Disposable City by Mario Alejandro Ariza

Mario Alejandro Ariza, author of Disposable City.
  Read the NYT interview here. 

Mario Alejandro Ariza. Disposable City: Miami's Future on the Shores of Climate Catastrophe. New York: Bold Type Books, 2020.

Mario Ariza's book, Disposable City, takes a front line and personal look at the impact of anthropogenic climate change in the city of Miami, Florida. 

I am headed to Miami in a few days for the meeting of the American Academy of Religion Southeast Region. This is an annual gathering of religion scholars and students from colleges all over the Southeastern U.S. to discuss all manner of academic religious topics. This year it happens to be held in Miami, Florida, a city at the epicenter of climate change. So to prepare for my Religion and Nature session, I have just read his book.

Ariza is a journalist and this book is a work of journalism. Ariza takes us with him as he investigates, interviews, and reports on the many facets of this complex issue. Interestingly, the book also came from Ariza's three years as a Michener Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Miami. And that shows. It isn't a dry book, but a work of creative non-fiction. Each chapter is a story in which the reader journeys with Ariza to a new part of the city and region, meeting interesting and compelling people, and getting a close-up, hands-on view of one thread of the climate disaster slowing but inevitably approaching Miami and South Florida. Miami, he tells us, is a "blisteringly new city, even by American standards. Most of the housing stock in Miami-Dade county was built after 1970" (89). He touches on everything from the real estate market, king tides, pythons in the Everglades, water management infrastructure, community organizing in Little Haiti, and to the offices of scientists, politicians, and courtrooms in which climate change decisions are being made . . . or avoided. The reader gets a detailed tour of the city and region, personalities, history, cultures, and inequities. The book is an amazing picture of a vibrant and fragile American city with an uncertain future. I learned so much about Miami, its history and cultures, its optimism and growth, as well as its multifaceted struggle with the most important global issue of our lifetime.

Ariza's intensely local focus is compelling. The book emphatically and unwaveringly points to the real impact of anthropogenic climate change and makes it personal. Ariza tells us how this city is drowning and how these people are impacted. As readers, we are drawn into the stories of those who are both effected by climate change and who are working passionately to pull Miami out of this environmental death spiral. At the same time, the local issues are woven into a global story that affects all of us.  

This map from National Geographic shows how
sea level rise will radically alter
South Florida and the city of Miami.

Chapter 5 "History Is a Swamp" looks at the doubly threatened Everglades, the unique and once massive freshwater wetland known as the River of Grass. Cut off from its water source of Lake Okeechobee and inundated with fertilizer run-off, the Everglades has shrunk and withered. At the same time, rising sea levels are causing rapid "saltwater intrusion" that is radically changing the ecosystem (130).  Ariza introduces us to Michael Frank, an elder of the Miccosukee tribe who is deeply engaged in the struggle to save the Everglades. The Miccosukee, like other Native people, are deeply connected to land in their stories, history, and lifeways. They are land-wise and interact with the landscape as a person and a community of which they are part. When the Miccosukee nation was being hounded and  threatened by the U.S. Army genocidally empowered by the Indian Removal Act, the Everglades embraced the people, hide them, and provided a refuge and home (128-29). Now they have adapted to fight the political and legal battles that will shape the future of their homeland. Although communicating that Native vision and relationship to land is difficult. I wish we could have learned more about this in Ariza's book. However Michael McNalley's Defend the Sacred:Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment is a great resource to learn more about how Native people have been approaching and fighting these battles at the frontlines of the ecological crisis.

If you are interested in Miami, other coastal cities, if you are concerned about the environment and about climate change, I highly recommend Disposable City. Just remember that what happens in Miami affects the entire nation. Ariza's discussion of climate refugees, displacement, and migration, powerfully communicates how Miami's future with climate change is eye of a hurricane of social change that will spin out in a "massive internal migration" that will reshape the U.S. (231). Yet, he doesn't leave this as an abstract issue. Ariza shares his own personal grief about the devastating impacts of this unfolding reality on the lives of real people (224-25). Ariza's transparency calls us into a more personal involvement and approach to these issues. What are the climate-related stories of tragedy, stress, migration, and upheaval that have impacted our own lives and those of our neighbors? Are we listening and telling these stories.

Ariza definitely does. He ends Disposable City by envisioning a somewhat optimistic future. It is a future in which Miami does not die, but survives and adapts. It is a story of human innovation and cultural creativity in developing new ways of life in the midst of climate change, sea level rise, and ecological stress. This is a story of Miami, but also a story that involves us all. Human-caused climate change is inevitably re-making the world. Will our human communities continue to hold stubbornly to the values, lifestyles, and institutions that led us to this brink? Or can we change, re-make our own relationship to land, ecosystems, and the other beings that we live among? 

