The Grapes of Wrath
We will be using John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath to structure our exploration of the environment. If you've read the book before, re-read it not as a work of literature but as a documentary of people who are reacting to economic and ecological forces (here are extensive resources on the Dust Bowl), and then try to imagine what the current version of the novel would be: a family in Guatemala who can't make a living raising corn, or one in Africa fleeing a civil war brought on by competition for land or water?
In the spirit of College 8, we encourage you to buy a used copy of the book (even one that's marked up is fine, as long as there's room for you to add your comments). Any edition will do, though the most common version is the one we'll use, a paperback published by Penguin (it's 455 pages, so try to find a copy that has about that to make it easy to follow along in class). Most towns have a used bookstore, and you can get used books online as well. If you want a new copy, you might try an independent rather than a corporate chain bookstore.
The study of the environment is important for its own sake (or rather, for ours, since our lives and all life depend on it), but it's also useful for learning how to think about systems (biology, economics) and especially how these interact on one another. Thus we want to use the novel as a way into these environmental issues and their interrelationships. Here are some Study questions.
Contents
Issues:
See also Literature, Art and the Environment
Literature: beauty is important in fiction and poetry, but it was also an important impetus to earlier waves of environmental movement. John Muir and others thought the beauty of nature could recharge the spiritual batteries of poor people who lived in crowded and poor conditions in the cities. But literature also spurred social movements: Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Jungle, Silent Spring (the last non-fiction, but used literary techniques).
Even though Grapes of Wrath is fiction, it was based closely on and was a critique of real events. You can find out more on how the book was received in its historical context by looking at Paul Wartzman's new book Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of The Grapes of Wrath Ch. 1 Ch. 3 on Steinbeck's reaction. Google books link. Video Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s the Grapes of Wrath.
Wartzman has a brief section on Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, a Socialist who ran for governor as a Democrat. He was defeated by an early and innovative propaganda and dirty tricks campaign by the newspaper (Hearst) and movie industry (MGM) among others.
Steinbeck (short biography) brief video biowas trained as a biologist, as you can tell by his careful detailed descriptions of plants and people)see his journals. His advice when his son Thom fell in love with Susan. Dorothea Lange also documented the lives of "Okie" Dust Bowl refugees, and also sought to affect political policy.
Rain: A Dust Bowl Story is a blog of several hundred poems by Shelley Shaver that chronicle what life was like. He welcomes your comments or questions. Of particular interest to us: 8. "Evening, December 15, 1933"--shows economic pressures on the family. 10. "Spring 1934: Bird's Eye View"--historical overview of the Dust Bowl area. 14. "Play Time"--the effects on children of the parents' problems. 15. "Storm: February 15, 1934"--description of the first severe storm. 16. "Schoolyard: Revelation"--interaction between the boy James and his deaf friend Barker. 127. "Piecing" and 128."Afterward: The Quilting"--the art of creating quilts. 261, 262, 263--the onslaught of Black Sunday. 305, 306, 307, 310--Encouraged by the County Agent, the farmer debates whether to change farming methods.
Nobel Prize speech video.
Steinbeck Resources
Steinbeck Center at San Jose State has a Biography and other resources.
National Steinbeck Center is in Salinas, his hometown. (bio)
Even though Grapes of Wrath is fiction, it was based closely on and was a critique of real events. You can find out more on how the book was received in its historical context by looking at Paul Wartzman's new book Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of The Grapes of Wrath Ch. 1 Ch. 3 on Steinbeck's reaction. Google books link
How Steinbeck Used the Diary as a Tool of Discipline, a Hedge Against Self-Doubt, and a Pacemaker for the Heartbeat of Creative Work alt link. Steinbeck on love, creative spirit and the meaning of life, the art of changing one’s mind (Sabra), and his six tips on writing.
Wartzman has a brief section on Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, a Socialist who ran for governor as a Democrat. He was defeated by an early and innovative propaganda and dirty tricks campaign by the newspaper (Hearst) and movie industry (MGM) among others.
Steinbeck (short biography) (brief video bio) was trained as a biologist, as you can tell by his careful detailed descriptions of plants and people)see his journals. His advice when his son Thom fell in love with Susan. Dorothea Lange also documented the lives of "Okie" Dust Bowl refugees, and also sought to affect political policy.
Plenary: "Why The Grapes of Wrath matters today" Susan Shillinglaw, English, San Jose State and Center for Steinbeck Studies (video tour), author of Journey into Steinbeck's California. (video interview);Springsteen's "Ghost of Tom Joad". On Reading the Grapes of Wrath 2014 book.
