Jenna Martuscello -- News Media Blog

By Jenna Martuscello

I was about five the first time my father took a match to my scalp. My brother and mother held me still as I writhed in fear of the flame, insisting how important it was that I just stayed calm. My father let the match burn for a second before blowing it out and carefully touching it to the small black lump nested in the hair above my temple, he then took a pair of tweezers and pulled away a little bug. My first tick memory coincides with the first year my family moved out to the east end of Long Island from our previous home in Nassau County. In this less populated area I was able to go into the woods around my house and be gone for hours, the neighborhood kids and I would find unkempt nature trails, rotting log bridges, and abandoned hunting blinds; we would walk through bramble and brush the ticks off our pants legs afterwards. Coming home summer evenings meant tick checks and sometimes a match to the scalp, followed by hot shower. Over the years I learned to check myself for ticks as well as the normal preventative measures people could take to avoid tick bites. Regardless of the amount of caution paid, I would still come home from the beach or a trail and find a tick once or twice a season. I would wait a couple days to see if a bulls-eye mark developed around it, keeping my fingers-crossed that I had not taken a bullet in the Russian roulette game of tick-borne Lyme disease. 

One day in late August 2014 (after spending too much time in the sun with too little sunblock) a large bulls-eye shaped mark revealed itself on my upper back. Two weeks later my diagnosis was confirmed and I began treatment for Lyme disease and Babesiosis, both specifically transmitted by Ixodes scapularis aka the Deer Tick. It was not surprising to me that I had not found the tick who had nestled itself between my spine and shoulder blade, Deer Tick nymphs carry Lyme and are smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. What did surprise me was my new fear and distance I felt from the natural places I had once felt so comfortable in.

While the east end of Long Island is cherished for its preservation and access to large expanses of nature, it has become an endemic area for Lyme disease due to tick overpopulation. On the East End white tail deer are the primary and preferred host for the deer tick. Due to numerous factors including a lack of predators, the population of white tail deer on the East End has ballooned and begun to cause much debate.  Like the ticks, the deer are viewed as invasive pests, threatening the livelihood of farmers, lives of automobile drivers, and the borders of private and wild land. It seems somewhat ridiculous from an outside perspective though, hundreds of people claiming fears of tiny bugs and literally-doe-eyed fawns; but the reality of their experience shows how difficult East Ender’s lives have been due to otherwise innocent animals.

In “Outcry in Eastern Long Island Over a Plan to Cull Deer” New York Time’s reporter N.R Kleinfield attempts to pull apart the issues underlying a battle that Eastern Long Island experienced when initiating deer culling. Deer culling is not an unheard of process, especially in more rural areas. When lack of natural predators allow deer populations to expand so freely, humans can reclaim their predatory role towards them. Culling the deer population would not completely eradicate deer ticks or Lyme disease, but it would decrease their numbers. When I read Kleinfield’s article I see the line drawn between locals and summer people, from those who live and work the land and those who believe their privilege gives them greater understanding for the animals. The people she lists as anti-culling advocates are not actual members of the communities, but vacation home owners, Kleinfield refers to former rock-concert promoter’s summer house as a “country home.” But what those who do not live full time in the area fail to recognize is the amount of issues caused by the deer over-population, their part-time aspect of the deer does not give them the whole story. What Kleinfield does bring out though is the local thought behind actual hunters from the community being able to participate in the cull versus military trained sharp-shooters. In human’s anthropocentric view of animals as pests, a military-like cull seems like a good idea in the same way pesticide spraying does, it is quick fix to a bad problem. “East End Deer Cull: Federal sharpshooters kill 192, falling short of goal in Suffolk County, report says” by Newsday reporter David M. Schwartz looks to show that a good part of the culls failure was due to local disapproval for non-local hunting. If the cull was instead one in which community members were able to engage in the hunting of the deer then they would be the ones in control of their environment. Employing hunters to cull certain amounts of deer per year would create proactive communities, giving local farmers piece of mind for crop protection and people in the community a lesser chance of deer tick contact.

