Environment

Gwangju: Home of Hope and Climate Action

Gwangju News

By Julian Warmington

Hello. Welcome. Please come in, sit down, and be comfortable. We have a lot to chat about and no time to spare, nor much space within these pages.

The time has already begun in which we need each other’s skills and support to survive. Local community bonds grow all the more vital. Yet this is one paradox of many we must confront: This need for face-to-face community connection comes at a time when industrial-strength distraction by glowing electronic devices results in increased isolation and disastrous disinformation. 

The last three years of the pandemic have not helped. The virus appears to be on the wane, outside China, at least. Our industrial climate crisis, however, is only just getting warmed up. Or is it? What is it? Why do some folks so steadfastly disbelieve it, and how can others think recycling their little bit of plastic can somehow help?

The challenge to the people of Gwangju on May 18, 1980 was direct and deadly. The people responded with courage and in unity. But our industrial greenhouse gas crisis is more dangerous because it is not an external threat that wears an easily identifiable uniform. It is our own industrial lifestyles and the people within governments and corporations that do not provide better alternatives.

What causes our industrial greenhouse gas effect and what can we really do about it, especially if the largest cities and the national governments are full of industry-paid science deniers? In a mediascape so awash with false information, whom can we trust for a true-north sense of direction? What value is hope when so many speak of the ugly reality of our situation, even in and around the good city of Gwangju?

These are the types of topics we’ll share in these pages over the next issues of the Gwangju News. I’d love your company for the journey and feedback on content, even if you think my views and information are all simply hogwash and chicken spit. 

Let’s start on the topic of hope, because the good city of Gwangju offers a history of naturally working together when faced with massive danger. I’ve lived in Gwangju for most of a decade’s worth of May 18 commemorations. It always seems to be a time of both mourning, and yet also – at least in some small part – a celebration of how people within the great town of light spontaneously worked together against the dark northern forces that surrounded and directly threatened the people and place. 

The original hockey stick graph that charts how global average temperatures were trending downward until the burning of coal became common from the start of the industrial revolution within just a few countries. Note that the rate of increase in temperatures is not a slow, gradual “incremental” rise, but instantly, like the steepest part of an exponential growth curve. (Wikipedia.com)

Author Lee Jae-eui survived the massacre and was tortured for his activism. He says in Gwangju Diary (1985), a sense of unity and purpose was inspired by brave and hardworking taxi drivers: “The taxis’ bonding together was such a strong display of people power that it inspired others to join in the movement and defend their freedom.” Despite the trauma of seeing friends and fellow citizens killed in front of them, Mr. Lee and many other citizens went to City Hall to organize the defense of the city. The people took the initiative to think creatively, to problem-solve together, on an emergency basis, and take great risks because it was a life-or-death emergency. It is exactly this type of sense of urgent unity we need to develop and promote, for it is the greatest asset in our new struggle. 

And we have already tipped over the edge of this ledge of time, into the life-or-death era of our industrial greenhouse gas pollution-based climate emergency: the West Antarctic ice sheet, Thwaite’s glacier, the Siberian tundra, and glaciers in Greenland and Iceland are all melting “faster than expected;” dangerously high heat temperature records are being broken ever more quickly all around our global village, and most recently with this winter’s heatwave in Europe; flora, fauna, and other living species are migrating to unusual new homes, disrupting old ecosystems; Seoul flooded twice in the last six years; tornado season is increasingly dangerous; drought and heat exhaustion are regular threats to our basic health; and food price shocks will continue to spike and shoot upwards.

Gwangju International Day sees many locally based migrant workers and expats come together to share food, fun, and creativity with other locals and locally based people.

As if these troubling new realities somehow still do not cause you alarm, maybe more frightening still is just how uncaring and clearly captured by corporate influence are our supposedly honestly elected politicians. They do much worse than nothing: English-speaking industrialized nations continue to work together to actively obstruct progress at international climate action meetings as they have done for decades. They do this in many ways: by providing places at these meetings for fossil fuel industry-based lobbyists and then listening to them far too closely; and by spying on governments from other countries and then brainstorming and coordinating ways to defeat their plans to reduce industrial greenhouse gas pollution. Given the huge challenge of this set of problems, what change can we possibly hope to make?

Well, despite all the many problems we face, Gwangju is also ground zero for hope and climate action within South Korea, and here are some reasons why. 

Firstly, our industrial climate crisis is a social justice issue nearly as much as it is environmental. Our climate emergency is a social justice issue because it is the longer-industrialized nations that have both created and benefitted from the most greenhouse gas pollution. These same countries have the best systems in place to withstand the effects of catastrophic weather events like floods or droughts, such as the insurance industry and early warning systems. Less industrially developed economies contribute almost nothing to the industrial greenhouse gas effect, and yet suffer the most. For example, the year 2022 saw fully a third of all land in Pakistan lost under floodwaters.

