1 00:00:06,180 --> 00:00:19,530 So I'd like to welcome everyone to the Friday seminar or in this webinar, and I'm going to say a few words about our guest speaker, 2 00:00:19,530 --> 00:00:30,220 whom we're extremely pleased to have sparing his time despite the best efforts of the train system to keep him running. 3 00:00:30,220 --> 00:00:37,330 So it's a big lorry completed stage in history, so us in 2020, before that, 4 00:00:37,330 --> 00:00:42,820 he was in student and saw us and had a B.A. from the University of Cambridge. 5 00:00:42,820 --> 00:00:48,190 He's now a research associate and teaching fellow at Science Is. 6 00:00:48,190 --> 00:00:53,890 Research focuses on the intersection of energy, environment, infrastructure and labour, 7 00:00:53,890 --> 00:00:58,390 especially but not only in the history of Iran in the Middle East. 8 00:00:58,390 --> 00:01:05,560 His doctoral thesis, which I should mention was awarded the very prestigious 2020 London business the Douglas Memorial 9 00:01:05,560 --> 00:01:12,520 prise for the best dissertation examines the techno politics of Iranian oil nationalisation, 10 00:01:12,520 --> 00:01:18,040 especially focussing on expertise, labour and anti-colonialism in Abbott. 11 00:01:18,040 --> 00:01:26,740 That is monograph based on this thesis entitled Refining Knowledge, Labour Politics and Oil Nationalisation in Iran. 12 00:01:26,740 --> 00:01:32,470 Nineteen thirty three eight fifty one will be published with Edinburgh University Press in 2023, 13 00:01:32,470 --> 00:01:37,300 and I very much hope you'll come back and talk to us about that when that happens. 14 00:01:37,300 --> 00:01:47,920 So today Martin is going to talk to us about the global climate emergency, especially as this impacts Iran and my team. 15 00:01:47,920 --> 00:01:52,480 The floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much. 16 00:01:52,480 --> 00:02:00,370 Firstly, thank you very much for, uh, to the Middle East and to Stephanie, to Michael for your invitation. 17 00:02:00,370 --> 00:02:12,880 It's really great to be here virtually and especially to be part of this series on the environment that you have at this in such a pressing time. 18 00:02:12,880 --> 00:02:20,520 So I'll just show my screen. So let me start. 19 00:02:20,520 --> 00:02:25,200 So as we witness, 26 struggle to deliver on its promises, 20 00:02:25,200 --> 00:02:29,820 we are reminded once again that a major hurdle for tackling climate change remains 21 00:02:29,820 --> 00:02:34,980 the refusal of countries in the global north to take responsibility for their 22 00:02:34,980 --> 00:02:40,620 historical culpability and connected to this issue that we're seeing that we see 23 00:02:40,620 --> 00:02:46,470 playing out at COP26 is the lack of representation from countries in the global south, 24 00:02:46,470 --> 00:02:59,230 with there being numerous complaints that the inaccessibility of the summit has excluded people on the front line of the global environmental crisis. 25 00:02:59,230 --> 00:03:04,660 After all, the global south will be disproportionately affected by global warming. 26 00:03:04,660 --> 00:03:07,720 This is especially so in the Middle East and North Africa, 27 00:03:07,720 --> 00:03:15,700 where climate catastrophe is already too apparent as evident this year in forest fires in Turkey and Algeria. 28 00:03:15,700 --> 00:03:23,230 And the sudden drying up of entire rivers includes a sun like the carbon pictured here in Davos. 29 00:03:23,230 --> 00:03:30,760 These events make it increasingly difficult to leave the environment as a discrete domain of enquiry separate from political, 30 00:03:30,760 --> 00:03:32,980 social and economic matters. 31 00:03:32,980 --> 00:03:40,120 And of course, this is a point that has long been at the heart of subjects like geography and the environmental humanities, 32 00:03:40,120 --> 00:03:47,140 but which has been relatively slow to gather pace in Middle East studies until recently. 33 00:03:47,140 --> 00:03:53,020 It's relatively easy to see how the events that I just mentioned of these instances 34 00:03:53,020 --> 00:03:58,930 of environmental crisis may be incorporated in the humanities and social sciences. 