Greta Manville's online searchable bibliography of secondary literature on John Steinbeck
Katie Rodger published Renaissance Man of Cannery Row: The Life and Letters of Edward F. Ricketts (2002) and Breaking Through: Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts (2006).
The Forgotten Dust Bowl Novel That Rivaled "The Grapes of Wrath": Sanora Babb wrote about a family devastated by the Dust Bowl, but she lost her shot at stardom when John Steinbeck beat her to the punch.
Video
Trampling Out the Vintage: Reflections on Steinbeck UCTV 2008 30 min.
A&E TV Steinbeck bio 45 min 2017.
Steinbeck pal and mentor Ed Ricketts (marine biology). Tales of Cannery Row: Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck (a character in half a dozen Steinbeck works).
UC Riverside Professor Emeritus Francis Carney discusses the work of John Steinbeck 2008.
Book TV on Steinbeck examples Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s the Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck’s view of labor issues inthe Great Depression, also Steinbeck’s influence on the past and current lives of Latino-Americans in the Salinas and Monterey area.
In Dubious Battle, the first in Steinbeck's Dustbowl triliogy, is a new movie (2017) by James Franco,Trailer. John Sayles' 1987 Matewan is a better movie on a similar topic: DVD3923 downstairs in McHenry Library.
Audio
Audio: The Big Read by the NEA, features Ed Harris, Jay Parini, Bill Ramsey, Richard Rodriguez, Susan Shillinglaw, Kevin Starr, Thom Steinbeck, Susan Straight, Rick Wartzman, and the music of Woody Guthrie.(transcript).
Audio biography BBC.[alt link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGubfmaKXUo].
Steinbeck interview regarding Grapes of Wrath.
Present at the Creation NPR on the origins of the novel.
== Social Documentation == as change agent: Photography (e.g.,
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange) video talk (1:15); (10 min interview).
Lange Collection Sample: unemployed
Library of Congress songs and photos of migrant life in 30's. Sample: Government Camp Song
Rare color images of the Great Depression, including Dust Bowl.
Newly discovered color photographs
Migrant Mother, the story behind this very famous photo, icon of the Great Depression.
Others sources
David Bacon writes and photographs migrant labor, for example Blueberry workers in Maine
Images That Changed the World TEDtalk video
UCSC's film school has a Soc Doc program: UCSC grad student Rian Dundon slipped into Myanmar to document life for young people under dictatorship Time magazine coverage. UCSC Soc Doc alumna reports from Egypt’s Tahrir Square 11/11. new clips 6/17
Aaron Huey's effort to photograph poverty in America led him to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where the struggle of the native Lakota people -- appalling, and largely ignored -- compelled him to refocus. Five years of work later, his haunting photos intertwine with a shocking history lesson in this bold, courageous talk from TEDtalk video.
Nature on the Great Plains (video and photos).
Photovoice images of south LA.
Activism
See also Activism Page.
Many people are rising to the challenges presented by the environmental issues noted above, as well as others). Some are scholars (many at UCSC) and business people who are doing research and R&D on sustainable technologies. Others are citizens, many of whom are concerned with issues of environmental justice. Another kind of important kind of change agent is the social entrepreneur, who uses social networks and sometimes market forces to improve human well-being.
Food
See also Food Page
Another key issue explored in the novel is agriculture. We see the shift from family farms to corporate agribusiness, and the hunger of the dispossessed. These conditions continue today on a global scale.
book on history of Agribusiness in California
Food Scarcity see also here
More than 862 million people in the world go hungry.
In developing countries nearly 16 million children die every year from preventable and treatable causes. Sixty percent of these deaths are from hunger and malnutrition.
In the United States, 11.7 million children live in households where people have to skip meals or eat less to make ends meet. That means one in ten households in the U.S. are living with hunger or are at risk of hunger.
In his new book, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown looks at the state of the world's resources ( a "food bubble"), warning that the outlook does not look good when it comes to feeding the world's population.
As the Irish Times put it in an editorial this summer: “Across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, hundreds of millions are struggling to adapt to their changing climate. In the last three years, we have seen 10 million people displaced by floods in Pakistan, 13 million face hunger in east Africa, and over 10 million in the Sahel region of Africa face starvation. Even those figures only scrape the surface. According to the Global Humanitarian Forum, headed up by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan, climate change is responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and affects 300 million people annually. By 2030, the annual death toll related to climate change is expected to rise to 500,000 and the economic cost to rocket to $600 billion.” This coming year may see a dramatic increase in hunger due to rising food prices from crop failures, including this summer’s in the U.S. Midwest after a scorching drought in which the Mississippi River nearly ran dry and crops withered. More 10/12.
