and Planning, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK ABSTRACT George Monbiot, the prominent British radical journalist and environmen- talist, shocked his readers and contemporaries by responding to the nuclear power station accident at Fukushima in March 2011 by becoming actively supportive of nuclear energy. In this paper we present a discourse analysis of Monbiot’s published articles which document this epiphanal transformation in his identity from orthodox to pro-nuclear environmentalist. Using a narrative theoretical approach which draws on Charles Taylor’s conceptualization of identity as arising from the telling of (moral) stories, we show how an individual can actively draw on the complexity of existing dis- courses in a given field to create new discourses and so recreate their own, and potentially others’, identities.
    [Show full text]
  • Environmentally Themed Books for Adults*
    Environmentally Themed Books for Adults* *The City of Roanoke does not endorse any books on this list; they are provided merely as a starting point for your own investigation. Collected from various sources, 2015. NON-FICTION Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World - Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It by Ken Alibek The Bleeding of the Stone by Ibrahim al-Koni Enviro-Capitalists: Doing Good While Doing Well by Terry Lee Anderson and Donald R. Leal Free Market Environmentalism by Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal Babylon's Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo by Lawrence Anthony and Graham Spence Earth from the Air by Yann Arthus-Bertrand Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb by Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability by Erik Assadourian et al Wild Solutions: How Biodiversity is Money in the Bank by Andrew Beattie and Paul R. Ehrlich Environmental Principles and Policies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction by Sharon Beder Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism by Sharon Beder Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems by Michael Begon et al The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber Fundamentals of Stack Gas Dispersion (4th edition) by Milton R. Beychok Aqueous Wastes from Petroleum and Petrochemical Plants by Milton R. Beychok Putting Biodiversity on the Map: Priority Areas for Global Conservation
    [Show full text]
  • The Politics of Climate Change
    THE POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE GOV 94YM – SPRING 2018 – MONDAY, 2-4, CGIS-KNAFEL K107 YASCHA MOUNK Description: Most scientists believe that we need to take immediate action to mitigate the effects of climate change. But politicians at both the national and the international level have, so far, done little to curb carbon emissions. In this seminar, we draw on a broad array of readings to understand the empirical and normative challenges posed by global warming. Why have political actors found it so difficult to agree on an effective response to climate change? And what would a just response to global warming look like? After gaining a brief overview over the science of global warming in the first part of the course, we look at the findings of the growing literature of empirical political science in the second part. In particular, we study three of the challenges—relating to public opinion, international cooperation, and economics—that make a more muscular response so difficult. To this end, we read empirical work employing a host of different methodologies, and consider the respective roadblocks posed by political psychology and the dynamics of public opinion; game theory and the need for international cooperation; and economic disagreements about the appropriate timing and extent of climate interventions. In the second part of the course, we look at the ethics of climate change to investigate the normative questions raised by global warming. Every possible political option for tackling climate change—or failing to tackle climate change—distributes risks and burdens in a distinctive manner. This raises a host of questions about distributive justice.
    [Show full text]
  • Nuclear Heresy: Environmentalism As Implicit Religion By
    Nuclear heresy: environmentalism as implicit religion By: Caroline McCalman A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sheffield Faculty of Social Sciences Department of Urban Studies and Planning November 2018 Nuclear heresy: environmentalism as implicit religion By: Caroline McCalman A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sheffield Faculty of Social Sciences Department of Urban Studies and Planning November 2018 Abstract | Nuclear heresy: environmentalism as implicit religion This thesis is a discourse study of environmentalism in the UK. The research indicates how reframing environmental issues using religious concepts and language can deepen our understanding of people’s relationship to the environment and environmentalism. The thesis suggests that this process of reframing may be important for the social sciences, by illuminating new ways to engage with and understand the controversies and debates at hand. The data supporting this reframing analysis was obtained through in- depth, semi-structured one-on-one interviews with individuals identified as being ‘environmentally concerned’ and was analysed first thematically, and then using the researcher’s ‘discourse toolkit’. Nuclear power is treated as an emblematic issue to provide a concrete focus for a topic prone to abstraction; viewing environmentalism as a form of religion encouraged interdisciplinary working. By developing ideas from Bailey’s implicit religion (Bailey, 1997) I provide a language for environmentalism-as-religion, wherein pro-nuclear heretics challenge an anti-nuclear orthodoxy. Linking environmental discourses to enduring cosmologies shows that ‘superficial’ conflict over climate change mitigation is acrimonious precisely because it deals with manifestations of deeper convictions on the human-nature relationship.
