S5 E4: Up to Heaven and Down to Hell

Scene on Radio: Capitalism

Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University

Society & Culture, Audiodoc, Radio, Documentary, Stories

4.9 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2021

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Why has the United States played such an outsized role in the creation of the climate crisis? As a settler nation, the U.S. emerged from the colonizing, capitalist West, but what did America and its cultural peculiarities bring to the party? Part 4 of our series, The Repair, on the climate emergency.

Researched and written by this season’s co-host, Amy Westervelt, produced and mixed by host John Biewen. Interviews with Colin Jerolmack, Darren Dochuk, Melissa Aronczyk, Bob Brulle, and the Rev. Lennox Yearwood.

The series editor is Cheryl Devall. Music in this episode by Lili Haydn, Kim Carroll, Chris Westlake, Lesley Barber, Cora Miron, and goodnight Lucas. Music consulting by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.

The Repair is supported by Scene on Radio listener-donors, and by the International Women’s Media Foundation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Season 5 is made possible in part by you, listeners who have supported our show and by the
0:07.8	International Women's Media Foundation.
0:11.0	Amy, I'm still thinking about this bizarre coincidence of the American oil industry taking
0:18.3	off right at the start of the Civil War and just how kind of weirdly well that ties
0:25.4	into this series.
0:27.1	I know it's almost two on the nose, right?
0:31.7	I have to admit, even though I knew all these dates about the discovery of oil and of
0:36.4	course the start of the Civil War, I hadn't really put that together until I heard Darren
0:40.8	Doecheck talking about it.
0:43.1	He's the religion and oil researcher we heard from last time.
0:47.0	And remember, he talked about guys like Lyman Stewart who fought for the Union at Gettysburg.
0:52.6	There are a driller discovers oil in western Pennsylvania, Stewart will become a founder
0:57.9	of what we now know as Unical, the big oil company.
1:02.5	And Darren Doecheck says oil emerges as a powerful driver of a damaged post-war nation
1:09.7	trying to rebuild itself.
1:11.7	So I just think oil in subsequent decades after the Civil War really assumes a unique
1:18.6	quality more so than let's say coal or other natural resources.
1:24.8	And again the nature of oil searching for it is always mysterious.
1:28.4	So it just lands itself to this mythical, mythological kind of understanding of a nation reborn.
1:35.8	A nation reborn.
1:38.1	This brings to mind what the always brilliant Chandra Ikumanika said in our last season
1:43.1	about the US after the Civil War.
	...

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