Global food crisis studied by Raj Patelin Stuffed and Starved video interview and discussed in videos. Colbert Report. Some history of Cold War and Green Revolution. (audio)
Ironically/tragically, today in US kids of migrant laborers are going hungry (audio). (December 10, 2009) Nearly a million migrant children crisscross the U.S. with their families, from harvest to harvest and from job to job. In North Carolina, migrant families struggle to find work, and many rely on schools for food and clothing. The people who run the state's migrant program say living conditions and financial hardships for laborers are the worst in memory.
More info from Bread for the World.org
The End of Food by Paul Roberts.Review of book
A Seat at the Table is a game/simulation from Oxfam.
Agro-Ecology See also (pesticides). Agribusiness works on very large scales, using machinery wherever possible to reduce labor costs. It uses pesticides and a great deal of fossil fuels (some oil companies bought large amounts of agricultural land in California to get tax writeoffs). UCSC has been an important center for research in returning to more sustainable community-based organic agriculture. Key at UCSC is Steve Gliessman (video overview); Often, small scale farmers cannot economically compete with large subsidized farms. These people are frequently forced off the land, and have to seek work elsewhere, often moving to slums in huge capital cities.
Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute is figuring out how to grow food in accordance with natural principles on the Great Plains prairie. See Sanders, Scott R. “Learning from the Prairie.” In The Force of Spirit in the course reader. 2011 text interview and 2009 interview(text and audio).
Economics/Globalization
Boom Bust Boom by Pythoner Terry Jones uses muppets and music to explain economic crashes. 2016
Repeats Itself: Why Acute Financial Stress Is an All-American Story The life spans of middle-aged white men are taking a nose dive. 11/16.
2015 Chinese Stock crash for same reason as 1929 8/15.
Great Depression: Crash Course US History #33 video ***
Brief comparison of Great Depression and now by by Michael Hiltzik, LATimes writer and author of a new book The New Deal: A Modern History (audio interview). Even briefer(video) by Robert Reich. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich talked about his book Saving Capitalism, in which he examines America’s current economic system.(whole talk)***
BBC doc on Stock Mkt Crash (video) Buying on margin 14 min. in.
Great Depression resources (some video).
Current Great Recession origins explained in Meltdown: The Men Who Crashed the World. (video).
Inside Job is a documentary about the financial crisis. Audio interview. See also Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?
Sub-prime loans, the cause of our current financial crisis, clearly explained by the brilliant and award-winning Planet Money blog (current events). The very best explanation of what led to Great Recession (interactive timeline) is their "The Giant Pool of Money" (and updates) heard on This American Life segments (audio)Transcript). ****
*** Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America is a 2010 book by the political journalist Matt Taibbi about the events that led to the financial crisis of 2008. Spiegel & Grau, 2010 ch. 1 excerpt, privatization. student debt crisis (video). 6/12 video interview on big banks. why no bankers went to jail. Why Dodd-Frank will not save us.
Raj Patel writer, activist, academic and author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System is a researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, and a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. His more recent book on economics is The Value of Nothing first chapter and short video here, also covered in longer video and full talk (highly recommended) Commonwealth Club talk audio 1/10, (Realplayer). Democracy Now interview.
A new paper by two economists, "showing that mortality among middle-aged white Americans has been rising since 1999 analysis. This parallels the men's loss of identity in Grapes, led caused Ma to step up to lead, also perhaps by leadership in Survivalist Party in Ecotopia. 10/15
Inequality
Inequality stats, fun graphic.
Robert Reich: The Big Struggle Is the Financial Elite vs. Everyone Else 11/15.
Inequality and Economic Collapses gives us the proverbial bottom line.
Another cause of Great Depression was instability caused by unequal income distribution. Current divergence now is actually greater (slideshow) Nobel winning economist Joseph Stiglitz: The Price of Inequality ( audio 6/12/12). "Back in 1928, right before the Great Depression, the richest 1 percent of Americans received 24 percent of the country’s total income. Starting with the New Deal, public policy favored greater equality and a strong middle class, so that by 1976, the share of the richest 1 percent of households had dropped to 9 percent. But then the great re-redistribution began in the 1980s, so that by 2007, right before the Great Recession, the richest 1 percent had regained its 1928 position—with 24 percent of income..." see also Gus Speth manifesto.