In Chapter 4, Ariza and a filmmaker friend kayak up the Miami River through the heart of the city. This chapter and its epic waterborne tour from Virginia Key to the Miami International Airport is worth reading just on its own. As the pair float around a bend in the river near the airport, they encounter two people standing on the bank under the spreading branches of a poinciana tree. Both are dressed in white, conducting a religious ritual. Ariza's friend quickly recognizes them as "Santeros" (123). They are practitioners of Santeria, one of the Afro-Caribbean religions that emerged from the forced migration and enslavement of West African people. Ariza recognizes something significant perhaps transcendent in that moment and writes, "I can't help but feel like I've entered the realm of Yemaya, the mother of the waters, the Yoruba deity worshipped by African diaspora on both sides of the Atlantic" (123). As a scholar of religion, this scene grabbed my attention with its compelling possibilities. What answer does Yemaya offer to the crisis that faces Miami and her waters? Do these religious practitioners bring a different understanding of water, river, and ocean that offers new possibilities of a more ecological relationship? Ariza describes a religiously inspired connective energy that reaches from Miami, to Cuba, to the coast of West Africa. Could religions help to unite human communities in responding to climate change? Religion can be a dangerously conservative and retrograde social force. But it also is a source of values, ideas, symbols, rituals that can motivate human communities in transformative ways. We need to further explore the ways that religions can be a resource for the species adaption that we must navigate. How can religion help us move into a post-Anthropocene era where we learn to live well in a world we have changed and devastated?

Review of Eruption by Michael Crichton and James Patterson

My phone camera is done

This month our book club read Eruption, by Michael Crichton and James Patterson.

To a great extent the book reads like a screenplay. Short chapters sketch out the action, each ending with a small cliffhanger of some sort. It is a thriller and much of the action is compelling, with some intense and engaging descriptions of volcanic eruptions, fiery death, and havoc. The pace of the novel is inescapable, with an "hours until eruption" countdown at the top of most chapters. Of course, it is not just the eruption that drives the plot. There is a military cover-up that amps up the stakes to an apocalyptic level, the fate of all life on the planet hangs in the balance. 

Only a few heroic characters stand in between us and the impending destruction. These heroes are made for the movies, as Rob Merrill writes in his AP review, "The book’s characters are straight out of central casting."  Ron Charles' review in The Washington Post points out that the "casting suggestions are embedded right in the text," which at various moments compares characters to a certain generation of movie stars like George Clooney, Pierce Brosnan, and Halle Berry. The protagonist is the passionate, no-nonsense, chief scientist of the Hawaii Volcano Observatory, John MacGregor, aka Mac, who has a soft heart for those he loves. He teams up with the rugged, take-charge General Rivers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has flown to Hawai'i to coordinate the disaster response. The beautiful but overlooked planetary scientist Jenny Kimura hangs around in the background waiting for moments to console love-interest Mac. And so on, with a host of other made-for-cinema characters including a young, gorgeous demolitions expert; a young, gorgeous NYT reporter; and a few young, handsome Hawaiian surfers ready for a few scenes catching the waves on Hilo beach.

The book becomes more interesting if we turn to some questions that can be raised adjacent to the storyline. Here are a couple I've been thinking about that tie into religion:

This is a doomsday story about the impending destruction of the world - literally a fire and brimstone scenario of biblical proportions that is about to be unleashed on humanity. It is an apocalyptic story. While the eruption of the volcano is a natural phenomenon, it enacts a sort of justice on human foolishness and hubris. The volcano chasers - arrogant, rich, attention-seeking dilettantes - are the first to go in a morality play sort of way. But the potential for worldwide destruction is the result of a military experiment-gone-wrong. Hidden away on the slope of Mauna Kea are hundreds of canisters of a secret military herbicide code-named Agent Black, an unstable chemical agent that makes Agent Orange look like Kool-Aid. Contact with the lava would release a chemical plume so toxic that it would contaminate the entire globe and wipe out all life on earth. The impending apocalypse draws this human flaw into focus, this sin of military-industrial hubris, the urge to control and to wield death as we would choose, now threatens all life. 

This really is the religio-ethical function of apocalyptic literature - to draw attention to the sins, flaws, immorality that we tend to overlook or accept as normal, especially the structural and systemic conditions that subjugate, dehumanize, and inflict suffering on common people. Apocalypse pulls back the veil of normality and reveals the hidden ethical tensions, the fatal flaws -  that are embedded in human societies. Apocalypse reveals how power is distributed and flows in ways that perpetuate injustice, violence, and evil. By revealing and condemning these inequities, forecasting their imminent destruction, apocalyptic literature calls us to pay attention to our social injustices in one way or another. Too bad this book will be taken for simply a thriller and its implicit critique of the military-industrial complex and the long-term global environmental damage we have done will be ignored or lost to most of its audience. Likely, it will not compel its white conservative American readers to take stock, reject militarism, acknowledge the real environmental crisis we have created, and to come together around real solutions and social change.

