US military bases occupy a fifth of the Japanese island of Okinawa. The latest round of base construction, says activist Hiroshi Inaba, threatens not only the environment but also the idea that the Okinawan people have a real say over what a foreign military does on their land.
Eliza Egret and Tom Anderson
More than six decades after America’s post-World War II occupation of Japan officially ended, more than 50,000 US troops remain there. Over half of them are stationed on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, an island with a population of 1.3 million, which the United States values as a strategic base close to China and North Korea.
ITF speaks with Andrew Blackwell about his new book, Visit Sunny Chernobyl, a travel guide to the most polluted places on the planet. Even sites ravaged by radiation and industrial waste, he argues, can still be places of “nature, wildness, and beauty.”
A man paddles across the Yamuna River, India’s most polluted.
Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World’s Most Polluted Places By Andrew Blackwell
Rodale Books. 320 pages.
Journalist Andrew Blackwell traveled to seven of the most polluted places on the planet: from the nuclear disaster zone of Chernobyl, to the smog-ridden city of Linfen, China, to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In his new book, Visit Sunny Chernobyl, Blackwell details his often humorously grotesque experiences hanging out in these past and present eco-disasters. In The Fray culture editor Susan M. Lee talked with him about his travels, the unique charm of the globe’s dirtiest corners, and the myth of pristine nature in an age of climate change. (Disclosure: Andrew Blackwell is president of ITF’s board of directors.)
You were inspired to write this book by a trip to India that you took years ago.
I heard how polluted Kanpur was supposed to be. It had just been named the most polluted city in India by the government. And it certainly lived up to that expectation. But I learned, after the fact, that I really enjoyed my time there — strictly as an interesting place to visit. So I had this flash: I just realized that, almost because they were polluted, there were all these places around the world that you would never really bother to visit, that you were missing out on because they had this stigma of pollution attached to them.
Did you have any expectations of what you would find, before you started out on your trips?
I thought the destinations would be a lot grosser than they were. As I went along, I realized I was in danger of not getting enough grossness in, and doing my due diligence for a book about pollution. Fortunately, I ended up being fazed by the Yamuna River in northern India in the last chapter. There was no way to say that it didn’t smell really, really gross. But otherwise, the visceral sensory experience of the locations was not nearly as intense or offensive as I expected. But that might have something to do with my message, which was not to find the grossest place but to find places that were the ultimate examples of a particular kind of environmental problem. And that didn’t always line up with the place being unpleasant.
Andrew Blackwell aboard the brigantine Kaisei, en route to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
What did you enjoy the most on these trips? What were the highlights?
In almost every case, it was experiences I had with people I met. I think that’s often true either about reporting or about travel. It’s less about whether you saw this or that building and more about the kinds of people you met.
In Chernobyl, my guides Dennis and Nikolai and I are drinking and totally wasted. And I see they are thinking, “Oh, he’s not joking — he really wants to see what’s fun and interesting about this town, not just what the horror story is.” People do respond to your curiosity and sincerity. Like the time with the sadhus [ascetic, nomadic Indian monks]. I’m with these guys and they’re wearing robes and paint and we’re camping in the countryside and they’re completely taking care of me and feeding me. They were so friendly and solicitous, almost to a degree that they drove me insane. That was a special experience.
What were some of the challenges you encountered in writing about the world’s most polluted places?
Some of the regular problems of traveling, such as: I don’t speak Chinese and I don’t speak Portuguese. On a topical level, while these places are real and their [environmental]issues are all real — and I certainly don’t want to be thought of debunking these issues — they’re often hyped. Maybe not by serious journalists, but at a popular level. A lot of the time, I did go into each location expecting it to be more spectacular. What I realized was that the story was more subtle and much harder.
But I think it ended up making the book stronger in the end — that struggle became a theme in the book. For example, that popular image of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as a solid mass is not true. But it’s still a powerful image that persists, even in the minds of people fighting the problem.
A smokestack disappears in the haze surrounding Linfen, China. The city is notorious for having some of the worst smog in the world.
In the book, there seems to be a recurring theme of problematic ways of viewing nature, even by modern environmentalists. Could you talk a little about these alternateviews of nature?
Inside the U.S., in the environmental movement, there is this foment right now with traditionalists, who draw their spiritual energy as it were from an idea of “pure nature” and restoring as much of the environment to a pure, pre-human phase as possible. That’s not the literal goal, but that is sort of the ideal that drives their entire enterprise.
Then you have these modernist folk, who believe that that is an impossible ideal: holding that ideal actually will leave you to miss out on all kinds of opportunities and will waste your time and energy on causes that aren’t worth it and harmful. They also believe that, yes, ideally it would be great to have that idea of purity and wildness at the center, but we are so far past that being the reality that there has to be something else motivating environmentalism. And what that is, is a recognition that human civilizations are part of nature and that there is no way of knowing what it means to have a pristine environment — and that it doesn’t exist anyway in an era of climate change.