35 00:03:58,930 --> 00:04:07,470 For example, how the drying up of rivers in Iran this year led to political mobilisations over water scarcity. 36 00:04:07,470 --> 00:04:13,440 However, there are still less spectacular environmental issues that are no less urgent, 37 00:04:13,440 --> 00:04:20,810 but which have captured less attention, perhaps because of the ubiquity. 38 00:04:20,810 --> 00:04:28,760 One of these is air pollution. It's estimated that exposure to air pollution resulting from fossil fuel combustion 39 00:04:28,760 --> 00:04:34,880 is responsible for more than 10 million premature deaths globally each year. 40 00:04:34,880 --> 00:04:40,310 That's more than HIV, TB and malaria area combined. 41 00:04:40,310 --> 00:04:43,910 And I think there are three main problems in its detection, 42 00:04:43,910 --> 00:04:51,570 which perhaps partly explain why it hasn't received more attention, at least in the social sciences and humanities. 43 00:04:51,570 --> 00:05:00,300 First, like other forms of pollution, it's often so dispersed that its specific origins and effects can be difficult to pin down. 44 00:05:00,300 --> 00:05:09,740 So, for example, pollution in one city or in one country may actually emanate from another country or continent altogether. 45 00:05:09,740 --> 00:05:22,050 Second, despite its hyper visibility in the form of smog or smoke, its true extent is often invisible and only detectable with special equipment. 46 00:05:22,050 --> 00:05:31,490 And it's particulate matter which is actually most damaging to the lungs, which is microscopic. 47 00:05:31,490 --> 00:05:41,540 Third, its damage is often incremental or what Nixon is called a form of slow violence taking place over many years. 48 00:05:41,540 --> 00:05:49,730 And this applies to both inanimate and animal bodies, and the exact extent and tempo of damage can differ from body to body. 49 00:05:49,730 --> 00:05:56,480 Now, as I'm sure many of you know in the audience. Air pollution is a major problem in the region today. 50 00:05:56,480 --> 00:06:04,550 Any visitor will attest to its immediate visibility when arriving at major cities like Tehran pictured here, 51 00:06:04,550 --> 00:06:11,270 and the effects are quickly felt in the body, especially in the nose and throat. 52 00:06:11,270 --> 00:06:17,060 So although there is uncertainty about the exact origins and the effects of air pollution, 53 00:06:17,060 --> 00:06:21,350 and although not all embodied experiences of it are going to be the same. 54 00:06:21,350 --> 00:06:27,130 Most people exposed will know, at least it's causing some harm. 55 00:06:27,130 --> 00:06:36,580 And I think this highlights how we need to consider embodied situated knowledge seriously in being able to detect environmental hazards. 56 00:06:36,580 --> 00:06:45,940 Indeed, our bodies are as material as the material environments and might be the first parameter of any environmental transformation. 57 00:06:45,940 --> 00:06:47,200 And yet, time and time again, 58 00:06:47,200 --> 00:06:56,020 we see that such knowledge is marginalised and grand plans for environmental solutions excluded from a domain of expertise, 59 00:06:56,020 --> 00:07:01,150 which is based largely on calculating macro level processes. 60 00:07:01,150 --> 00:07:03,820 So why is this the case? Well, 61 00:07:03,820 --> 00:07:12,940 without attempting to provide a comprehensive answer to this big question or trying to present an exceptional case in the remainder of this talk, 62 00:07:12,940 --> 00:07:22,250 I want to offer one intervention by turning attention to air pollution caused by the oil industry in Iran. 63 00:07:22,250 --> 00:07:29,660 As a historian, I will do so through a historical lens focussing on pollution and soil became central in 64 00:07:29,660 --> 00:07:37,200 political discourse in the years leading up to the country's oil nationalisation in 1951. 65 00:07:37,200 --> 00:07:40,380 Now, there are lots of studies on oil nationalisation, 66 00:07:40,380 --> 00:07:50,250 and these largely focus on high politics in Tehran for understandable reasons, especially figures like Mossadeq. 