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New Technologies and
Catastrophic Risks:
Hubris in the Anthropocene
Majia Nadesan
Fourth Annual Conference of the Governance of Emerging Technologies: Law, Politics and
Ethics
May 24-26, 2016
Tempe Mission Palms Hotel and Conference Center
Tempe Mission Palms Hotel and Conference Center, in Tempe, Arizona, on May 24-26, 2016
Session 5.2: Managing New Technology Risks
Moderator: Cynthia Selin, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, ASU
Emerging Technologies and Catastrophic Risks
•Theoretical Grounding:
•Risk Society and Catastrophic Risks (Ulrich Beck)
•Exacerbated by Centralization (Charles Perrow)
•Emerging Technologies Studied
•“Financialization”: Innovative financial contracts and trading technologies
•New Carbon-Extractive Technologies: Deepwater drilling & Fracking
•Nuclear Technologies and Innovations: Uranium-backed securities and MOX
•Thesis: Emerging Technology Crises Illustrate Hubris in the Anthropocene:
•21st Century Financial Crises; BP Oil Spill; Fukushima Daiichi
Structural Foundations
of Risk Society:
Assemblages in Finance & Energy
Organized by Extractive Logics and
Innovations
Consolidated Ownership and Decision Making Across
Assemblages: Complexes in the Network Society
•Concentrated ownership,
especially in finance and
energy
Consolidated Wealth and Control
•1318 corps. control 60% of global revenues
•“Super entity” of 147 (financial) corporations, controlled 40% of entire network
•734 “top holders of stock accumulate 80% of the control over the value of all
TNCs”
•“Network control is much more unequally distributed than wealth. In particular,
the top ranked actors hold a control ten times bigger than what could be expected
based on their wealth” (Vitali, Glattfelder, and Battiston, 36)
Financial, Oil, and Nuclear Complexes
•Common ownership, organizational logics, and problem-solution frames:
•Risk-seeking & growth dependent
•Innovation around extractive technologies
•Externalize full costs of hazards produced by operations
•“Financialization” amplifying systemic risks (bubbles, over-production,
institutionalization)
•Prone to lack of transparency and fraud
•Produces communications that mystify “innovation” and deify
corporations
•Regulatory capture
CASE I: Financial Crises 2007-2008 and 2015-
Present
•Extractive, Risk-seeking Behavior and
Fraud drove (2007-2008) Financial Crisis
•New financial instruments & algorithmic
trading
•Crisis Outcomes: Moral Hazard; More
Wealth Consolidation; Commodity Bubble
•Crises Ahead: Bankruptcies in Energy;
Declining Living Standards, Environmental
Destruction Zak Slayback. Feb 25 2016. The Fed Fracked The Frackers: How Government Exacerbated the Oil
& Gas Bust, https://medium.com/life-learning/the-fed-fracked-the-frackers-how-government-
exacerbated-the-oil-gas-bust-2aa44374983d#.aquxeg1vt
CASE II: BP Oil Crisis:
2010 Deepwater Horizon
•Reliance on risky new technology
•Risk seeking culture
•Failures of transparency
•Insider Trading in weeks before accident
•Regulatory capture
•Moral hazard via federal military
contracting
"BP Pressing to Head Off Future Claims From Oil Spill" in AZ
Republic page 2 July 9, 2011
"BP is arguing that victims of last year's Gulf oil spill should
not be paid any more claims for future losses because the
areas affected by the spill have recovered and the economy
is improving"
Hiltzick 2014
BP: Substantial Shareholder
Ownership by Most Connected
Corporations (10-12)
2009 annual report, “substantial shareholders”:
JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock Inc. (which had acquired
Barclays Global Investors in 2009), and Legal &
General Group Plc.
Bank of America, State Street Global Advisors, Capital
Research and Management Company, Vanguard and
Franklin Resources
2010 BP relied on 5 financial advisors: Blackstone,
Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and
UBS, with Goldman Sachs serving as BP’s lead
adviser.
BP: Regulatory Capture
•Clifford Krauss. March 13, 2014. U.S. Agrees to Allow BP
Back Into Gulf Waters to Seek Oil. The New York Times
•Steven Mufson. March 13 2014. BP regains ability to bid on
leases for U.S. land, water. The Washington Post
•Danielle Ivory, “BP Wins Most Pentagon Fuel Awards in
Year After Gulf Explosion,” Bloomberg.Com, February 24,
2012,
•BP’s contracts with the military surged 33 percent to $1.35 billion
in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 from $1.02 billion in fiscal
2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Government. BP
received 49 percent more in defense contracts than the No. 2 fuel
supplier, San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp. Image: Louisiana. The Guardian.
