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Risk, Time and Everyday Environmentalism in Modern Britain

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Governing Risks in Modern Britain

Abstract

Cooper’s chapter investigates the relationships between ideas of risk, time and ‘everyday environmentalism’, which sees environmental politics as something carried out in the sphere of day-to-day life. Using case studies of refuse disposal and the 1967 Torrey Canyon oil disaster, he focuses on some of the tensions between capitalist production, dedicated to the constant accumulation of value, and other priorities. The chapter also shows that the temporality of risk is critical to understanding the relationship between environmental hazards and environmental politics, with some risks immediately present, as in the form of catastrophic disasters that disrupt normal social life and demand immediate action, and others enduring, repetitive and an ever-present, unmeasurable threat to a potential future.

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Notes

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  31. 31.

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  32. 32.

    Cooper, ‘Burying the “Refuse Revolution”’.

  33. 33.

    Aberdeen Daily Journal, 6 July 1910, p. 8.

  34. 34.

    Salford City Reporter and Salford Chronicle, 22 September 1933, p. 9.

  35. 35.

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  36. 36.

    Salford City Reporter, 15 December 1933, p. 7.

  37. 37.

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  38. 38.

    West Drayton and Yiewsley Weekly Journal, August 1935, p. 4.

  39. 39.

    Ibid.

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  41. 41.

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  43. 43.

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  44. 44.

    ‘Continental Drift—How Much Might UK Waste Exports Grow?’, Isonomia. Available at: www.isonomia.co.uk/?p=1894 (date accessed 17 November 2015).

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  49. 49.

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  51. 51.

    Beck, Risk Society, p. 57.

  52. 52.

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  53. 53.

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  57. 57.

    C. Gill, F. Booker and T. Soper, The Wreck of the ‘Torrey Canyon’ (Newton Abbot, 1967).

  58. 58.

    See A. Green and T. Cooper, ‘Community and Exclusion: The Torrey Canyon Disaster of 1967’, Journal of Social History 48 (2015), pp. 892–909.

  59. 59.

    Tony Issacs, interviewed by A. Green, 11 June 2012, 05:00–10:00.

  60. 60.

    Marion Caldwell, interviewed by A. Green, 17 July 2012, 15:00–20-00.

  61. 61.

    R. Petrow, The Black Tide: In the Wake of Torrey Canyon (London, 1968).

  62. 62.

    Beck, Risk Society; Cooper and Bulmer, ‘Refuse and the “Risk Society”’, p. 23.

  63. 63.

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  64. 64.

    Stuart Charles, interviewed by A. Green, 18 July 2012, 50:00–55:00.

  65. 65.

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  66. 66.

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  67. 67.

    Robert Cook, interviewed by A. Green, 17 July 2012, 05:00–10:00.

  68. 68.

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  69. 69.

    A. Green and T. Cooper, ‘Community and Exclusion’.

  70. 70.

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  71. 71.

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  73. 73.

    Eric Busby, interviewed by A. Green, 20 May 2012, 55:00–60:00.

  74. 74.

    Ibid.

  75. 75.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Humanities, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Cornwall, TR10 9FE, UK

    Timothy Cooper

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  1. Department of History, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Tom Crook

  2. School of Social, Historical and Literar, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

    Mike Esbester

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Cooper, T. (2016). Risk, Time and Everyday Environmentalism in Modern Britain. In: Crook, T., Esbester, M. (eds) Governing Risks in Modern Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46745-4_7

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