In response the town’s issues with the cull, the East End looked towards implementing other methods of tick control on the deer population. In Tessa Raebeck’s local news article written for the Sag Harbor Express “As Tick Population Increases, the Debate of the 4-Poster Program Continues” brings to light the East end Community’s interest to revive a tick control project conducted by the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County. The 4-Poster Program is one that uses a 4-poster device/ station which has been baited with food, when deer come to feed, rollers with pesticides brush against the deer, treating and killing the ticks on them. In Tony Buck’s YouTube video “Lyme Tick Control,” he explains the process of using a 4-poster device, and while his is homemade, it still works in the same way. Government sanctioned or homemade, the 4-poster device’s efficiency comes from its ability to transfer the chemical Permethrin. Unfortunately locals are misguided in their belief that Permethrin will be the answer to their battle against nature as it is supported by the government and private companies profit interests. Shelter Island’s brochure on the 4-poster program “Ticks are the Problem” they try to show the safety and effectiveness of Permethrin by giving examples of its uses, one of which being the treatment of Permethrin on clothing. In the advertisement video for a local lawn care specialist “Southampton New York Tick Spraying and Tick control” a man totes the safety and benefits of spraying your yard with Permethrin SFR. He looks to appeal to the local populace, closing his ad with “Serving Southampton and all of Long Island for over 26 years,” as if he labors and serves to protect you from the dangers of ticks and tick bites.

As mentioned in Raebeck’s article, the use of 4-poster devices is illegal in all of New York State except for Suffolk County due to the environmental toxicity of Permethrin. What those pushing for 4-poster devices and spraying do not mention is Permethin’s high and often fatal toxicity to fish and beneficial insects like honey bees. The Permethrin SFR’s Product Label warns of the toxicity and hazards that can occur due to the incorrect application of Permethrin or its contact with other animals. While both Shelter Island and the local lawn care specialist touted the safety of Permethrin in clothing, the label suggests that no skin contact is good and that all clothing should be washed immediately if it comes into contact with Permethrin. What is most surprising about the east ends support of Permethrin use is the fact that it is fatally toxic to honey bees and marine life; two necessary aspects to life on the east end. Without honey bees the farmers will not have crops to grow, so it will not matter if the deer come to eat them or not. Our fresh and salt water ecosystems on Long Island are intricately interwoven and are what maintain much of how people live out east. The British Colombia Ministry of Agriculture’s piece on the “Environmental Fate” of pesticides details how different environments impact the ways in which pesticides are distributed throughout the environment. Due to our sandy soil being the good at leaching, run-off from chemicals like Permethrin does not have trouble finding its ways to water systems. And while Permethrin is said to have a low toxicity towards humans, Permethrin leaching can contaminate the underground aquifers, which provide us with our drinking water.

Shaye Weaver’s recent 27east.com article “Four Poster Tick Management Program May Come to East Hampton Town” explains how those in the East Hampton township are just fed up with the prevalence of ticks. The East Hampton Deer and Tick Management Foundation has decided to go forward with the 4-poster tick project though, collecting funds from private and public sources. Weaver quotes Randy Parsons of the Nature Conservancy, saying, “At some point we’d like to get to a place where people don’t feel like prisoners in their own homes.” While I relate very much so to the sentiment attached to feeling kicked out of nature or trapped in my home, I can’t see how the benefits of these proposed answers outweigh their implications and risks. People of Eastern Long Island would greatly benefit from lessened deer and tick populations, but in anthropocentric misguidedness we have begun to overlook that the cost very well could be poisoning our own ecosystem.

The Human- Animal relationship: why you should keep your friends close, but your anemones closer.

