#nutmegscurse — Public Fediverse posts

> .. the movement became synonymous with a place— Standing Rock— it could be said that its political energy was generated in large part by the landscape itself. In the words of a group of activists, “Standing Rock emerged as a ‘prayer camp’ because the grounds in question are sacred, a site of ceremony and ancestral knowledge.”

#AmitavGhosh #NutmegsCurse
#StandingRock #OccupyMovement #OccupyPlaces
#一所懸命 #PowerOfPlace #BloodAndSoil #StoryAndSoil #StoryAndPlace

> .. the movement’s insistence on the particularity of a specific landscape did not, in any way, limit its appeal; to the contrary, #StandingRock became a magnet for people from many countries and faith traditions. “There were Iraqi people there; there were Egyptian people there,” says an activist. “You had many people from different European countries that came to Standing Rock. Different walks of life. Filipinos. You have every walk of life there.”
#AmitavGhosh #NutmegsCurse

This empire may be under American control today, but it is the product of centuries of combined Western effort, going back to the 1500s. What would happen to this vast strategic structure if there were to be a quick, worldwide transition to forms of energy that do not need to be transported across oceans? The answer is obvious: its value would be hugely diminished. China, India, Japan, and other large Asian economies would not need to worry about the Strait of Hormuz or Malacca— they would generate their power on their own soil.

... imagine if China were able to completely reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and switch to renewable energies. It would completely overturn the geopolitical order of the world today, because the geopolitics of the world really depends on the shipping of fossil fuels, you know, through these particular chokepoints. Two of the most important chokepoints are the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca. And, you know, something like 40% of the world’s oil ship through these chokepoints every day. So, on controlling these chokepoints depends, actually, Western geopolitical dominance. And if fossil fuels were to be completely substituted at scale, what you would have is a complete inversion of the world’s geopolitical order.

> We can’t say “It’s just #capitalism”.. “It’s patriarchy”.. “It’s #racism”. It is everything about how we have organized this society that is based upon extracting labor and resources from people and places that we have rendered into things. It is the idea that all parts of the world are inanimate, #mechanical, #soulless, and therefore open to economic use and ultimately destruction. This idea affects everything, indeed it creates our story of “everything”
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-03-21/the-nutmegs-curse-review/
#NutmegsCurse

#AnthropoceneDefinition
> it might lead to greater political action or awareness of the problem. But I do feel that it is important to note that there have been several resignations from #AWG over the narrowness of this definition because effectively, it ignores the prehistory of this problem which goes back three or four centuries to the invention of an #ExtractivistEconomy, which is what my book The #NutmegsCurse is about.
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/interviews/climate-change/there-are-so-many-problems-with-the-anthropocene-definition-amitav-ghosh-90928
#AmitavGhosh on #TheAnthropocene

.> the Pentagon is the single largest consumer of energy in the United States— and probably in the world.4 The US military maintains vast fleets of vehicles, ships, and aircraft, and many of these consume huge amounts of fossil fuels. A non- nuclear aircraft carrier consumes 5,621 gallons of fuel per hour; in other words, these vessels burn up as much fuel in one day as a small midwestern town might use in a year. But a single F- 16 aircraft consumes a third as much fuel in one hour of ordinary operations— around 1,700 gallons. If the plane’s afterburners are engaged, it consumes two and a half times as much fuel per hour as an aircraft carrier— 14,400 gallons.