The second religious theme is that of animism. The book explores or at least references a good deal of volcano and earth science, very interesting stuff. The use of popular fiction to explore science along with its triumphant and horrific implications is Crichton's specialty. However, the book also puts forward the possibility that despite everything the scientists know, there is another way to look at the volcano, another frame of reference that is preserved in the animism of the Native Hawai'ians. The best description of animism comes in a conversation among the Native youth surfers as they argue about who really knows about the volcano. Lono, a Native teenager who is mentored by Mac the chief scientist of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, takes the side of science but not without some cognitive dissonance. 

    "I know what I heard and what I saw," Lono said. "These guys are scientists. They know what they're talking about" 

    "Haole scientists," Dennis said. (1)

    "I'm telling you, they were talking about something loa big," Lono said. "And loa bad." (2)

    Lono, kama'aina like his friends, knew all the myths and legends about volcanoes, the way old people like Dennis Lee's grandmother thought of them as powerful living creatures who were not to be interfered with for fear of their response. (3)

    (Crichton/Patterson, Eruption, 168-69, italics are in the original text)

I bought this poster of Pele, by Herb Kawainui Kāne, 

when I was at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park in 1995.

This short passage is not a bad description of animism. The Native elders (aka Dennis Lee's grandmother) are the keepers of traditional knowledge. They comprehend and relate to the volcano not as a thing and not through the physical data of science but as a person, a being. To them, the volcano is "a powerful living creature" as Crichton/Patterson puts it (although I would use the term "being" instead of "creature" - the volcano is a goddess, a creator more than a creature.) This description is consistent with animism and works better than the older terminology of "spirit" or "spirit being" which tends to overly spiritualize the sacred being as somehow otherworldly or ethereal.) We are not talking about a spirit that lives in the volcano, but the volcano itself in the world as a being of immense power, presence, and agency capable of giving and creating land and life and also capable of acts of great, cataclysmic destruction and violence. The human beings dwell on the island with this powerful living being, in the presence of and in relationship to her. In the course of this relating, this powerful being is sometimes thought of and addressed as the goddess Pele. She is the volcano, or the volcano is the embodied aspect of Pele. 

Despite this quick glance, the book missed the opportunity to present a more robust and compelling picture of animism. None of the main characters expresses or supports an animistic view. The passage relegates the animist perspective (rather than entrusts it) to a very minor character's grandmother who never actually appears in the book. In a later passage,  animism appears again, in the one brief appearance of Lono's fundamentalist, anti-science, fatalistic Native mother. Despite the impending danger, she "stubbornly refused" to listen to reason and evacuate. (Eruption, 400) Note that the  authors use the word "refused" three times in a row here to characterize Lono's animistic mother as both ignorant and contrary). Instead of evacuating in the face of imminent danger, she tells her son:

    "The goddess has always provided for us . . . . It is Pele's will at work now. Not mine or yours. Not your friend Dr. MacGregor's."

    "Are you saying it's her will for us to stay and die in this house?" Lono asked.

    "You must have faith," she said. "You were raised in the ways of the natural world, and you were also raised in the ways of the spiritual world."

    But I'm growing up in the world of science, he wanted to tell her. In the real world.

(Eruption, 401, italics are in the original text.)

      

This passage seems wildly out of touch with the actual lived animism of Native Hawai'ian people. This artificial conflict between "faith" and "science" is more characteristic of the conservative Christian stance against evolution, and even there it is more nuanced. Unfortunately, Native Hawai'ians have been characterized frequently and unfairly in this way. During the protests against the Thirty Meter Telescope on the slope of Mauna Kea where so much of this book takes place, scientists called the protestors “a horde of native Hawaiians” and wrote stupid things like "It seems to me that it's an argument about returning to the stone age versus understanding our universe and it'll be interesting to see who wins in the end." Yet as Native spokespeople made clear: "The conflict was never between our culture and western science,” said Wong-Wilson, who is executive director of the Lālākea Foundation, a group of cultural and spiritual practitioners. “We’re as fascinated with our view of the heavens, our view of constellations, and our relationship [with them] from the Native perspective as anything.” Rather, she said, the issue was “the use of particular areas of land, of which there may be conflicting interests.” 