By Jenna Martuscello

The different ideological standpoints that people hold towards nature often influence or come into alignment with their morals regarding animals. Many people are exposed primarily to mediated representations of animals such as television characters or animals displayed in zoos. By separating the human and animal world, society’s (mis)understandings of nature are taking over actual experiences. Throughout all of the pieces I reviewed this week, there was an emphasis on how humans perceive animals, how humans feel more powerful than them, and how society’s institutionalized misconceptions of animals create barriers between humans and animals. When people have detached or dominating feelings towards animals they lose site of the vital importance all creatures have to the global ecosystem.

As discussed by Julia B. Corbett in Communicating Nature, our perception of animals are “impossible to divorce pop culture messages from.”(178). She highlights that it is impossible to remove your understanding of animals away from your epistemological background. What is even more troubling in our understanding of animals is that it is an understanding based upon human, not animal, experience. When we describe situations or movements taken by animals, we explain them in humanistic terms, humans anthropomorphize creatures because we know no other way to explain their lived experience.  I find what she says to be exactly correct in the sense that we cannot fully understand animals as we construct them by our terms, but then I also Alice Walker’s empathy for Blue to be an almost full understanding of an animal by a human.

In Am I Blue? author Alice Walker, is able to understand and communicate appreciation as well as sadness with Blue, a neighbor’s horse who is kept by himself. We are assuming that Blue waiting by the tree is his appreciation and that his actions after his mate got taken were grief, but I don’t believe that these assumptions are ungrounded. Walker’s writing brings to light the very special connection that people can share with animals if they choose to. As her writing is a memoir, we read it like thoughts of our own; we are able to understand her experience. When she says that the animals have not changed, she touches on the fact that our relationships with animals are heavily influenced and constructed by media and other outside influences. While Corbett notes that younger children are actually the most indifferent towards animal’s existence, it is not how much they care that is important but that their understanding is on still being shaped. When children experience an animal they are not as ingrained with the binaries of communication that adults are; children assume to understand in the same way Walker does- because how could you not?

In The Cove viewers learn the history of activist Richard O’Barry, a former trainer for the show “Flipper” turned dolphin liberator. O’Barry describes how his relationship with one of the dolphins and his experience with her depression and ultimate suicide was what changed his mind about animal’s rights. Dolphins are one of the animals where in which people think have worthy sentience and cute enough for people to not want others to kill. Unfortunately, as shown in The Cove, they do not rank above whales and that many efforts to help stop the mass killings of dolphins in Japan are often overlooked. I also felt that it is surprising that this film was not as popular as Blackfish, which contained a similar subject matter, but was much less gruesome, and about orca whales. Unsurprisingly many animals, including dolphins and pigs, are looked over regardless of proved intelligence and emotional capacity. As we are able to understand Walker’s connection with Blue, we are utterly horrified at the fishermen’s brutal slaughters of dolphins. When the audience is finally shown the footage of the killings they cannot help but go through multiple levels of shock and disgust. Witnessing people so detached from the screams of dying animals is a jolting realization to most regardless of their stance on animal rights.

How we approach animals is also constructed through whether we consider them a threat or not. Predatory animals, “pests,” and insects often incur the wrath of humans due to their perceived notions of danger and disease. The dominant view towards animals is an anthropomorphic one in which we should and do have the power to control or eliminate specific species. In Dwellings Linda Hogan touches on how the relationships humans have created with predators, specifically wolves, is one of competition where people must fight them for food or territory. This “us vs. them” mentality and relationship though creates issues for not only predators, but our entire ecosystem. When humans look at the world as only theirs, they ignore how all creatures work towards the proper sustainability of the world. Demonizing predators ultimately helps no one, but also works to sever the intrinsic connections we feel with animals that both Walker and Hogan describe. Hogan’s accounts of Native American tribes dying from eating poisoned meat left for wolves’ works to bring the reader more aligned with a positive view of wolves and overall nature. She does this by literally humanizing the murders of wolves and therefore bringing to light the suffering and complete disregard towards general life that those in power have.

