Why Is the Solution to Pollution, Dilution? Dr. Max Liboiron Talks ‘Pollution is Colonialism’
The Environmental Humanities Research Center hosted a virtual meeting with Dr. Max Liboiron to discuss how environmental science intersects with colonialism on Oct. 20. The founder of CLEAR, a lab that specializes in plastic pollution research while maintaining good land relations, Dr. Liboiron delved into their book “Pollution is Colonialism,” which discusses colonialism, environmental science and anti-colonial methods practiced through academia writing.
The event began by acknowledging the Tongva and Acjachemen tribes in Irvine. Dr. Liboiron spoke from Bishop’s Cove, a Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and thanked the Beothuk tribe for their land. To Dr. Liboiron, land acknowledgment emphasizes the importance of land relations included in all disciplines of research.
With this in mind, Dr. Liboiron stated that conquest, slavery, and genocide are colonialism but so is “appropriating cultural designs for fashion, accessing land images through satellites [and] beach cleanups without permission or consent.”
“Something that could be good in one register, like environmental or anti-racist, can still be colonial,” Dr. Liboiron said.
Dr. Liboiron displayed a graph of assimilative capacity, the ability of an environment to purify itself of pollutants. The intersecting lines of pollution and absorption capacity created a “sweet spot” that allows pollutants to contaminate an area without detrimental effect. It is used to monitor water quality. However, achieving this “sweet spot” requires indigenous land.
Afterward, Dr. Liboiron segued into the practice of anti-colonial methods through academic writing. Referring to their book, instead of uniting “two diametrically opposed audiences” for the sake of “equality,” Dr. Liboiron kept them distinct. At least a third of the footnotes clarify certain facts or analyses that may be considered offensive or controversial. The book does not omit social class disparity and holds settlers accountable for their actions.
Finally, Dr. Libioron ended the lesson with a Q&A. Jiwon Kim, a Ph.D. student from John Hopkins University, mentioned that they watched local villagers in Java Island confront an NGO publicizing the illegal trade of plastic waste, the people’s main source of income. Kim asked if it was of any significance.
Dr. Liboiron’s response referred back to the “solution to pollution is dilution” mantra, and that dilution has to happen somewhere else in “somebody’s lands, bodies and air.”
They added that “well-intentioned NGOs using damaged-centered narratives” to describe people’s living situations can “fuel an anti-indigenous state to clear slums and take their livelihood.”
