MEMORY LANE SERIES - #5
A Case for Applied Sustainability: Understanding the Brune Effect of Modern Environmentalism (Part 3.14159265359...)
Welcome to the “Memory Lane Series”
This series will take the form of both short notes and longer posts like this one. They will typically reflect on various aspects of my past work as a new materialist to help historically frame-up the final book Seven Storey Garden: Memoirs of a Redeemed New Materialist. Some reflections in this Memory Lane Series will serve as a historical archive of various documents, reports and written works that will be cited in the final work. This said, lets dive in…
This particular piece is the last part of a three part series that was written in 2014 as a critique of the established environmental movement in Central Appalachia led by such groups as Climate Ground Zero, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network and Appalachian Voices to name a few.
PLEASE NOTE: I only made minor edits to these works to ensure they accurately reflect the history of the Appalachian Transition movement…
A Case for Applied Sustainability: Understanding the Brune Effect of Modern Environmentalism (Part 3.14159265359...)
“To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
When considering the economic, social, and ecological situations found within the central Appalachian coalfields, perhaps the modern environmental movement should be aware of the extremely complex landscape of issues that are often times over simplified especially when these complex realties are obscured by what I call the Brune effect. In its most simplest form the Brune effect functions by hyper-generalizing the social realities of central Appalachia in its attempt to convey a fully captured and complete “reality” of the coalfields, that is, the closer it comes to the perceived realities the further it separates itself from the actual lived, experienced realities of this region. Here, the observer effect of physics functions similarly to the Brune effect. For example, and this is one of the most prevalent reductive mechanisms for collapsing the dynamic realities of the region: COAL, in and of itself, is typically understood by modern environmentalist as the primary problem of the region. This could not be further from the truth...
During my eight years of analyzing Appalachia’s symbolic pendulum teetering between the contemporary dichotomy of “Us vs. Them,” I am now confident to begin the necessary task of shaking such an ideology from its foundational footings in order to uncover a false conflict presently being weaved into the historical fibers of the American psyche. In my graduate thesis, I sought to uncover the historical construction of the War on Poverty in general and poverty specifically by linking various symbolic constructions of the central Appalachian coalfield region (e.g., hillbilly stereotype) to a variety of social, economic, and ecological strategies of community action regardless of whether they were government, private, or foundation driven. My evolving research within the “reality” of poverty in central Appalachia has recently lead me to argue that the War on Poverty and the American environmental movement are two parts of the same moral disposition or value system. In short, their symbolic characteristics in political and everyday realities represent a false ideological conflict that separates the creative potential of what the local communities can do, thereby stifling any type of creative or dynamic collaboration from emerging (i.e., the wave function). Essentially perpetuating the plague of poverty throughout the region. For example, Sustainable Williamson’s integration of an all-the-above energy strategy is a perfect example of one strategy from which the moral disposition of “anti-fossil fuel” will arguably continue to rear their reactionary brow. As a case in point, try to discuss the merits of clean coal within environmentalist circles while citing Wired magazine’s controversial piece entitled “Renewables Aren’t Enough: Clean Coal Is the Future.” It may prove to be a difficult endeavor especially when one tries to convey the very real mechanisms that force us to consider clean coal such as baseload and growing global demand.
RE simply isn't advanced enough to fill the void of fossil fuels. For modern environmentalism, pragmatism is simply off the table.
While pondering the ideological landscape that has and still is generating the realities of living, breathing human beings that make up the social milieu of central Appalachia, I chose to use French psychologist Jacques Lacan’s framework for further clarification. This said, perhaps the ideological conflict of “Us vs. Them” can be seen as a continuation of the prior cultural logic in which the ignorant hillbilly served as the obscene superego supplement or fantasy to America’s progressive reality. Within the dominant narratives reproduced by modern environmentalists, central Appalachian communities play an analogous symbolic role to the hillbilly of the past, the excluded “Other” whose alien presence legitimizes conflictive measures for obtaining the internal “eco-conscious” fantasy of sustainability through reactive means. Moreover, although most environmentally conscious Americans are victims of environmental externalities associated with the coal industry and fossil fuels (i.e., climate change), the same can be said about the defensive coal communities who proclaim that environmentalists threaten their jobs and way of life. Within this conflict driven framework, neither side is wholly justified in their actions of attacking each other, leaving us to ask: what is to be done? Is there a resolution? What is the real problem? Is sustainability even possible?
For Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, “there is still more work to be done.” On June 25, 2013, Brune responded to President Barack Obama’s climate plan with an implicit determination to fight the “worst abuses of the fossil fuel industry, including dirty and dangerous fracking, ending the devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, halting destructive oil drilling in the Arctic, and overhauling the sweetheart deal on public lands that pads the bottom line of coal companies at public expense.” In the end, Brune further legitimized an internal eco-conscious desire of the American environmental movement by way of an implicit reactive-disposition or simply, a desire for conflict, one that fails to consider the complex realities of the coalfields. Simply, where Brune sees “the devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining,” I see a way of life that not only “pads the bottom line of coal companies” but also supplies a fragile economy with the means to survive – a means that is under direct attack by Brune and the environmental community he represents.