In the article I found from MSNBC, “Progress for elephants, and for the animals rights movement,” author Peter Singer looks to celebrate the victory of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey’s Circus decision to phase out use of elephants.  Singer also uses this article as a way to convey that animal rights have come leaps and bounds. His response to the question of whether animal rights have really progressed conveys a sense of experience and therefore an opinion you should be able to trust. His analysis of our progression though is one that is supposed to convey positive evolution to the reader who may not know the in’s and out’s of Animal Rights Politics as he does.

Giving a Frack.

By Jenna Martuscello

When Sandra Steingraber discusses our society’s approach towards energy sources she uses the metaphor of an alcoholic burning through whatever alcohol he can find until he burns out. Using this type of comparison humanizes the issue, you are saddened as you realize that you have been enabling this addiction. Throughout Raising Elijah your perspective on environmental issues are shifted towards how personal these large issues can be. As it is written in memoir format, you flow easily between stories of her children to detailed descriptions on endocrine disruptors. By formatting issues like chemical run-off from fracking within reference to her everyday life, you are able to detach from the dominant ideas that mass media might want to sway you towards.

How Steingraber drums up comparisons between the ways in which we respond to different issues in society are also very insightful. In chapter seven when she compares our handling of the climate crisis to the handling of her possible rabies contamination she proves that we are capable of taking care of issues to the point of their dissemination. While a man might come to your home to tell you how to keep bats out and prevent rabies, no one is going to help you find better ways of insulation or plant a garden to aid in energy and efficiency. “I began to wonder why we don’t bring a rabies approach- with its urgent, multitiered, take-no-chances, can-do lines of attack- to climate change.” Steingraber shows a large disconnect in the way that we have reacted to climate change as an actual crisis. If our society is able to err on the side of caution, than why are we not with CO2 emissions?  And don’t we realize that our unpreparedness will leave us with much worse than a series of shots?

The most shocking perspective though was that presented in Gasland. Filmmaker Josh Fox set off to learn about fracking after being offered money by an energy company to use his land. What the audience is shown are multiple accounts of contaminated water and sick people. Even more shocking is when they light water on fire as it runs out of a tap, or gather plastics to the surface with a butane torch. Gasland relies heavily on shock value, but it is the shock that brings viewers to a better understanding of how dangerous hydrolicfracturing can be.

What both Steingraber and Fox do well though is show how environmental dangers, especially those from fracking, move downstream and affect society on so many levels. By saying no to fracking, you are saying yes to preserving your environment, keeping your drinking water clean, but even more so doing these things for the whole of society. In their hopes for a new Saudi Arabia, those in power have been negligent and disrespectful to our world. In their hopes for prosperity they forsake parts of their humanity, they forget how interconnected we all are. Fracking process wastes that settle into ground water wells create non-ingestible water that is now a part of the water cycle. When we contaminate small areas we still contaminate the entire system. 

Steingraber’s memoirist style allows you to relate to her struggles as well on a family/ household level. When she speaks about mowing the lawn or planting her own garden, you too want to strive for that kind of dedication. While she is probably aware of this, she does not discuss the implications for people who are not even able to have those kind of experiences. Her analysis and answers to environmental issues, while not any less important, do not give answers or help to those who do not have yards. We can all do our best to help, but just as no one teaches us how be more environmentally aware at home, not one actively works to lessen the amounts of pollution and marginalization that affects those in many working class urban areas. People who have yards may be more encouraged to fight against fracking or pollution as they have a more direct connection with their landscapes. If fracking in New York State had not been stopped this past December, millions of New York City inhabitants would have begun drinking water that was coming from fracked areas, but how many of them would have known that?

