Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
baked products - like breakfast bars), it is was less
likely to cause heart disease (see
Science Daily
,
2009). While the health benefits of palm oil are
now being questioned, its role as a popular
substitute for hydrogenated fats has already had
serious environmental consequences. In countries
such as Indonesia and Malaysia large swathes of
rainforest have been cleared and peat wetlands
drained in order to make way for profitable palm
oil plantations (BBC, 2007). In addition to causing
local environmental tensions (palm oil plantations
are increasingly encroaching on orang-utan
habitats), it has been argued by Greenpeace that
the spread of the palm oil industry is contributing
to the loss of crucial carbon sinks (in the form of
both rainforests and peat wetlands), and thus
contributing to enhanced forms of climate change.
Ultimately, what the example of palm oil illustrates
is that within the Anthropocene it is important to
recognize the lines of geographical connection
that join supermarkets in the UK with peat swamps
in Indonesia, and the cooking and eating practises
favoured in the US kitchen with global climatic
change. Recognizing these often hidden forms of
geographical association, and understanding why
they connect the places they do in the ways they
do, is a crucial step in beginning to critically
interpret the nature of the Anthropocene (for an
interesting discussion of relational space and
emerging forms of relational empathy between
different places see Rifkin, 2009).
But the study of spatial relations does not
preclude the study of very specific spatial locations.
Understanding the role of particular sites in the
orchestration of the Anthropocene appears to
me, at least, to be an important starting point
from which to study how human-environment
relations have developed in certain ways, and
to think about how these relations could be
transformed. Studying environmental locations
in the Anthropocene is, however, about more
than simply tracing our current environmental
problems back to the early Egyptian farm (and the
domestication of livestock), James Watt's work-
shop (and the invention of steam power) or the
For an engaging account of how human
understandings of machines, such as
spaceships, have influenced the ways in
which we collectively think ecological
systems work, and can be exploited, see
Adam Curtis' three-part documentary
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving
Grace:
adam-curtis
forms of cultural exchange, and geopolitical
struggle, which have occurred over long periods of
time. According to Massey (2007: 13), a concern
with this form of relational geography requires us
to follow the '[l]ines of [a place's] engagement with
elsewhere. Such lines of engagement are both part
of what makes it what it is, and part of its effects'.
In environmental terms, the relations that connect
one place with another's environment are not
only trans-boundary pollution (such as acid
rain, toxic waste disposal and air pollution).
Environmental relations are also hidden in the
everyday products that we buy and consume. The
prominent contemporary example of palm oil
helps to illustrate this point.
Palm oil is an edible extract of palm trees,
which is used in the production of a number of
everyday products ranging from margarines to
cosmetics. You may not recall seeing reference
to palm oil on the labels of your supermarket
purchases; this is because it is often classified
under the more general term vegetable oil. Palm
oil is also becoming an increasingly significant
agro-fuel (Pichler, 2011). In 2010 and 2011 palm
oil topped the global vegetable oils production list
(with 53.3 million tonnes being produced during
2010-2011). One of the reasons that palm oil
has become so popular in more economically
developed countries is because it was believed that
while it exhibited many of the same properties as
hydrogenated fats (particularly in relation to its
ability to harden and be used in the production of