BP: Ubiquitous Long Term Effects
“I’ve never seen such a high
prevalence of very sick
animals,” said lead author
Lori Schwacke, a researcher
with the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric
Administration
(NOAA). http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/02/22/
world/dolphins-in-bad-shape-after-bp-oil-spill-
study/#.UwoRHaWyOf0
Kerry Sheridan. April 12, 2016. Baby Dolphin Deaths Linked to BP Oil Spill. Discovery, http://news.discovery.com/animals/whales-dolphins/baby-dolphin-
deaths-linked-to-bp-oil-spill-160412.htm
CASE III: Fukushima Daiichi 2011
•Diet report a “profoundly man made disaster”
•GE and TEPCO had history of accidents and fraud
with Mark I reactors
•TEPCO cannot find reactor cores for reactors 1
and 2 despite muon scanning
•Technology does not exist for removing melted
fuel. The plant is subject to liquefaction
•The costs were socialized by government
TEPCO Creditors, Equity Owners and Uranium
Supply Chains
TEPCO Creditors AND Shareholders:
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., Mizuho
Corporate Bank, and Development Bank of
Japan. Major Share-holder: Daiichi Life
E.G. MUFG #22 Top Control Corporations
Integration, Centralization and
Financialization of Uranium Supply
Chains:
Uranium Participation Corporation (UPC) &
NUFCOR
2014 Senate report, “Wall Street Bank
Involvement with Physical Commodities,”
http://www.tr.mufg.jp/english/aboutmutb/business/corporate.html
Fukushima: A
Contaminated-Water
Generating Machine but
Japan Seeks to Re-Start Idled
Reactors & MOX Fuel
300 tons of contaminated water
accumulates daily.
1,000 massive storage tanks
generate X-rays
German Risk Study predictions
NUCLEAR WATCHMar. 8, 2015 Echoes of 3.11: Fukushima Daiichi Struggle Continues Noriko Okada
Nuclear Watch, NHK (March 8, 2015),
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclearwatch/20150309.html
Fukushima’s
Radiation Refugees
54,000 (due to 5yr
exclusion zone for
areas with 50 mSv
year or more
radiation exposure
(Kasai, 2013 March
11)
Areas 1-19
mSv
considered
safe
https://europasicewolf.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/
discrimination-against-fukushimas-nuclear-
refugees/
http://thefunambulist.net/2013/08/24/topie-
impitoyable-accelerationdeceleration-of-the-
death-process-in-biothanatopolitical-regimes/
Dispossessed People
•Fukushima’s decontamination
workers from the margins of
society are being ‘exploited’ by
Mari Yamaguchi AP Mar 12,
2016 http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/03/12/national/social-
issues/fukushimas-decontamination-workers-from-the-margins-of-society-are-being-
exploited/#.Vzn5kOSYJmw
•They were simply labeled
“decontamination troops” —
unknown soldiers…
Commonalities Across Case Studies
•Centralized ownership
•Centralized decision-making around extractive and externalizing logics
•Risky, innovative technologies
•Hubris and failures of transparency
•Regulatory capture
•Accelerating and irrational ecosystem destruction
Framing of Anthropocene Obscures
Institutional Agency
Framing the Anthropocene
•Atmospheric changes in levels of
CO2, methane, nitrate, and lead
concentrations delimited in “golden
spikes” (1, 2)
•Framing of Anthropocene is a political issue
Exclusive Climate framing dissipates
accountability and responsibility:
•“we’re all responsible for climate
change is the reverse implication that
none of us are—that no one in
particular can be held to account… It
says nothing about inequality. It
ignores structural racism and the
legacy of imperialism. And it lets
capitalism off the hook. ” (Forrester
2016)
Anthropocene Deconstructed:
Anti-Politics & Thanatopolitics
•Dislocate anonymized framings of Anthropocene
•Identify catastrophic risks from extractive, risky technologies mystified by
discourses of innovation
•Reveal “Anti-Politics” (e.g., Purdy After Nature 4)
•Explicate a THANATOPOLITICS of DISPOSSESSION (5), a logic of disregard for
the polis and ecological commons, accompanied by extractive and
externalizing logics, technologies and ideological communication systems
Conclusions: Anthropocene Reframed
•Anti politics and dispossession in Financial Crisis, BP Oil Spill and
Fukushima Nuclear Crisis illustrate:
•Concentrations of ownership, decision-making, and risk
•Extractive logics and risky deployments of innovative technologies
•Technological hubris, moral hazard, and propagandistic communication
Primary Resources
•Arguments from presentation
published in Nadesan, (2016) Crisis
Communication, Liberal Democracy
and Ecological Sustainability.