Also, it’s just another form of separation. We’re still seeing nature as separate from human civilization, and that has been half the problem right there. And so the goal really is to find an integrated idea of what a healthy environment is.
The destroyed Chernobyl nuclear power plant, with a view of the steel and concrete “sarcophagus” built to contain Reactor No. 4, which is still dangerously radioactive.
So you’re sort of trying to demystify these polluted places as well as the idea of pristine nature?
Yeah, exactly. There are people out there doing some interesting work on showing ways in which places that are thought of as pristine aren’t. And I’m working from the other end, by finding places that are considered to be horror stories and “anti-nature” and saying it’s also still a place that has nature, wildness, and beauty.
Do you think that your background had anything to do with your desire to write about environmental and industrial issues?
I don’t know what comes from my family or what just comes from me. But my brother was trained as a scientist. Now he works doing visualizations at the California Academy of Sciences. My dad is an engineer. His dad was an engineer. And I have a cousin who’s a geologist. So science has always been special to me.
I grew up mostly in Seattle, but before that our family lived in Japan for three years. I lived in Japan for first, second, and third grade. And we also did a lot of traveling in the summer since we were in Asia. We went to Indonesia, Singapore, and a number of other places. That was a really formative, great experience. Just that a place can be bizarre and strange and can be welcoming and fun. I think Japanese culture especially, at least thirty years ago, was extremely safe — and people were friendly, probably because I was American and different and had blond hair.
If you could have included other places, which ones would they be?
I wanted to go to the oil fields in the Niger Delta. Two things kept me from doing that. The two or three people I talked to sort of were cautious. You want to make sure you’re in safe spots. And also I didn’t want half the book to be about oil-related locations. I wanted a better spread.
I really wanted to see ship breaking in India or Bangladesh — these incredible beaches where they tear ships apart. The world is just a candy store for this stuff.
Interview has been condensed and edited.
An oil tanker carrying twenty million gallons of crude oil approaches Port Arthur, Texas.
Susan M. Lee Susan M. Lee, previously In The Fray's culture editor, is a freelance researcher and writer based in Brooklyn. She also facilitates interviews for StoryCorps, a national oral history project. In her spare time, she maintains the blog Field Notes and Observations.
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Although this isn’t about the environment, it’s about human relations and is the voice of an ethnic Han who lives and works among Tibetans in China.
Chen Lu* is an owner of a Tibetan business that operates from Langmusi in a traditional Tibetan area in China. Although of Han Chinese ethnicity, Lu works and lives among ethnic Tibetans without any conflicts. The protestations by monks and government crackdown have affected Lu’s business as well as other businesses depending on tourism. These are Lu’s words about how he as well as regular Tibetans view the situation, which is different than how the western media have portrayed it:
In Langmusi, the violence was not so bad as in Lhasa. There are two monasteries in Langmusi, one belongs to Sichuan [Province] and [the other] belongs to Gansu [Province]. On 16th March, around 200 young monks from Sichuan monastery went on the street to throw stones [at] the shops. No old monks joined in. And only the monks from Sichuan monastery made this violence. The monks from Gansu monastery and the local Tibetan people hadn’t join[ed] in them.
Langmusi is very small town with only one street, so this violence only lasted for around half an hour. Later in the same day, policeman surrounded the Sichuan monastery. But the monks in Gansu monastery and all the local people’s life are still as normal. This is very important. Not like the western news [who] said the police crack[ed] down [on all] the Tibetans, they were just taking action [on] the people who violated the law. The police need[ed] to find who organized this violence and need[ed] to prevent it [from] happen[ing] again.
I asked many local people [what] they thought about the things the monks had done. Actually, they can’t understand why the monks did this very well and they don’t want to this [to] happen again.
Especially when April arrived, the local people find the number of the tourists is much less than last year, they become worr[ied] about the influence caused by the violence.
Yes, [still] today the Chinese government doesn’t allow the foreigners to go to the Tibetan area, but the Chinese people can go. But from the travel forums in China, you can see many Chinese are afraid of the situation in [the] Tibetan area, some of them will cancel their plan to travel to the Tibetan area in this year.
The Tibetans think the monks are the representation of the god. So they think they must follow what the monks request. But actually the monks are still human beings, when they get the power, some of them will become avaricious. Now some old Tibetan men have recognized that the monks are not as good as what they think. But [still] today, they still think Dalai Lama [is] their spiritual leader. But this doesn’t mean they don’t like what the Chinese governments do.