Ultimately, there are no strong or compelling Native Hawai'ian voices in the story, even though the book is set in the geographical heart of Native activism in Hawai'i. The traditional Native religious perspective is circumscribed and misrepresented despite the fact that Maua Kea has been the site of Native activism and organizing for years and despite the many articulate explanations of Native Hawai'ian spirituality. Yes, the Thirty Meter Telescope protests occurred from 2014-22 and Crichton died in 2008, so his original story predates that event. But Patterson's rewrite could do a lot more to frame the story in light of Native Hawaiian worldview, religion, and resistance. Yes, the novel includes a protest in Hilo - but it is quickly coopted by the two main haole characters - the scientist Mac and the army general Rivers, whose voices and perspectives dominant this book, subverting the alternative visions, identities, and solutions of Native people and religions. 

Notes:

1. The Hawai'ian language term haole emphasizes that these are white scientists, outsiders, who shouldn't be completely trusted.

2. Loa is an important Hawai'ian concept of distance and measurement. After reading this article, I think it is communicating the sense of something cosmic, an event with a magnitude that transcends human comprehension and scale, beyond the human ability to control and handle. It signifies the sacred nature of the volcano and the magnitude of its agency.

3. Kama'aina literally "child of the land" refers to those native to the Hawai'ian islands. According to Kiope Raymond at the University of Hawai'i, the word carries connotations of the Native Hawai'ian animistic relationship to the kalo plant, from which the Hawai'ian staple food, poi, is made.

The Blue Line Project, Circular Church in Charleston, SC

 Almost every year at our academic conference, someone brings up the relevancy of these meetings. Are we just talking without any effect? In our Religion and Nature section, we are trying to make connections to local activists and eco-justice projects. It is something that we have been thinking about for a couple years and I was able to pull it off this year.

Circular Church,
Charleston, SC
photo by author

I just started searching the internet for churches and community groups in Charleston, SC that were doing work in environmental justice. I found Circular Church, a UCC congregation pastored by Jeremy Rutledge who did his doctoral work in religious naturalism. The church has its own Climate Work Group and also participates in the Charleston Area Justice Ministry. Pastor Rutledge as keen to be involved, so things started tracking from there.

On its historic campus downtown, Circular Church has set up a Blue Line Project that shows anticipated sea level rise and storm surge. As the church website states, "Blue Line Projects are found around the world in coastal communities seeking to draw attention to the climate crisis. Many blue lines mark the height to which sea levels are expected to rise."

Circular's blue line marks the height of the storm surge if the 1989 Hurricane Hugo were to land in Charleston again. Hurricane Hugo was a big and devastating storm. Of course, the reality is that with climate change and rising ocean temperatures, storms are becoming bigger, more powerful and dangerous. The next hurricane to land in Charleston may indeed be worse than Hugo. 

Circular's Blue Line Project is pretty modest, to be sure. It consists of four small informational placards, and future storm surge levels marked on the wall of one of the church buildings. 

What do you think about this as 1) a type of environmental justice action, and 2) as a religious practice?

The religious and the environmental are not separate of course - the blue line project is both. As the signs indicate, this awareness of climate change and its impact arises from the religious and ethical imperative to love the world and care for the neighbor.

Blue Line Project at Circular Church,
photos by author

As a religious practice, the signs serve as reminders of what or where one's core ethical commitments should be. 

As people - congregation members or visitors - walk through the historic cemetery surrounding the church, they have the opportunity to be aware of the place where they are - note how the placards point out that Charleston is particularly at risk, how "you are standing at 10.4 feet above sea level" on the church campus, how the public housing projects - such as the one by Gadsden Creek - are in lower-lying areas. 

So it is a very place-based sort of approach. The blue line project is a sort of augmented reality. It overlays a future potentiality onto the present. By marking potential storm surge, the blue line asks us to see the place from a different perspective. It's not "what if" but "when this place is underwater." Can you see the place with this in mind. If you have that awareness of "when," the inevitability of that, then how does that change the way you live in the place now?

In The Location of Religion, Kim Knott writes about the simultaneity of space - that spaces are "synchronically dynamic because at any time they are overlapping, co-existent, in parallel with other spaces, and because they are internally in tension, being made up of multiple, contested, real, and imagined sites and relations." Synchronous spaces, she writes, "contain the past within them" like a palimpset (Knott, 23).

But they may also contain the future within them. Or potential futures that can be marked or indicated in certain ways. And that is how I understand the blue line project. It indicates this simultaneity of space - that both the past - like Hurricane Hugo - and potential futures - like devastating storm surge - are present, contained within the space in the present, all simultaneously experienced if we can become aware of it. As Knott points out, these are not "layers" like a slice through time, but the "dynamic and simultaneous coexistence of social relations" in that space (Knott, 20).