I even recall the same Brune year’s earlier standing on a stage next to Marsh Fork Elementary School breaking ranks from the normative disposition of environmentalist anti-coal rhetoric. Its important to note that no matter what protest I studied/experienced, this reactionary disposition always faced the crowd of activist inciting anti-coal chants creating a positive feedback loop while occasionally turning to the crowd of coalminers behind them (or around them) to reciprocate the angered chants with equally angry platitudes thus creating a negative feedback loop. This is the living breathing affectual petri dish that breeds the emergence of the environmentalist beloved "reactionary hero" - in physics they call this the collapse of the wave function. However, one such reactionary hero exhibited something different that day in the coal river valley... Turning against the normative currents of environmentalism in central Appalachia, a curious twist or break from maintaining the reactive disposition by Brune caught my eye as he turned to the coalminers and said something along the lines of:
"I understand why you're here. I have two young children myself, and know the pressures of needing to feed your family. Personally, I think its criminal the way workers in West Virginia are being treated by coal companies and government officials. Mountaintop removal is an abomination, and all bluster from miners aside, it can't feel good to be blowing up your own backyard.”
Although this break was quickly sealed by the prevailing forces of Modern Environmentalism's internal logic (signified by a reactionary disposition), it did provide me with a glimpse of hope in an oversaturated context of breeding reactionary heroes. It signified an undercurrent within the environmentalist movement to turn towards the lived, experienced realities of coalfield residents where local wives “love their coalminers” and attempted to build up the deprived reactionary disposition (i.e., reptilian brain) towards a state of empathy (i.e., mammalian brain) where I believe that Brune actually understood (if only for a moment) why those coalminer’s wives where there because he in fact has “two young children” and knows “the pressure of needing to feed” his family.
As such, using this experience as well as a Lacanian framework for understanding modern environmentalism as it is expressed in central Appalachia, I am able to gain a deeper glimpse into the reactive disposition that is already libidinally invested by a series of nationally acclaimed anti-MTR documentary films (e.g., The Last Mountain, or Mari-Lynn Evans' "Coal Country") and, at a more granule level, “I Love Mountains” bumper stickers and actions of “speaking truth to power” as so often is the case with many activist rallies I have experienced in West Virginia. These symbols may signify exactly what modern environmentalists unconsciously desire: sustaining the Appalachian Other as the breeding ground for the “reactionary hero” that emerges through a series of conflict based narratives rooted in an “Us vs. Them” approach to community action. Within these narratives the complexities of the region are drawn into the vacuum of over simplification asking a singular question: are you for coal companies (and by default coal communities) or for the environment? At this point, the reactionary hero fighting for the environment (e.g., Mike Roselle, Bo Webb, etc.) acts as the signifier of environmentalists’ inability to obtain the beloved object of desire, ecotopia or sustainability – causing them to pathologically send these eco-warriors $$ and moral support such as “keep fighting the good fight,” etc. Essentially normalizing the brune brune effect by creating a positive feedback loop.
Moreover, the reactionary hero is disjoined from the actual living breathing subjects of the central Appalachian coalfields – take Brune as a case in point. In other words, the reactionary hero is not the object that environmentalist's desire (object a) aims at, but rather the reactive hero organizes the imaginary scenario of the fantasy which orders desire where Appalachia becomes the screen on which environmentalist project their desires as they relate to America’s notions of progress both in the present as well as in the past. This effectively seals what I will forever call a Brune’s gap or a break in the reactionary fabric of modern environmentalism that is almost immediately obfuscated and rendered smooth by what philosopher Michel Foucault refers to as ‘productive power’ (normalization) leaving the enviro patting themselves on the back saying: "well, at least we are fighting THE good fight.” Pointedly, the action itself is completely disconnected from peoples lives and resides almost entirely within the symbol in and of itself such as banner drops and protest signs:
These libidinal investments quickly seal the Brune’s gap, signified by a reactionary resolution through a series of symbolic community actions (e.g., marches, direct actions, and rallies) which link the moral dispositions of environmentalists to their fantasies of achieving ecotopia by "fighting THE good fight." In turn, these symbolic linkages create the illusion of a purely external threat to the coalminer’s way of life (as if a march or direct action actually amounted to threatening the coalminers way of life). Moreover, these moral linkages allow the lack of economic diversification to go essentially unexplored, and function to indefinitely defer collaborative discussions for exploring the possibility of sustainability and/or economic diversification to occur in coalfield communities and beyond. Drawing from my own experiences in central Appalachia, many local residents perceive Renewable Energy and sustainability as a negation to the coalminer’s way of life as opposed to complimentary in the shared goal of economic diversification (i.e., this is a direct effect of the environmentalist reactionary disposition). In affect, the potentials of Renewable Energy development are lost within the Brune’s gap. At least they were until Sustainable Williamson launched its collaborative strategy four years ago.