Lexington
•Arguments developed secondarily
•Nadesan (2013) Fukushima and the
Privatization of Risk, Palgrave
•Nadesan, Boys, McKillop, & Wilcox
(2014) Fukushima: Dispossession or
Denuclearization, Dispossession Press
Endnotes (for sources not otherwise cited on
slides)
1. Described by Katrina Forrester in “stratigraphic terms—denoting when
atmospheric changes significant enough to warrant a break in geological time
took place” with a great acceleration in 1954. Katrina Forrester. The
Anthropocene Truism. Humans and the environment have never been
separable. But what does the idea mean for politics? The Nation, May 12, 2016,
http://www.thenation.com/article/the-anthropocene-
truism/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20C
ampaign&utm_term=daily
2. Epoch-defining study pinpoints when humans came to dominate planet Earth.
UCLA, March 11, 2016, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-
articles/0315/11032015-defining-anthropocene-human-epoch
3. The human epoch. Nature 473(7347) (19 May 2011 online)
doi:10.1038/473254a
Endnotes for sources not included in slides
4. Jedediah Purdy. 2015. After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene. Harvard
University Press.
5. Majia Nadesan. 2016. Crisis Communication, Liberal Democracy, and Ecological
Sustainability: The Threat of Financial and Energy Complexes in the Twenty-First
Century. Lexington.
6. Charles Perrow, The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and
Terrorist Disasters (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 1.
7. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Toward a New Modernity. Sage: London, 1992. 22-23.
8. Ulrich Beck, “The Reinvention of Politics: Towards a Theory of Reflexive Modernization” in Reflexive
Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order Ulrich Beck, Anthony
Giddens, and Scott Lash eds., 1-55 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994): 5-6.
9. Michael Hiltzik. 2014. BP gets slick in trying to undermine gulf oil spill settlement In full-page ads, BP
ridicules payouts it believes are undeserved, including $8 million to famed chef Emeril Lagasse and
$173,000 to an escort service. Los Angeles Times, February 23, 2014,
http://articles.latimes.com/2014/feb/23/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20140221
Endnotes for sources not noted in slides
Endnotes 10-12
BP Austria Aktiengesellschaft Jahresbericht, “Annual Report,” 2009, accessed
January 13, 2016,
http://login.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy1.li
b.asu.edu/docview/1523972709?accountid=4485.
John Collins Rudolf, “Just How British Is BP?” The New York Times, June 14, 2010,
accessed January 14, 2016, http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/just-how-
british-is-bp//
“Goldman Leads the Old Guard to BP's Defence,” Euroweek July 16, 2010, accessed
January 13, 2016,
http://login.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy1.li
b.asu.edu/docview/744219355?accountid=4485.
Images (not referenced in Slides)
•Sources Slide 3
•Oil Field #19a, Belridge CA 2003
•http://www.photoforager.com/archives/edward-burtynsky/oil-fields-19a-belridge-california-
usa-2003
•Noble Drilling Offshore Oil http://oilmanmagazine.com/oilman-archive-1950s-gulf-of-mexico-
early-noble-drilling-offshore-rig/
•Tar sands (‘oil’ sands). Extreme Energy Initiative http://extremeenergy.org/tar-sands-oil-
sands/
•(Operation Teapot Image) Operation Teapot, Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Teapot
•The J. P. Morgan & Company bank building in Manhattan in 1915. Credit Office for
Metropolitan History http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/business/26morgan.html?_r=0
•APOC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Persian_Oil_Company
•Source Slide 22
•Technological Utopia https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CMNZ5H2
Additional Information
•Financial Crisis
•BP Oil Spill
•Fukushima Crisis
#1 Search Image
result for
thanatopolitics
Thatantopolitics
are not
anonymous but
derive from
logics, strategies,
technologies and
policies
Insider Trading at BP?
•Tony Hayward sold off significant amounts of BP stock weeks before the
disaster. Likewise, Goldman Sachs sold off $250 million of BP stock,
constituting 44 percent of their holdings in the first quarter of 2010.
Wachovia, owned by Wells Fargo, sold 98 percent of their BP shares and
UBS sold 97 percent, although the value of the sales was almost one-half of
Goldman’s. Jon Swaine and Robert Winnett, “BP Chief Tony Hayward Sold
Shares Weeks Before Oil Spill,” The Telegraph, June 5, 2010, accessed June
6, 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7804922/BP-chief-Tony-Hayward-sold-shares-weeks-before-oil-spill.html
•John Byrne, “Goldman Sachs Sold $250 Million of BP Stock Before ,” Raw
Story, June 2, 2010, accessed June 3, 2010,
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/06/month-oil-spill-goldman-sachs-sold-
250-million-bp-stock/.