Amazing inequality graph 9/14.
Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies (TEDtalk video).
Student debt is a scam, another source of current economic problems argues Reclamations, a UC student journal. 10/11.
Public Works and Public Good
When the economic and banking systems failed in 1929, the government had a alphabet soup of programs to help people recover, providing food shelter and jobs--most notably, the Works Progress Administration (WPA). This was a major component of FDR's New Deal.
New Deal/Green Deal
The New Deal: A Modern History, by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Hiltzik Audio interview on KQED/NPR. Also Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century.
Upton Sinclair Socialist governor of California during the Great Depression? "Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual" video interview with author Lauren Coodley (see also "Land of Orange Groves and Jails: Upton Sinclair's California"). Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair by Anthony Arthur.
Right Out of California: University of California, Davis, professor Kathryn Olmstead discusses reaction to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legislative efforts, which provides basis for US moving to the right(summary review). (BookTV video).
The New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the 1930s, formed under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was created to lift America out of the Great Depression and get people working. “FDR also strove to raise the nation’s battered pride and spirit. One way to do that was to celebrate the country’s stunning natural wonders—and encourage Americans to visit them,” said Director of the FDR Presidential Library Lynn Bassanese. WPA artists were employed in this campaign, creating stunning posters that promoted America’s natural beauty, including monuments and national parks. Now updated by new artists.
Some people feel that the climate change crisis is one that is as significant faced by the US in WWII and requires the same kind of mobilization of people and resources as the Great Depression (and on an international scale). Mark Hertsgaard has proposed a Global Green Deal, creating good "green collar" jobs (such as installing insulation and solar panels, which allow people to move up from manual labor to skilled and even professions, for example electrical engineering).
Micro-loans
One way of helping very poor people that has been extraordinarily success if giving them access to capital (in Grapes of Wrath, the banks were able for foreclose/take the farms because the farmers could not repay their loans and had put the land up as collateral). Micro-loans do not require collateral, but allows people to be more productive by buying materials in bulk or tools). More info, including a biography of founder Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (another recent winner in environmental activist Wangari Maathai, reflecting the growing awareness that peace, justice and the environment are inextricably linked).
== Migration == (environmental refugees) People can also be forced from their land by drought/famine/civil war (often these are interrelated).
Gig Economy Nomads:
Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder, [https://kpfa.org/episode/rising-up-with-sonali-october-13-2017/ (audio interview with author);(another audio interview with author) (review)
Climate change is forcing people to migrate and the world doesn’t have a plan to handle it 10/15. Update 11/15. See Global Warming.
Climate Change Poised to Push 100 Million Into ‘Extreme Poverty’ by 2030 11/15.
New Study Says Climate Change Helped Spark Syrian Civil War (and thus ISIS?) NYT. Right-wingers in Europe 9/15.
US setting up camps to house children fleeing drug gangs in Latin America 6/14. Sonia Nazario first introduced the world to Enrique through a series of Pulitzer Prize winning articles for the Los Angeles Times and then in the acclaimed 2006 book “Enrique’s Journey.” "I saw migrants inflicted with horrible cruelty, and also amazing acts of kindness. In South-Central Mexico, when people in tiny towns along the tracks heard the whistle of the train, I watched them rush out of their homes with bundles of food in their arms. They would wave, smile and shout out to migrants perched on top of the trains. They threw bread, tortillas, whatever fruit was in season—bananas, pineapples, or oranges. If they didn’t have even that, they lined up next to the tracks, and sent out a prayer to the migrants atop the train."Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit providing legal assistance to undocumented children. author video interview. Mother Jones series (6/14).
UCSC's T.J. Demos, Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture wrote The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary during Global Crisis (Duke University Press, 2013), which explores the relation of contemporary art—including practices from North America, Europe, and the Middle East—to the experience of social dislocation, political crisis, and economic inequality,
Disaster-Induced Displacement Grows Worldwide including currently sea level rise on island nations and in Panama 9/14 See Global Warming.
UCSC's Dana Frank one of top academic experts on Honduras, and has written on women in banana labor unions. audio interview on wave of child imrants from Latin America 6/25/14.
UCSC alum Cary Joji Fukunaga has created a Sundance award winning film about migration, Sin Nombre. Interview
Kiribati climate refugees fighting to stay in New Zealand 10/13. see Sea Level Rise.
Natural Disasters Displaced Twice As Many In 2012 As In 2011 5/13
Overview with reference to Katrina.
