Beyond Global Warming: Interacting Ecocrises and the Critical Anthropology of Health

摘要

Human health is at growing risk due to the multiple climatic effects of global warming. More importantly, it is becoming evident that individual ecocrises are not independent phenomenon but are entwined with and contribute to the intensification of other environmental predicaments. In light of a range of imagined futures that share a narrative about global warming that posits the existence of global "winners and losers" (regions that will benefit from and those that will suffer from global warming), this paper examines two specific cases-Midwestern flooding during the summer of 2008 and the accelerating degradation of the Sacramento Delta. These examples, expressions of convergent ecocrises, here termed pluralea interactions, suggest that going beyond global warming reveals the folly of "winner and loser" thinking. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the health impacts of intersecting ecocrises for directions in medical anthropology. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]