In this respect, the only perceived Other to modern environmentalism is a renewed form of the hillbilly. For environmentalists, the real Others are almost every energy consuming American they come into contact with, all of whom are paradoxically extended the promise of the “commons” through consuming the very source of their discontent: energy. Moreover, while claiming to stand for democratic rights and principles through “environmental justice,” the modern environmental movement actually suspends these same rights in the coalfields and legitimizes economic stagnation (monopsony) in order to maintain its fight against MTR (specifically) and Coal (generally). As such, it fuels a regional narrative rooted in an “Us vs. Them” approach that translates into a virtual consolidation of “philanthropic sensibilities” which could otherwise be used for addressing the systemic causes of poverty through sustainable economic diversification. This in affect, signifies the economic component of the Brune’s gap or more specifically its Marxist roots of rendering all things market as tantamount to oppression.
Moreover, the contemporary dispositions of (r)evolutionary activism – “fighting THE good fight” – erode any potential for evolutionary actions to emerge or a type of “bridge building” that could be made between a state of conflict and a state of collaboration, a central resolution explicitly found within contemporary sustainability circles (e.g., collaborative governance). Because the anti-MTR movement always generates new states of emergency (i.e., Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act) by saturating various mediums of representation to maintain its dominance within the larger environmental movement, it tends to justify the negation of its ethical principles (i.e., environmental justice) through symbolic community actions by clamoring for it's "issue" to be placed at the top of the symbolic pyramid. As such, the future of sustainability cannot be exercised within an modern environmentalist framework; for instance, the importance that practitioners of applied sustainability (or evolutionaries) place upon collaboration or a breaking down the “Us vs. Them” approach. Another way to put it is found in Manuel DeLanda's A New Philosophy of Society where the object of contention for the residents of central Appalachia are stereotypes and addressing the material expressions these categories maintain for the region. DeLanda states:
"... one of a the goals of a social movement is to change that classification. But the reason such a change is important for the members of a given social movement is not because categories directly shape perception (as social constructivist would have it) but because of the unequal legal rights and obligations which are attached by [modern environmentalism] to a given classification, as well as the practices of exclusion, segregation and hoarding of opportunities which sort people out into ranked groups [e.g., hillbilly]. Thus, activist trying to change a given category are not negotiating over meanings [or symbols], as if changing the semantic content of a word automatically meant real change in the opportunities and risks faced by a given social group, but over access to resources [environmentalist monopolization of funds] and relief from constraints. In short, struggles over categories are more about their legal and economic significance [material action] than their linguistic signification [symbolic action]."1
With DeLanda's emphasis upon material action rather than symbolic action in mind, perhaps anthropologist Marshall Sahlins would clump the anti-MTR movement into his “hucksters of the symbol,” whereby the activist carries a synaptic function within the larger nervous system of the environmental movement.2 It is the activist’s role to “be sensitive to the latent correspondences in the cultural order whose conjunction in a product-symbol may spell mercantile success.”3 In its raw form, the symbols of the anti-MTR movement are quite simply a well-executed marketing strategy for an obsolete model (i.e., non-profit industrial complex) that ironically draws funding from the very region this movement proclaims to help. Michael Brune’s recent response to EPA’s approval of new approaches to selenium mitigation from mountaintop mining elucidates my point: “Today, the EPA failed in their commitment to protect our natural spaces and clean water. They’ve allowed Kentucky to change the rules of the game and stack the deck against communities across the region.” Is Serra Club not doing the same thing: "stacking the deck against communities"? Again, an example of the Brune’s gap.
As ethical engagements such as listening to underground and surface coalminers, acts utilized in Mingo County’s Sustainable Williamson project, Sustainable Pike County, Wayne County’s Quality Job Initiative and, on a liminal level, the interactive documentary Hollow show that there are alternatives to obtaining justice other than the dominant American environmental movement. Moreover, the current paradigm of the “STOP global warming” and the “STOP MTR” restricts the range of apparent conflicts to social, ecological, or, worse, liberal ones. These conflict-based strategies mask a more fundamental barrier to the economic liberation of the central Appalachian coalfields: the lack of economic diversification within the modern day coal-town. The same displacement of socio-economic conflict that emerged during the War on Poverty is mirrored in the environmentalist vs. coal conflict, the “symptomal knot” of all the economic and cultural logics of the contemporary American psyche.
Manuel DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (Continuum, 2006), 62.
Newcomb, Horace. "Appalachia on Television: Region as Symbol in American Popular Culture." Appalachian Journal 7, no. 1/2 (1979): 155-164.
Ibid.