Summary of the book
The Beast is a collection, in pictures and a few writings, of the devastating impacts of oil. The book reflects how humans’ focus on mining crude oil has caused many problems for animals, plants, and humans. The book begins by using the phrase “get your head out of the star sand” to indicate how people have lived in denial of the harmful consequences that continued extraction and use of oil causes to the environment and climate system. The statement reminds everybody, particularly policymakers and leaders, to stop avoiding the continued existence of oil as a climate change cause. People have been hiding their heads in the sand for a long time by refusing to acknowledge that climate change is a real problem.
The books also note Canada’s significant oil reserves, both unexploited and already mined crude oil. There are about 2.8 million barrels per day of oil produced from the sand. There are also about 162.5 billion barrels of oil that remain unestablished in the oil reserves. Canadian Oil Sands are close to reaching a record extraction of about 315 billion barrels even as the nation’s largest oil producers get more volume of oil from the existing reserves.
The 2016 Fort McMurray fire is clear evidence that a significant amount of the earth’s forest cover was reduced due to the fire, whose primary cause was believed to be human. The fire, during its onset, caused a lot of heat in the surrounding North Alberta, resulting in the record temperature ever received in the region. Currently, nearly 80% of the devastating forest has been recovered, but the impact of the fire is still felt over the surrounding areas and another continent. Suppressed rainfalls and increased soil erosion are evidence of the detrimental effects of forest fires as far as climate change is concerned.
The controversial “Hot Lesbian” ad, which went viral on Facebook, got Canadian Oil Sands gain more public attention than it merited. This was one of the biggest millennium blunders as the group isolated other groups from every sector. The book propelled people to opt for Canadian oil over Saudi Arabian oil since, as the ad notes, “In Canada, lesbians are considered hot! In Saudi Arabia, if you are a lesbian, you die!” The ad was viewed as a strategy to radicalize Canadians from importing oil from Saudi. Through the ad, Canadian oil reserves reserved a lot of pressure from miners who strived to meet the overwhelming oil demand from their country.
The book also talks about the 2008’s controversial incident in which about 1600 ducks flying to nesting grounds fell and died in Syncrude’s oil mining sites. The United States birds’ watchers protested the incident and called for tar sand oil mining to halt. They said no to tar sand mining when they heard that the federal state was close to allowing the expansion of the mines. The death of the birds led to an uproar among several civil societies and environmental activists as they questioned the destructiveness of the oil company. The short, medium, and long-term consequences of the excessive pollution of the environment would probably lead to significant changes in the climate of not only the United States but the whole world.
Key issues presented
The most important aspects of the book are the issues revolving around the perpetrators of climate change. The talks of fossil fuel industry as the biggest challenge of climate change, both at the extraction, or drilling point, to use in vehicles and factories. In line with this, the book tries to equate the number of oil reserves that Canada, for example, has to the environmental impact it will have on climate. The book’s early sections are quite the opposite of issues raised in the later chapters of the topic as the book notes attempts to reduce greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide from fossil fuel extraction and use. This is seen as James Cameron slams tar sand and terms it a “black eye.”
In conclusion, the book, The Beast, presents typical examples of what is happening in the contemporary world as far as causes of climate change are concerned. The book summarizes, in picture form, some of the practices that pollute the environment. The book is a vital instrument that can be used to teach or learn about climate change, particularly considering that the world is currently dealing with climate change issues. One of comic book’s most significant and common importance is that they are more accessible and more fun to read than regular books. Therefore, people can relate to and read books with much fun. Moreover, the books provide their readers with a picture interpretation of the content, making them remember the content. Some books similar to this are The (Burning) case for a Green New Deal by Naomi Klein.
Naomi Klein’s “Right to Regenerate”
All human beings’ tussles require a reflection of a promising future for those who support gathering around. However, knowing and understanding their fate or destiny is only sometimes fulfilling. The achievement of insightful societal changes also requires an array of psychological and linguistic frames the insurgents can utilize to notify, impassion, and consequently persuade many people to join the move towards changing aspirations into political and economic realities. Moreover, effective movements demand concrete policy commands and complex data to authenticate their claims. Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus The Climate gives all these necessities for the climate movement.
In Naomi Klein’s article, she presents the multifaceted argument of the dilemma between taking care of the environment and having an economic gain. Klein’s fervent manifesto reaches its climax when she champions the biosphere’s fundamental “right to regenerate.” In this heartfelt and poignant chapter, Klein describes her fight with her sexual reproductive system. Klein draws a comparison between the struggle she went through to be pregnant and a myriad of hurdles that are moving up contrary to reproductive letdown due to a compromised environment.