    [Show full text]
  • Jan Horst Keppler, NEA, "The Contribution of Nuclear Energy To
    Nuclear Energy: Combating Climate Change Prof. Dr. Jan Horst Keppler and Dr. Henri Paillere OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) Nuclear Development Division (NDD) “Why the Climate Needs Nuclear Energy”, NEA/IAEA Side-event at COP21, 10-11 December 2015 Energy-related CO2 emissions since 1985 • Energy use is responsible for about 70% of total, global GHG emissions. • Carbon-dioxide (CO2) constitutes 90% of total energy-related emissions, two thirds of total emissions. Nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (NH4) make up remaining 10%. • In energy sector, CO2 is exclusively generated by fossil fuel (coal, oil, gas) combustion. Source: IEA • Coal contributes 44% of energy-related CO2 emissions (29% of energy demand), oil 35% (31%) and gas 20%. (21%). “Why the Climate Needs Nuclear Energy”, NEA/IAEA Side-event at COP21, 10-11 December 2015 2 The Electricity Mix 2013 Electricity produces 40% of CO2 emissions, 30% of total emissions and rising share. • Coal produced 41% of electricity globally, 33% in OECD and 49% in non-OECD countries. Of ca . 4 000 coal plants in the world, only one is equipped with CCS. • Gas 22% (26% and 19% • Hydro 16% (13% and 19%) • Renewables (wind, solar PV, biomass, geothermal and marine) 6% (8% and 3%) • Nuclear energy 11% (18% and 4%). 25000 Other REN 20000 Solar PV Wind 15000 Biomass Hydro 10000 Nuclear Gas 5000 Oil Coal 0 World OECD non-OECD “Why the Climate Needs Nuclear Energy”, NEA/IAEA Side-event at COP21, 10-11 December 2015 3 Carbon Content of Electricity Produced by Different Sources Source: UNFCCC “Why the Climate Needs Nuclear Energy”, NEA/IAEA Side-event at COP21, 10-11 December 2015 4 Nuclear’s Expected Potential… • IEA’s Energy Technology Perspectives 2015 expect current nuclear capacity of 376 GW to more than double by 2050 to reach 18% of global electricity supply (see below).
    [Show full text]
  • European Journal of American Studies, 14-2 | 2019 US Conservative and Libertarian Experts and Solar Geoengineering: an Assessment 2
    European journal of American studies 14-2 | 2019 Summer 2019 US Conservative and Libertarian Experts and Solar Geoengineering: An Assessment Jean-Daniel Collomb Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/14717 DOI: 10.4000/ejas.14717 ISSN: 1991-9336 Publisher European Association for American Studies Electronic reference Jean-Daniel Collomb, “US Conservative and Libertarian Experts and Solar Geoengineering: An Assessment”, European journal of American studies [Online], 14-2 | 2019, Online since 06 July 2019, connection on 08 July 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/14717 ; DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.4000/ejas.14717 This text was automatically generated on 8 July 2021. Creative Commons License US Conservative and Libertarian Experts and Solar Geoengineering: An Assessment 1 US Conservative and Libertarian Experts and Solar Geoengineering: An Assessment Jean-Daniel Collomb 1 As the international community and the United States have been struggling with how to address human-made climate change, some voices have started calling for conscious efforts to engineer the earth’s climate in order to limit the amount of damage humankind will incur in the 21st century and beyond. Consider, for instance, former Exxon Mobil CEO and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s remark to the effect that climate change is “an engineering problem and it has engineering solutions.”1 2 According to J.G. Shepherd, “geoengineering is deliberate intervention in the climate system to counteract man-made global warming.”2 He goes on to reference
    [Show full text]
  • The Theodicy of the Good Anthropocene
    Environmental Humanities, vol. 7, 2015, pp. 233-238 www.environmentalhumanities.org ISSN: 2201-1919 COMMENTARY The Theodicy of the “Good Anthropocene” Clive Hamilton Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University, Australia To the dismay of those who first proposed it, the Anthropocene is being reframed as an event to be celebrated rather than lamented and feared.1 Instead of final proof of the damage done by techno-industrial hubris, the ‘ecomodernists’ welcome the new epoch as a sign of man’s ability to transform and control nature. They see it as evidence neither of global capitalism’s essential fault nor of humankind’s shortsightedness and rapacity; instead, it arrives as an opportunity for humans finally to come into their own. A few years ago Erle Ellis began to speak of the ‘good Anthropocene,’ an unlikely juxtaposition now amplified into the idea of the ‘great Anthropocene’ and set out in An Ecomodernist Manifesto.2 There are no planetary boundaries that limit continued growth in human populations and economic advance, they argue. ‘Human systems’ can adapt and indeed prosper in a warmer world because history proves our flexibility. In this view, as we enter the Anthropocene we should not fear transgressing natural limits; the only barrier to a grand new era for humanity is self-doubt. Ellis urges us to see the Anthropocene not as a crisis but as “the beginning of a new geological epoch ripe with human-directed opportunity.”3 Romantic critics of technology (and the gloomy scientists they draw on) stand in the way of the vision’s realization.