Don Mitchell, The Lie of the Land--migrant workers and the California landscape (Minnesota, 1996). (password required)
New study shows migration due to global warming will be problematic. 2/12
For two decades photojournalist David Bacon has documented the connections between labor, migration, and the global economy. In his book, Illegal People, Bacon examines the many ways globalization uproots people in Latin America and Asia, driving them to migrate. (World Affairs Council audio interview, one hour mp3 download) David Bacon's Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)
Bacon's Photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US: Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006). See also Transnational Working Communities project
The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border by David Bacon (University of California, 2004).
Bacon's latest book, (2013) The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration by David Bacon is the story of the growing resistance of Mexican communities to the poverty that forces people to migrate to the United States (NAFTA is key, see also Ana Lopez 2013 plenary). audio)
A Mexican Migrant’s Death Portends Dangers of Harsh "Border Security" in Senate Immigration Bill. 6/13. Families divided by fence. (video). No Papers, No Fear activists.
Migration data and policy North America.
Center for American Progress reports on migration. See Global Warming.
2009 UN study on how climate change will affect migration. See also a comprehensive but readable 2007 UN report.
Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting provides a view from Bangladesh, a nation already reeling from the impact of climate change.12/09 See also Bangladesh 5/10 article.
Juan González's Harvest of Empire takes an unflinching look at the role that U.S. economic and military interests played in triggering an unprecedented wave of migration that is transforming our nation’s cultural and economic landscape. It's now the basis of a new documentary. Democracy Now segment.
Migrant construction labor TEDtalk video
Often people are forced off farms and have to migrate to large cities to live in slums to work in factories. This is documented by Ed Burtynsky (video).
Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities, finds the world’s squatter sites -- where a billion people now make their homes -- to be thriving centers of ingenuity and innovation. He takes us on a tour. (Migration) TEDtalk video
Stewart Brand on squatter cities. TEDtalk video
Against All Odds is a game from the UN that gives some insights.
UCSC alum Reyna Grande has written two acclaimed novels about the Mexican immigrant experience, her new memoir--The Distance Between Us.
== Labor == See also Labor
In the novel, we see union organizing emerging as an important counter-balance to increasing corporate exploitation by the Associated Farmers (excerpt). Currently, the United Farms Workers (UFW) organized by Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta (recent audio interview ), is working to protect workers from pesticide poisoning. See also here. In doing so they protect the rest of us, not just from toxins on our food, but airborne and waterborne toxins. Randy Shaw argues they set the stage for later social movements from environmentalism to the Obama campaign. Shaw is the author of "Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century." Audio interview UCSC has extensive oral histories of local farmworkers and activists (including Helen Hosmer , who knew Dorthea Lange). UCSC's Melanie DuPuis argues that we must not allow businesses to pollute the air and water because no one "owns" them (traditionally, to prove damage to a particular person or property is the only way to get legal protection, as in a car accident). This bring us to thinking about public good.
NO JUSTICE, NO PEAS: Underpaid, overworked farmworkers set to get liberal labor protections. Farmers grumble. 9/16
UCSC's Steve McKay, associate professor of sociology and director of the UC Santa Cruz Center for Labor Studies and his students have research local farmworkers. 5/15.
A new book on the UFW by local author Frank Bardacke concentrates on leaders aside from CC. video.
“The Harvest of Loneliness: The Bracero Program,” Gonzalez and Vivian Price, an alumna of UCI's political science doctoral program, explore the historical accounts of migrant Mexican farm workers brought into the U.S. from 1942-1964 under the temporary contract worker program known as the Bracero Program.
Child Labor in the fields is still legal in the US, as documented in The Harvest/La Cosecha, a new documentary directed by the veteran photographer and human rights advocate U. Roberto Romano, shines a bright light on this murky corner of the agribusiness universe. See also this article. 10/11.
Raj Patel exposes modern slavery in Florida tomato fields: Imolokee "workers were chained inside trucks, charged $5 for a shower, and made to work for pennies a day, suffering heinous physical abuse from their employers. Their suffering is bought cheap, at $2 a pound in the supermarket. Yet for picking those tomatoes, the average worker earns about 45 cents for a 32 pound bucket. And far too many earn much less." audio interview 6/11.
Imolokee workers in 2010, together with allies from the Student/Farmworker Alliance, Interfaith Action, and Just Harvest, they created the traveling Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum out of a cargo truck similar to one in which workers had been locked and kept in slavery two years prior. College 8 student [mailto: vpozosbe@ucsc.edu Victoria Pozos], a FoodWhat alumna, whose mom is a farm laborer in Watsonville, is currently at UCSC studying Farm Labor Justice and most recently worked with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida learning about and advocating for their Fair Food Campaign nationally.