What Gasland also works to do is to show the corruption within the energy companies, their affiliates, and the ways in which people are kept from getting help. While companies would bring people giant containers of water to “replace” the now tainted water, they cannot replace the damage they have done to the land. Even for those who now have clean water, they cannot escape the toxicity of chemical runoff as it is now a part of their local water cycle. In “The Fracking of Rachel Carson” Steingraber talks about the “millions of gallons per well” of fresh water that are pumped into the ground during fracking which never return. The amount of water that fracking takes from our environment whether through drilling or contamination will never be able to “replaced”. Some of that water actually never comes back, and the rest of it now puts further contaminates into the global water cycle.

Dear Governor Cuomo was the most different piece we encountered this week, as it was really a combination of many medias. By combining music, firsthand accounts, scientific evidence, and activist concern, Dear Governor Cuomo uses the multiple different ways in which media can be used to express emotion and concern; Actors/ activists inspire people due to their Hollywood iconic images, when someone sees Marc Ruffalo thinking something is important, they think it is important too. And while Marc Ruffalo is absolutely not the reason everyone came together to make Dear Governor Cuomo, the pieces attachment to celebrity artists as well as scientists give the message a larger boost.

The New York Times article “New Research Links Scores of Earthquakes to Fracking Wells Near a Fault in Ohio” by Michael Wines discusses how fracking has led to underground fault line slips and ultimately earthquakes in the surrounding areas. While this article is more technical than personal, the article addresses directly and clearly that fracking is the direct cause of the earthquakes. By leaving out personal accounts, readers of this article lack what they took away from the works of Fox and Steingraber; they do not worry immediately about the people who live in the surrounding area. 

For Every Action there is an Equal and Opposite Reaction

By Jenna Martuscello

Human responses to the environment may stem out of their early experiences with nature, but also grow out of their reactions to how their environment changes around them. The materials covered this week showed us the ways in which people have reacted to the environment and the ways in which we have harmed it. While many may people may not originally believe that environmental issues are important to them, when they recognize how hurting the earth hurts it’s people, they are able to rally behind the cause.

In the film A Fierce Green Fire, the true roots of grassroots activism are shown as people recognize their need to take action in order to preserve their ways of living. Through original news and documentary footage of the event, the viewers are able to see the destruction of their community as they had experienced. The people of Love Canal could have been seen to exemplify the American working class suburban neighborhood of the late 20^th century. After chemical waste dumping in their area by a near-by factory began to affect them, they decided to take action. The plant which dumped the chemicals in Love Canal was one where people of the community had worked. Before they discovered how badly they were being affected by the chemicals and waste products, many though of the employer as a part of the community. As many female workers later came to realize, it was their work at the factory and later their proximity to the dumped chemicals that made them and their children so sick.

The families of Love Canal were able to see chemical run off come in through their basement foundations as well as their front lawns. The footage that shows the colorful contamination in real-time allows the viewer to engage in the same shock and outrage. When multiple women discovered their frequency of miscarriages as well as the birth defects that were showing up in their children, they knew it was the chemicals at fault. As they pushed for further investigations and relocation of their families, the government and chemical companies resisted. Love Canal was only able to become an environmental movement because the people had no choice but to react. While they worked and fought for justice, it only came once they threatened those in power. 

Similarly, the rubber plant workers of the Amazon in Brazil originally had no significant ties or commitments to keeping the environment safe, until they recognized the impact that deforestation would have on their personal community. Many people come to their environmental belief not through learned actions, but necessary reactions. They saw that they would lose not only their jobs and way of life, but also their homes and land. Both stories within A Fierce Green Fire engage the viewers by relating the stories and controversies to that of the “common man”. People are willing to engage deeply with the stories of both the people of the Amazon and Love Canal because they feel as though they can relate to their struggles. The amount of powerlessness that we witness those people going through is one that most people not only have experienced but live in fear of.