Fukushima: Japanese Diet Report Attributes as
Human Wrought Disaster
The Japanese National Diet’s “The Official Report of the Fukushima Nuclear
Accident Independent Investigation Commission” (2012) executive :
“Although triggered by these cataclysmic events, the subsequent accident at
the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant cannot be regarded as a natural
disaster. It was a profoundly manmade disaster –that could and should
have been foreseen and prevented. And its effects could have been
mitigated by a more effective human response… Our report catalogues a
multitude of errors and wilful negligence that left the Fukushima plant
unprepared for the events of March 11. And it examines serious
deficiencies in the response to the accident by TEPCO, regulators and the
government.”
Uranium Bubble: Uranium Financial
Instruments in 2010
•Warwick-Ching, Lucy (March 25, 2010) Nuclear choice: time to invest in uranium? The Financial
Times,http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/3123b600-3610-11df-aa43-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3bvSqrV00
•Canny investors first began to take notice some years ago, when the price of uranium shot up from about $10 per pound
in 2003 to more than $130/lb in 2007. The global financial meltdown sent it crashing down again, though it has hovered
around the mid-$40s/lb ever since. But experts now believe recent developments could prompt serious price gains.
•“Demand for uranium is on the increase thanks to a number of reactors due to come into operation over the next few
years,” says Scott Lawrence, head of nuclear fuel at MF Global, the derivatives brokerage. “The growth is concentrated in
the emerging economies where nuclear power presents an attractive, low-carbon option for baseload electricity
production.”
•There are already more than 400 nuclear power stations globally, but the World Nuclear Association predicts hundreds
more need to be built to fight global warming. The British government has approved the installation of 10 new nuclear
power stations. Decisions on at least as large a scale are expected in Germany, Japan, Italy, China, India and the US.
•…[Brewin Dolphin analyst Nik Stanojevic] He also makes the point that uranium mining is relatively concentrated.
“Kazakhstan now represents more than 20 per cent of global mine supply, and the authorities there have stated they
intend to swap uranium mining assets for nuclear power stations,” he says. “It is in their interests not to allow the price
to fall too far and to establish a floor to the uranium price.”
•While energy traders have been interested in uranium for years, it has been a relatively closed market for investors. It
was not until the New York Mercantile Exchange launched its first-ever uranium futures contract on its CME platform in
2007 that private investors could get really involved.
Fukushima Statute of Limitations Illustrate
Externalization
2013, the LDP legislated a ten-year statute of limitations of liabilities for
Japanese citizens impacted by the Fukushima disaster. Contamination
produced by the plant and the effects of radiation will unfold over decades
yet TEPCO’s liability is limited to ten years.
Shinichi Sekine, “LDP Seeks to Extend Statute of Limitations for Nuclear
Accident Damage Claims to 10 Years,” The Asahi Shimbun, September 21,
2013, accessed September 23, 2013,
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201309210059
MASAKAZU HONDA. 30 groups show
radioactive soil levels to address Fukushima
fears. The Asahi Shimbun, May 6, 2016
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201
605060006.html
•The highest reading so far was 135,000 becquerels of
radioactive cesium detected in a forest near a home in
the Hiso district of Iitate village, northwest of the
embattled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
•The soil sample showed 111,028 becquerels of
cesium-137 and 23,920 becquerels of cesium-134.
•Radioactivity readings at many observation spots in
Shizuoka Prefecture, which is far from the nuclear
plant, were below the lowest detectable level.
•But the survey this year still found sites in the Kanto
region, south of the Tohoku region where the
Fukushima plant is located, with readings exceeding
10,000 becquerels.
Watanabe, Yoshito, San’ei Ichikawa, Masahide Kubota, Junko Hoshino, Yoshihisa Kubota, Kouichi Maruyama, Shoichi Fuma, Isao
Kawaguchi, Vasyl Yoschenko, Satoshi Yoshida, “Morphological defects in native Japanese fir trees around the Fukushima Daiichi
Nuclear Power Plant,” Scientific Reports 5.13232 (2015): doi:10.1038/srep13232.
Anthropocene Revisited:
Risk Society Produced by
Heedless Resource Exploitation
and Escalating War
Conclusion from a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature
DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa
Motesharrei of the US National Science Foundation-supported
National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association
with a team of natural and social scientists. Nafeez Ahmed March 14, 2016
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/14/nasa-civilisation-
irreversible-collapse-study-scientists
#1 Image for 21st Century War, Klare, M. (2014, July 8). Our 21st Century Energy Wars, Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/07/08/our-21st-century-energy-wars