The privilege of benefiting from fossil fuel-based technology brings with it the responsibility to end the damage from those industrial strength impacts on the rest of the global village. The good folks of Gwangju are most likely to understand and act on this challenge because they have a heightened awareness of social justice. The city has held the annual Gwangju Prize for Human Rights since the year 2000, hosting some of the most exciting and important social justice heroes from around our global village these days. Joining in and supporting demands for fairness and equity in our own towns and nations is possibly the most important thing we can all do for other humans. 

The Kia EV6: A pure electric private autocar, and one of the best on the market around the world these days. (https://www.autodaily.com.au/new-kia-ev6-specs-confirmed-sporty-ev6-gt-joins-line-up/)

Secondly, the Kia car factory in Gwangju produces pure electric cars. The move to make the world’s fleet of vehicles run on pure electricity as soon as possible is vitally important for three reasons: It reduces the toxic gas-powered car fumes that cause brain damage, especially in children; it reduces the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; and it limits the financial power of older, more corrupt gas-powered auto car manufacturers who could and should have gone pure electric decades ago. 

Kia and Hyundai cars are now in an elite set of just a few automakers in the world successfully producing and exporting large numbers of top-quality, pure electric cars. As a result, Kia and Hyundai are more likely to survive as car companies over the rest of this decade, which will see most older car companies merge or disappear altogether. Such is the benefit of doing the right thing before it is trendy. But this also means that Gwangju’s economy will remain relatively stable while also contributing some very real climate action.

But not everyone can afford to buy nor even rent a pure electric car. There are, however, other ways we can all contribute to the cultural and political changes we need to see happen immediately. Just as Chung Hyun-hwa pointed out in her Gwangju News column in November 2021 (issue #237), our daily mealtime decisions do contribute hugely to our regular weekly carbon footprint. Schools around Gwangju were joining in the Meat-free Mondays movement and going vegetarian more than ten years before this writing, leading the way in yumminess and awareness, proving it is not just possible, healthy, and smart but also very delicious to help the environment. 

The problems with animal fat-based foods. This infographic is from the Netflix documentary Cowspiracy, released in 2014. That year an Oxford University professor started a five-year-long study to disprove this information. He was an omnivore at the start of the research. He proved this information to himself and converted to eating purely plant-based within a year. (https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.cofc.edu/dist/7/826/files/2016/10/Cowspiracy-Infographic-2-1012×1024-197ph6p.png)

Students at Seoul National University, Ewha Womans University, and Oxford University in the UK are among the most famous to also support animal fat-free restaurants and options on the menu within their cafeterias. A five-year-long study published by Oxford University on the impacts of food saw the lead researcher go vegan within that first year of research. The Guardian explained the finding of Professor Joseph Poore’s study in an article titled “Avoiding Meat and Dairy Is the ‘Single Biggest Way’ to Reduce Your Impact on Earth.”

Gwangju students and teachers identified these facts long ago, acting upon them, thereby leading the way within the South Korean education system in caring for the beauty of the Korean countryside and the natural world beyond. This is important because choosing plant-based options and organizing our kitchens as well as school and workplace cafeterias to provide such delicious options regularly is the most achievable and affordable climate action we can all make happen, immediately and daily, however wealthy or less privileged we may be. 

Hope is a verb: It is a thing we must do to make new opportunities for our shared tomorrows. Hope is also an antidote to the modern affliction of climate despair that so many people feel, however much they have the opportunity to express it within a media culture more interested in appearance and less in substantial matters. 

In this still from the documentary Dark Snow, USA field scientist Jason Box “describes how human action is negatively impacting the environment. The most compelling proof comes from the ice sheet, which is three times the area of France.” (https://madfeed.co/video/dark-snow/)

But false hope is the curse of modern media. Thinking that doing our weekly recycling, buying soy milk, or driving an electric car will somehow re-freeze the eons-frozen glaciers and polar regions is a deadly dangerous delusion. Over the coming weeks, we will look at the false hope of greenwashing and also the role of media, in addition to surviving beyond the era of industrial-strength misinformation. It will be a challenge to live up to the high standard of articles Chung Hyun-hwa has contributed with such good attention to detail on facts and figures. 

But what do you think? How can we best contribute to a mass mobilization of effective action to reduce this city’s and nation’s greenhouse gas pollution by 10 percent per year? What do you actually do to reduce the enormity of our problem right now and prepare for more of the impacts? Does your cafeteria or cafe offer your favorite animal fat-free options? Have you convinced your principal or school board to put solar panels on your school rooftops yet? Or do you regularly demand and oversee calls for structural change at a national or international level?

Please send your ideas, information, and achievements to me at Julian.Gwangju@gmail.com, subject heading: GN Environment Column. I’ll work to include mention of your email in the next column. Until then please stay safe, sociable, and enjoy the year’s upcoming spring sunshine.

The Author

Julian Warmington taught for twenty years at the university level in South Korea, half of which he spent in Gwangju. He established and ran the Busan Climate Action Film Festival, has given presentations internationally on teaching about environmental issues within ESL lessons and curricula, and misses visiting downtown Gwangju’s vegan buffet restaurant.