A Fierce Green Fire and the film in class on Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring highlight how our government, private corporations, and banks will simply continue to devastate the world unless more people begin to react. The images in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring were not only shocking, but horrifyingly ironic; DDT companies spraying down people almost directly in their faces with deadly insecticides in order to prove their point that it was safe. As tons of fish and birds died around them, the government and pesticide companies continued to deny how dangerous the use of these insecticides were, all because they wanted the profit. In return, they would say that Rachel Carson’s claims were not true and “hysterical,” a line they later tried to use with the women of Love Canal.

While Thoreau and Bill McKibben often subscribe to the idea of removing oneself from these denatured situations and trying to find their homes in the forest, these are not ideals attainable by the majority of our population. While someone like McKibben may have the money or resources to build himself a home away from society, many of the people shown in A Fierce Green Fire did not even own land or have the possibility to leave. McKibben, Wendell, and Thoreau all held degrees from highly regarded Ivy League schools and were able to attain a more affluent lifestyle. Before retreating to his forest home, McKibben worked for years as a New York Times column writer. While great nature writers, appreciators, and advocates, these men did not suffer or hurt in the same way that someone from Love Canal had. The relationships with nature that subjects in A Fierce Green Fire had did not come out of the appreciation for how a hawk flaps its wings, but from the necessity of our planet to be actually livable by communities of people.

As shown in Chapter Three of “Communicating Nature”, the idea of environmentalism being a white elite issue is no longer the case. Most Americans acknowledge and support the idea of stopping pollution and the overuse of CO2 production, not as many as 20 years ago maybe, but still a large amount. As easy as Corbett’s text is to read though, this chapter is bogged down with statistics which makes it less fun to read. While trying to convey that the environment is a problem for everyone, it seemed very much like things I had heard before. This point was put across much better in A Fierce Green Fire when interviewee Robert Bullard says that the air we breathe is not only for whites, or blacks, or Latinos; our planet’s water and air are used and shared by everyone. The actions and reactions we have and take towards ending our corruption of the earth’s resources is a job for all people. We must make sure that we don’t allow environmental responsibility or justice to lie with those in charge, as they are not always looking to help those at the bottom.

The article I found is by BBC reporter Dave Shuckmen called “Will the falling oil price undermine green energy?”. Schuckmen’s question throughout the piece is whether the current falling oil prices will make people less inclined to rally behind the need for alternative energy sources. This piece is important and relevant as it shows how we react when we believe the earth is or is not in crisis. While many of us may ignore the need for alternatives because we are happy with our cheaper oil, it does not excuse the fact that oil is an exhaustible resource and one that is very much involved with the damaging of our planet. While his writing is fact and statistic heavy, it is easier to read and digest as he breaks things into smaller paragraphs. Because this article is from a very large news conglomerate, ease of access to the type of writing is critically important. Shuckman is more able to have readers understand him as they are not turned away by heavy research. Articles like this allow those who may not have much knowledge on CO2 emissions and the energy crisis a better and somewhat comprehensive understanding. 

As mentioned in A Fierce Green Fire, President Reagan removed the White House’s solar panels once oil prices dropped. Cheapening oil prices may allow consumers to ignore problems with how our oil is obtained, where it comes from, and whether we should be using it at all. Once it begins to rise in price again, we will have to wait and see how the general populace reacts to the truth behind their ignorance.

Jenna Martuscello -- Blog 1: Climate Change

By Jenna Martuscello

The way in which an individual responds to issues such as climate change has to do with their personal environmental ideology and where it stems from. While we like to consider ourselves independent and free-thinking, it is hard to ignore the ways in which our beliefs and values are influence by the world around us. Through the multiple and varied ways in which we communicate nature to ourselves and one-another, society creates dominant conversations and thoughts about our environment.

When thinking about environmental media, it is important to remember that media is a form of mediation, an arbitration of sorts between the creator of the media and you. The goal behind any form of media is not only to entertain, but to put a specific point across- whether it be a story, an emotion, or fact. How we respond to issues of the environment often stems out of what types of environmental media we have experienced, but when we become aware of our ignorance we become able to view critically.

