Question 3. How does environmental devastation, and nuclear disaster in particular, challenge received human time scales?
Time scale is an arrangement of events used to measure the relative or absolute duration of a period of time. There are several different time scales that are used to describe different events and phenomena. We use geological time scale to describe the history of the earth, often in millions or billions of years. However, historic or human time scale is the one to describe the events of humans; it is usually described in days, months, years, decades, and/or centuries. This is very short compared to other time scales, seeming almost insignificant. To humans a year is a long time and a decade is even longer; humans can barely fathom what an entire century entails, without looking to their parents or grandparents.
Technology has changed or received notion of time scales, with innovations of transportation, construction, and distribution of information, travel and construction is done at a much faster rate. Thus environmental disasters that could disrupt the channels of transportation, construction and information could alter our current notions of human time scale. This is the precariousness of modernity and futurity. Assuming technology will always be there to make our lives easier creates precariousness that we do not even consider. Environmental disasters are always going to exist and affect the lives of humans and this creates a pervasive sense of precariousness. These effects compound and our modernist reliance on technology results in an even more precarious life.
The dangers of environmental devastation of ordinary fossil fuels are starting to be understood rather than ignored. Greenhouse gases, melting of the polar ice caps, acidification of the oceans are all things that are finally being discussed on a transnational scale. Their effects on the world challenge our notion of time because of how slowly they change the earth, over decades and centuries. Since humans cannot see this happen in their daily lives it is often dismissed as a problem for others, so scholars came up with the term “slow violence” to describe things that affect our lives but are not seen or felt in our everyday lives. Rob Nixon describes slow violence as, “gradual, out of sight, delayed destruction across space and time.”
Nuclear technology is a source of energy for many developed nations in the world. It is powerful, efficient and uses less natural resources than the technology of fossil fuels. It often seems like the source of energy of modernity, futurity, and neoliberalism. Unfortunately this technology has dangers that are not as obvious as smog, greenhouse gases, and the bleaching of coral reefs. The dangers of nuclear technology come from the radioactive materials used in the creating of the energy and the waste that is left over afterwards. One form of the technology is used for making bombs of devastating destruction. Besides the obvious devastation of the bomb itself, there is another dangerous form of violence that is left long after the bomb has detonated. Rob Nixon describes this “slow violence” by talking about the Marshall Islands after 67 nuclear bomb “tests” between 1948 and 1958: “In 1956 the Atomic Energy Commission declared the Marshall Islands ‘by far the most contaminated place in the world’, a condition that compromise independence in the long term.” This is a perfect example of how nuclear disasters, such as constant nuclear bomb “tests” can challenge our notions of human time scales. By simply testing our technology in a foreign country, we set back another nation’s entire independence for decades.
Cesium-137, the result of the fission between uranium and plutonium, has a half-life of about 30 years and is very common in nuclear technology. It has been released into the air from the accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima. Cesium-137 also spreads quickly in nature because of its high water solubility. Before nuclear technology Cesium-137 was not present on earth in significant quantities for around 1.7 billion years, again challenging our notion of human time scale. We know from Little Voices From Fukushima of how it would take over 40 years to clean Japan of Cesium-137. In Precarious Japan Anne Allison describes how the events of 3/11 in Fukushima reintroduced the stigma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, terms like genpatsu nanmin (nuclear-refugee) and hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors). Showing how nuclear devastations can span decades, generations, and even centuries further challenges our notion of human time scale.
The convenience of technology and the precariousness it creates, especially from nuclear technology, fundamentally challenges our notion of a human time scale. While technology enhances development of moving, building, and learning more efficiently over the course of decades and centuries, environmental devastation can take all of that away in a few minutes or hours and leave us with repercussions that last years, decades or even longer.
Jordan Foster