Engineering and Re-engineering Earth:\ud Industrialized Harvesting of Ireland’s\ud Peatlands and its Aftermath

摘要

Such has been the transformation of the planet Earth by human activity over the last\ud200 years thatWood (2009), quoting scientist Paul Crutzen, has suggested that geologists\udshould henceforth refer to these two centuries as the “anthropocene” period.\udIn that time, according to Wood, humans have reshaped about half of the Earth’s\udsurface. While some of this reshaping has been unintended, for the most part it has\udconstituted deliberate engineering, that is, the application of science, technology\udand know-how to achieve particular ends. The result has been the transformation\udof the earth, identified by Kates (1987) as one of the key strands of the analysis\udof human/environment relations, and one of the core concerns of geography as an\udacademic discipline.\ud“Earth” being a concept with many meanings, here we use it to refer to the surface\udof our planet, which provides the environment for human habitation, and that\udthin layer of earth’s crust underneath the surface from which humans derive most of\udthe resources which sustain their civilization. The term “earth engineering,” therefore,\uddescribes both the restructuring of the earth and the extraction of its resources\udin order to facilitate human occupation and subsistence. While much of the earth\udengineering which has occurred to date consists of small and localized incremental\udalterations, as human technology has advanced so has the scale of earth-engineering\udinterventions, leading to a rising frequency in the incidence of the megaengineering\udprojects which are the focus of the current volume.\udThis chapter focuses on one such project, that is, the large scale mechanized\udharvesting of peat from Irish bogs, a project which has been ongoing for more than\udseven decades and is likely to continue for at least two more. In its areal impact, this\udproject represents the most extensive episode of planned earth engineering in Ireland\udsince the transformation of the island’s agricultural landscape associated with the commercialization of farming in the 17th and 18th centuries (Aalen, Whelan, &\udStout, 1997). This is a fascinating story in terms of the development and utilization\udof appropriate technologies, the extent of landscape transformation involved, and\udthe social and economic impacts of this transformation on the areas affected.\udThe remainder of the chapter outlines the physical/environmental and historical\udbackground to the launching of the peat harvesting project in the 1930s, provides\uda descriptive account of the development of mechanized peat harvesting and processing,\udand analyzes the socioeconomic impact of this development in the areas\udaffected. It concludes with an assessment of the likely uses to which the residual\udpeatlands will be put following the cessation of peat extraction, representing a second\udexercise in earth engineering which, in terms of the complex issues involved,\udmay prove to be even more challenging than the first.