    [Show full text]
  • The Walking Dead: the Anthropocene As a Ruined Earth
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Essex Research Repository The Walking Dead: the Anthropocene as a ruined Earth Dr Nicholas Beuret (corresponding author) Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University Email: [email protected] Phone: 07742947921 Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University Lancaster, UK, LA1 4YQ Dr Gareth Brown School of Business, University of Leicester Email: [email protected] Phone: 07910 887 324 School of Business, Ken Edwards Building, University of Leicester University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH UK Abstract Much has been made of the claim that humanity has ascended to the status of a terrestrial force and inaugurated a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. While attention has been paid to the contestable nature of the epoch and its disputed histories, insufficient attention has been paid to the significance of the Anthropocene for political praXis. Contrary to much Anthropocenic discourse that articulates a renewed sense of mastery over nature through assertions of humanity’s complete subsumption of the environment, recent work in both science and technology studies and human geography suggests an alternate reading of the Anthropocene as an epoch without mastery, one where humanity eXists in a permanent state of vulnerability. The political significance of this state of vulnerability is eXplored through a reading of popular TV show The Walking Dead, a post-collapse narrative of a world in ruins and overrun by zombies. On a ruined earth, political praXis is orientated not towards a return of the earth to its previous productive state, but rather as an unending labour of survival and salvage.
    [Show full text]
  • The Anthropocene: an Engineered Age?
    The Anthropocene: An engineered age? A lecture to the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 28 October 2014 Clive Hamilton Today I’d like to provide an overview of a new way of understanding the Earth and the profound predicament now faced by humankind. I plan to take a panoramic view rather than to go into depth. A new geological epoch For many years ecologists have been warning that humans have been disturbing ecosystems far and wide. But now scientists are saying something new, that human activity has disrupted the Earth system as a whole. We are disturbing the natural processes that govern the Earth’s evolution—the distribution of carbon around the Earth, the acidity of the oceans, the nitrogen cycle, the global water cycle and so on, the great natural cycles and processes that constitute the Earth as an entity in an unceasing state of flux. So profound has been the influence of humans that Earth system scientists are now proposing that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans, defined by the fact that the “human imprint on the global environment has now become so large and active that it rivals some of the great forces of Nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth system”.1 1 Will Steffen, Jacques Grinevald, Paul Crutzen and John McNeil, ‘The Anthropocene: Conceptual and historical perspectives’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (2011), pp. 842–67 1 I cannot stress too strongly that we are not simply describing the further spread of human impact on Earth but a shift in its nature.
    [Show full text]
  • Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition Instructor Course
    Globalst 702 “Topics in Globalization Studies 2: The Global Politics of Sustainability and Justice” Instructor: Peter Dauvergne Location: Kenneth Taylor Hall (KTH-732) Monday 2 May to Friday 13 May, 2016: 1–4pm daily Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition Instructor Peter Dauvergne is a Professor of International Relations at the University of British Columbia. His research interests include the environmental politics of social movements, corporations, and consumption (see Academia.edu or ResearchGate). Recent books include The Shadows of Consumption (MIT Press, 2008, winner of the Gerald L. Young Book Award in Human Ecology), Paths to a Green World, 2nd ed. (coauthored with Jennifer Clapp, MIT Press, 2011), Timber (coauthored with Jane Lister, Polity Press, 2011), Eco-Business (coauthored with Jane Lister, MIT Press, 2013), and Protest Inc. (coauthored with Genevieve LeBaron, Polity Press, 2014). He is the founding and past editor of the journal Global Environmental Politics. His latest book is Environmentalism of the Rich, forthcoming with MIT Press in 2016. Email: [email protected] |Twitter: @PeterDauvergne Office hours: 4pm each day, except Fridays Assessment: Essay (50%); Participation/Presentations (30%); TASK Preparations (20%) Course Readings: The readings are available by clicking the article titles below, or for those without a hyperlink from your university library or the course instructor. Note that the first class (Monday, May 2, 2016) requires reading in advance. Course Description The Global Politics of Sustainability and Justice examines the politics of global environmental change, striving for critical thought that integrates both rigorous analysis and ethical reflection. The focus is on the consequences of discourses, institutions, and power struggles for global ecological change, taking an interdisciplinary approach that does not assume a background in international relations.
    [Show full text]