Davis Bacon has written extensively on migrant farmworkers
Stephen Colbert appeared with United Farm Workers (UFW) President Arturo S. Rodriguez today to testify before Congress about a day he spent working in the fields, having taken up the UFW on its dare to American citizens "take our jobs." (Humor)
Lopez, Anna A , who obtained her PhD in Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz, wrote The Farmworkers' Journey brings together for the first time the many facets of this issue into a comprehensive and accessible narrative: how corporate agribusiness operates, how binational institutions and laws promote the subjugation of Mexican farmworkers, how migration affects family life, how genetically modified corn strains pouring into Mexico from the United States are affecting farmers, how migrants face exploitation from employers, and more. (also Google book).
Andres Arias (Oakes, 2016), a double major in Latin American and Latino studies and sociology, has immersed himself in California migrant communities to conduct original research about this vulnerable and often voiceless population.
NAFTA effect on worker safety in Mexico. Overall effect (video) 12/13 20th anniversary report (which could have lessons for current TPP). NAFTA sparked indigenous Zapatista uprising in Mexico.
== Human Rights == See also Environmental Rights.
Slavery in modern Florida tomato fields.
Video of talk on relations between human rights and the environment.
Soil loss was a significant factor in the Rwanda genocide.
Global Warming/Water Scarcity
See also Global Warming and Water The debate about if it's real is over (prolonged by fossil fuel companies using many of the same tactics and PR firms used by the tobacco industry), but the one about what to do continues. Water will probably be a bigger challenge than oil in this century; some are already using the term "peak water."
The Best Reporting on California’s Drought 8/14.
The Immediate Climate Threat Isn't Rising Sea Levels, It's Water Scarcity 10/13.
Is Climate Change Driving the Southwest Toward a Dust Bowl? 7/13.
World Health Organization map of 150K of people who are killed annually by climate change. Link to study pdf.
Michael Mann video overview TEDtalk.
As the Irish Times put it in an editorial this summer: “Across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, hundreds of millions are struggling to adapt to their changing climate. In the last three years, we have seen 10 million people displaced by floods in Pakistan, 13 million face hunger in east Africa, and over 10 million in the Sahel region of Africa face starvation. Even those figures only scrape the surface. According to the Global Humanitarian Forum, headed up by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan, climate change is responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and affects 300 million people annually. By 2030, the annual death toll related to climate change is expected to rise to 500,000 and the economic cost to rocket to $600 billion.” This coming year may see a dramatic increase in hunger due to rising food prices from crop failures, including this summer’s in the U.S. Midwest after a scorching drought in which the Mississippi River nearly ran dry and crops withered. More 10/12. 12/12 UPDATE (guess what?)
Drought Monitor Map (current conditions). See also Maps page. US Megadrought 9/12. effect on food supply 10/12. Drought worsens 11/12: The report showed that 60.1 percent of the lower 48 states were in some form of drought The amount of land in extreme or exceptional drought — the two worst classifications — increased to 19.04 percent. U.S. Drought Expands In Kansas, Oklahoma And Texas 12/12.
Rebecca Solnit, Climate and Clarity 10/12
Somalia Drought Is 'Worst Humanitarian Crisis': U.N. 7/11
UC research on CA drought 7/09
2012 updateVideo of Arizona Duststorm 7/11.
For more on history, see Dust Bowl page
== Desertification/Topsoil Loss == (see Land) Desertification occurs when too much vegetation is removed to keep the desert from encroaching. recent example in Mongolia (Here are striking images). A more widespread general and on-going problem is Topsoil loss, the Dust Bowl being only one dramatic example.
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by David R Montgomery (book trailer) professor of geomorphology, University of Washington discusses the problem of global soil degradation and soil erosion and why it is one of the most significant environmental crises that face our species and planet for the next 400 years to come. another talk.
The worst case scenario for soil is desertification, often as the result of deforestation (and probably intensified by climate change). Being fought in China 9/14.
Update on soil 8/12.
Architecture student Magnus Larsson details his bold plan to transform the harsh Sahara desert using bacteria and a surprising construction material: the sand itself (based on UC Davis research). See also Great Green Wall Sahara TEDtalk video.
The coming Mega-Drought pdf 10/10.
2012 updateof Car crashes in Arizona in dust storm (video) 10/11.