As discussed in Julie Corbett’s Communicating Nature, direct experiences with nature are on the decline. Direct experiences are those considered to be actual physical contact and activity in natural settings, possibly with non-human species, but undirected. Two young friends who go into the woods near their neighborhood to explore and climb trees would be considered as having a direct experience. More often people are having indirect experiences, which are “natural experiences” controlled by humans, like zoos or aquariums. Media, advertising, and entertainment further pull us out of nature, often showing us images of what we think or expect nature to be without ever going there ourselves. And with the increase of technology and screens, the normality of vicarious or symbolic experiences will only become more normal.

If people do not view environmental media critically, they may not stop to question what is actually being said to them at all. The danger in this is that what is often considered a dominant ideology may not always be the one that helps you as an individual. When it comes to the crisis of climate change, many do not realize the personal danger they or their family are in because they listen to dominant ideologies. Being a critical reader of environmental messages does not mean turning completely away from dominant thoughts, but instead evaluating them and pulling what you can find to be true vs. what you know to be untrue.

The New York Times’ article “As Mexico Addresses Climate Change, Critics Point to Shortcomings” by Victoria Burnett is a recent critique on the amount of action and inaction that the country has taken in the fight against climate change. The tone of the article works to keep the reader interested in fighting climate change by showing the position of the people vs. their government. While overall Burnett is mediating the message that change needs to happen in Mexico, she doesn’t seem to be telling the whole story.

As we were informed in class, there is no official regulation on the reporting or collecting of data when it comes to the United Nations agreements on climate change. And while Burnett mentions Mexico’s diligent reporting, she does not tell the reader Mexico shows a greater commitment to these agreements than many of our leading nations. Further she uses Mexico being the 13th largest contributor of Co2 emissions without framing how badly they have transgressed in comparison to other countries. Mexico’s emissions are more than ten times less than the United States 2013 count, and over twenty times less than the world’s current leader in C02, China. In the film Earth 2100 we are given a dim view of our future. One scene in particular shows a mass exodus and eventual rioting of people who need to leave drought and death stricken Mexico and Central America for the U.S. The sad irony of Earth 2100 though was that nowhere was safe from the devastation and destruction that climate change had brought. The U.S itself was almost in complete shambles.

When looking at this article through a different ideology it becomes possible to touch upon nuances that previous did not stand out. The ecofeminist ideology believes that the oppression of women, races, classes, and nature stem from the same system dynamic. When analyzing issues of society an ecofeminist viewpoint also touches on the ways in which our governmental systems work to keep these oppressive systems in place. In the documentary Everything’s Cool, the interconnectedness of our government representatives and private oil and power companies are exposed. The U.S and global neoliberal dichotomy of money over people has given those with power selfish, monetarily-based excuses to not address climate change head on. Kick-backs from oil and coal-fueled power companies keep the upper classes happy and wealthy, and ignorant to the amount of devastation the rest of us are experiencing. While the documentary intended for the viewers to realize that corruption existed, by following all the ways in which the system is corrupted can we see how oppressions of nature, class, race, and gender connect.

In the article Barnett writs that Mexico is still considered a developing nation. This term can be taken as archaic and imperial, especially when taking into consideration that the small amount of countries considered “developed” are majority English speaking, white, or European. And the few which are not (like Japan) are ones that experienced extreme western intervention at one or many parts of their history. When you look at the majority of the countries within the top twenty producers of C02, it is important to recognize how many of those countries became that way due to western influence and imperialization. Taking an Ecofeminist perspective on the matter, the “developed” nations in many ways created the industry or lack of industry in most countries, starting from before colonization. The patriarchal white supremacist way of thinking of these other countries was that their people and resources could be exploited, as long as our westernized countries prospered. As Burnett portrays the people of “underdeveloped” nations critiquing their countries for not doing enough against climate change; she puts the blame on their own people and not the larger systemic causes at hand.