As an old Tibetan man told me, before 1949, the life for the normal Tibetans were very hard. They didn’t have their grassland and livestocks. They worked [hard] for the monks or the aristocrats [but got] very little food to survive. But after the Chinese army [got] inside the Tibetan area, [the Tibetans] first got the grassland [for] livestock, so they could control their own life.
In these decades, the Chinese governments build many roads in Tibetan area; give money or corn to them when they suffer [bad] weather; help them to build new houses, etc. And they also can believe the Buddhism, as they like.
So actually, [the Tibetans] like the religion and the Chinese government both. The very important thing is that they want to have a peaceful life; they want their living condition [to] be better and better. They don’t want violence or war [to] happen. So after this violence, 99 percent of the Tibetans when they talked about this, they don’t think it’s right and they don’t want it happen [to] again.
First my country and all the Chinese people already know the Cultural Revolution is at fault. Second, it’s already passed. When we are talking about something happening today, we should see what’s going on, but not the history. As all the western countries have done some wrong things before, but should we still use the history to talk about these countries today?
All the Chinese have seen in these decades, although there are still many problems in our government, but our life is really becoming better and better. So we have the faith for our country. We need time to build our country and we need time to make our life better than now. We want the people in other [countries to] understand us, but not censure our government and ignore what we have already done.
Recently handbag designer Anya Hindmarch decided to jump on the environmental bandwagon by releasing a limited-edition canvas shopping bag emblazoned with the words "I’m not a plastic bag." Because of its exclusiveness, people lined up around supermarkets in cities all over the world just to get their hands on it. The bag was/is a definite hit and sold out in hours only to appear on eBay later on for a mark-up equaling hundreds of dollars. But this message of creating a buzz around a canvas bag that should help the environment is wrong.
The people that bought the bag won’t use it in place of plastic bags Most people aware of this bag are most likely into trendy items and not interested about the environment. This bag is the "it" bag of the moment, so just because it’s made out of canvas and its claim is that it’s not a plastic bag doesn’t automatically make the person who buys it "green." A lot of the people that bought the bags wanted to resell them on eBay for hundreds of dollars anyway, not use them for grocery shopping. Most of the people that bought the bag probably don’t even shop for groceries themselves. They send their housekeepers or personal chefs who most likely won’t get the bag lent to them for that purpose.
The bag designer is all about consumerism, not environmentalism Anya Hindmarch is a bag designer. Her job is to create bags and encourage people to buy as many of them as possible so she can make a living. Encouraging mass consumerism is not good for the environment. And even though she pretends that her "I’m not a plastic bag" bags are good for the environment, London’s Evening Standard recently uncovered the unflattering fact that Ms. Hindmarch’s bag was manufactured in China using non-organic and non-free-trade materials.
Have yet to see regular people using the bag for groceries A quick trip to some Manhattan grocery stores didn’t uncover anyone actually using the bag for its so-called intention. The grocery baggers — as usual — still used plenty of plastic bags. They were double bagging and barely filling these bags full. There was not an "I’m not a plastic bag" in sight. There was, however, a non-trendy, ratty, old Hughes Market canvas bag and Sierra Club canvas bag that were in use by me. But since they have been in use every week for years, no one wanted to rip them off my shoulder and offer me $200.
The people that waited in line and bought the bag are hypocrites Here in the U.S. the bag was sold at Whole Foods stores for a mere $15. The day was rainy. So after the lucky people who were at the front of the line got their precious canvas bag, it got wrapped up in a plastic bag to keep it dry. How ironic is that?
Belarus, Egypt, Bangladesh, Iran, China, Singapore, and Libya have all detained bloggers or other Internet personalities thus far. Although Morocco has not, freedom as it pertains to the Internet has a long way to go.
In December of 2006, two journalists were arrested for analyzing jokes made on the Moroccan street in Nichane, Morocco's only magazine written in dialect. Reporters Without Borders called the actions "insane and archaic," a sentiment which was echoed throughout the Moroccan blogosphere.
And yet few have even mentioned the fact that Morocco censors the Internet. Unlike China's extreme censorship, Morocco has only banned a few sites, mostly related to the Western Sahara. Additionally, Livejournal has been banned for a little over a year, and Google Earth is only sporadically accessible, allegedly because its close shots offer views of the Moroccan royal family's many palaces.
"We hope that after this show airs, homosexuality will no longer be an issue, that society will be more enlightened about it, more understanding and more tolerant." —Gang Gang, the producer of "Gay Connections" in English or, according to the Chinese press release, "Connecting Homosexual People," the first program to focus on gay issues in the country. The 12-episode show is produced by a Hong Kong-based broadcast, launched by a Chinese TV channel, and is airing on the Internet. Despite the fact that homosexuality was categorized as a mental illness until 2001, the show is hosted by AIDS activist Didier Zheng, who is openly gay.
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