Klein writes that “…as our boat rocked in the terrible place…” to mean the experience that she went through when she witnessed the aftermath of the event in which BP Deepwater Horizon spill. She felt the boat was suspended, not on the water’s surface, but on the amniotic fluid. Klein further notes that their boat was immersed in a large pool of multi-species debacle or miscarriage. On realization that she was in the early stages of developing an unfortunate embryo, Klein began to think about the time she had the swampland.
In scarce circumstances, do you find journalists appeal such influential association between representations of disasters and appropriate persona problems or hardships? Klein’s metaphorical character and proficient fearlessness are exemplary. Klein further maintains that saving our world and ourselves from devastations or catastrophes demands a far-reaching new perception. In her statement, Klein talks of a new type of right to reproduction, in which one is fighting for women’s reproductive rights and the rights of the whole planet. Klein notes that every life on the earth’s surface has the right to regenerate, renew, and health itself. The regenerative viewpoint excoriates the concept of cloudy anthropocentrism that is still based on the concept of passing for good reason in halls of power.
The right to regenerate can be viewed as a new type of atmospheric or environmental biopolitics that explains life rights in terms of the right to right to regenerate. For a long time, there have been many biopolitical issues concerning the environment, such as environmental management. Biopolitics relates to decisions about the people suffer even though Klein hopes that people can overcome the neoliberal approach of biopolitics. In her book, Klein indicates that people are in a better position to administer our slow death as species, where the ability to enhance survival and life has hit a paradoxical point. By reflecting upon indigenous rights, Klein gives insight into how the right to regenerate could work.
Leanne Simpson’s Idea of Land as Pedagogy
In sustaining and resurging Indigenous knowledge and life, land education works as a one-on-one contestation to immigrant colonialism; it also eliminates or eradicates Indigenous claims and life to the land. Simpson’s idea of land pedagogy highlights the variations of land-based education. It also addresses the significant contribution of land-based education on the indigenous renaissances model of intellectual judgments. For most scholars, working on native political concerns within universities in Canada and other places has proven to be one of the most vigorous scholarly prototypes for studying indigenous politics.
Simpson’s ideas commence with a feature article and then moves to two creative writings, ten articles, a poem, and a video. In the article, we come across how the Mohawks’ lives are disrupted by a lot of industrial pollution. There is also evident Metis landscape transformation during the increase in industrial capitalism. There are Mono and Tlingit areas whose stories, ecological realities, and names have been laid down by colonial association.
The story also contains the contributions made by Anishnaabe writers in discussing issues of land, both based on cultural perspective and contest. Simpson also talks of the land stories from Swampy Cree, a writer or author. The issues that Simpson discusses offer a diverse and nuanced appreciation of the importance of land-based practices and pedagogy as an accelerator for redeveloping indigenous spiritual, physical, and social connections.
Simpson’s article prompts in-depth thinking concerning ways mainstream pedagogical education aligns with the bourgeoning life behaviors. Simpson gives a convincing argument for the need to raise indigenous young people who are well connected to their native land and their indigenous languages and cultures that the land can accommodate (Simpson, 2022). While including Kwezens’ story, Simpson based her reasoning on the Nishnaabeg framework. Utilizing learning from the view of land V perspectives gives a critical intercession into contemporary thinking about indigenous learning or education. This is because indigenous education does not necessarily mean indigenous. Simpson’s article presents an essential ultimate statement regarding the value of land-based education, mainly focusing on indigenous cultures and their resurgence.
As Simpson describes in her opening remarks, her paper was developed “inside a community of intellectuals, artists, Elders and cultural producers to whom I am both influenced by and accountable to.” Although Simpson’s article never went through the required academic peer review steps, it presents vital information that demands an understanding that four Nishnaabeg thinkers had previously peer-reviewed her draft work. Simpson’s article is a fundamental piece of information for the individuals’ Indigenous education since it gives people the responsibility to increase the amount of energy they dedicate to encouraging land-based education sites. To create education sites, people should also consider how we can compel institutional capability. Despite Indigenous people remaining in poor conditions, advancing land-based education is fundamental.
Simpson’s approach poses a solid challenge to how people conduct peer reviews in Indigenous resurgence and land-based education. For example, people should refrain from preempting or assuming that the talked about ‘peers’ in this case are primarily intellectuals such as professors. People should also refrain from assuming that the process of reviewing demands giving papers for anonymous feedback. It is pretty challenging to imagine how people develop a review process that incorporates everybody, including community members that foster and support land-based actions and initiatives.
References
Simpson, L. B. (2022). We as resurgent method. Feminist Asylum: A Journal of Critical Interventions, 1(1).
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