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Bradford: We All Live in Bhopal

Bradford: We All Live in Bhopal. How would you interpret the title? How do we all live in Bhopal?. Major Environmental Catastophes. (1) Bhopal: At least 4,000 dead and as many as 500,000 directly affected. (100,000 sick)

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Bradford: We All Live in Bhopal

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  1. Bradford: We All Live in Bhopal How would you interpret the title? How do we all live in Bhopal?

  2. Major Environmental Catastophes • (1) Bhopal: At least 4,000 dead and as many as 500,000 directly affected. (100,000 sick) • (2) Chernobyl: Nuclear power plant explosion: 135,000 permanently evacuated from the area. • (3) BP oil spill (2011): Full effects not yet known. • (4) 1952 London smog crisis: Almost zero visibility, possibly about 12,000 died from respiratory crisis.

  3. Issues emphasized by Bradford • Industrialization and development Developing world has large debts and needs economic growth to pay them off. Change in developing world economy brings risks. “The Indians only take the risks and bear the costs…” They don’t get the benefits of industrial capital. The benefits “are exported in the form of loan repayments.” (p. 323)

  4. The Green Revolution • The Green Revolution (1940s-1970s) was a revolutionary shift in agricultural modernization that had a huge effect on both developed and developing nations. • It began in Mexico with high yield wheat & corn and spread to Asia (miracle rice). However, the US also dramatically increased its yields.

  5. Bradford Criticizes Green Revolution • Modernization of agriculture creates need for fertilizers, insecticides, etc. • However, the rural economies of subsistence farming were destroyed in favor of a class of wealthier farmers dependent upon western technologies. “People are further trapped in the technological labyrinth…The ideology of progress is there, blared louder than ever by those with something to hide…a cover-up for plunder and murder on levels never before witnessed…” (323)

  6. Problems of Industrialization • Poorer regions are very vulnerable to pollution. • Bradford: They are a “dumping ground” and “pool of cheap labor.” • Chemicals which are banned in developed countries are produced in developing countries. [E.g., leptophos exported to Egypt killed & injured many Egyptian farmers. Mercury tainted wheat killed 5,000 Iraqis.

  7. Bhopal/Union Carbide (bought by Dow) • Other companies are like Carbide. Half the workers in battery plant had kidney damage from mercury exposure. • Asbestos exposure allowed. • 22,500 people killed every year by exposure to insecticides. • [However, ‘development’ and wealth require technology & this requires industrialization & accompanying pollution.]

  8. Is pollution necessary? • What kind of response would be given to Bradford? • The idea that economies develop in stages and every industrialized society has a ‘dirty’ stage & then, when more wealthy, moves on to a ‘cleaner’ stage. China is thought to be an example of this.

  9. Effects of pollution and toxins • Instead of death on a mass scale: cancer, birth defects. • EPA 90% of toxic waste is disposed of ‘improperly.’ • A billion tons of pesticides and herbicides were produced in 1 year. 79 million imported. 15,000 chemical plants ‘daily manufacturing mass death.’ Chemicals leech into water.

  10. We all live in Bhopal • Man says when things get bad, people ‘go to the village.’ • Bhopal residents fled to the village. • But what do we do when there is no village? • What are alternatives to the current chemical toxin regime?

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