67 00:07:50,250 --> 00:07:55,290 But as I argue in the forthcoming book that Stephanie mentioned, 68 00:07:55,290 --> 00:08:06,420 we should root this important event in the subaltern experiences of those living and working in the centre of Iran's oil operations in Khuzestan, 69 00:08:06,420 --> 00:08:09,760 especially the city of Abadon pictured here. 70 00:08:09,760 --> 00:08:20,230 This was home to the largest oil refinery in the world at the time, operated by the soon to be expelled Anglo Iranian oil company IOK. 71 00:08:20,230 --> 00:08:28,700 I think that this more focussed history can provide some lessons for how we may tackle environmental crises today. 72 00:08:28,700 --> 00:08:35,720 Like a budget first, like a burgeoning body of work in the environmental and energy humanity shows, 73 00:08:35,720 --> 00:08:45,460 it highlights how imperialism has been historically responsible for global pollution in the Middle East and global south more generally. 74 00:08:45,460 --> 00:08:53,410 Moreover, by understanding how the situation in abaddonn was then translated into mainstream political discourse 75 00:08:53,410 --> 00:09:00,820 in Tehran and how abadon has more generally been marginalised in histories of oil nationalisation, 76 00:09:00,820 --> 00:09:13,730 we encounter a more fundamental issue about expertise, namely who has the legitimacy to speak and what forms of knowledge are valued over others. 77 00:09:13,730 --> 00:09:17,750 I argue that this history not only further demonstrates the importance of 78 00:09:17,750 --> 00:09:23,030 situated and embodied knowledge and solutions to environmental challenges today, 79 00:09:23,030 --> 00:09:33,470 but also that environmentalism must not be detached from wider issues of social justice, such as workers rights and infrastructural inequality. 80 00:09:33,470 --> 00:09:45,140 So I'll present this history in free parts. First, I'll show how pollution from the refinery was symptomatic of structural inequalities in abadon. 81 00:09:45,140 --> 00:09:54,920 Then I'll shift attention more specifically to disputes between oil workers and the company over toxic exposure in the refinery, 82 00:09:54,920 --> 00:10:04,210 showing how these were emblematic of the company's efforts to render workers as political non-expert actors. 83 00:10:04,210 --> 00:10:06,730 Finally, I show how Tehrani, 84 00:10:06,730 --> 00:10:16,790 journalists and politicians then reproduced the separation between politics and technology of oil in mainstream political discourse. 85 00:10:16,790 --> 00:10:23,060 And this had important effects on the oil nationalisation movement. 86 00:10:23,060 --> 00:10:32,700 So first, some background. The Anglo-Iranian oil company, or Anglo Persian, as it was initially called, 87 00:10:32,700 --> 00:10:41,910 constructed the first processing plant of the abadon refinery in 1912 to refine crude oil found recently found at Masjid Soliman. 88 00:10:41,910 --> 00:10:51,330 Now, as others have highlighted, the construction of such infrastructures depended on dispossessing local populations to secure territory, 89 00:10:51,330 --> 00:11:00,420 and this allowed the company to rapidly expand the refinery, which quickly grew to an exceptional size with a large workforce. 90 00:11:00,420 --> 00:11:11,490 Partly due to its strategic importance in the British Empire, the refinery was a major source of fuel oil, especially for the Royal Navy. 91 00:11:11,490 --> 00:11:17,700 This expansion continued during the interwar years to meet rising consumer demand for oil products and, 92 00:11:17,700 --> 00:11:26,100 of course, gasoline being one of the main ones at this time. 93 00:11:26,100 --> 00:11:31,530 Meanwhile, a large city had emerged around the refinery with its own social and economic 94 00:11:31,530 --> 00:11:36,690 life as people migrated from other parts of the country seeking employment. 95 00:11:36,690 --> 00:11:44,820 While the company had initially built accommodation adjacent to the refinery for British management and also for skilled artisans from India, 96 00:11:44,820 --> 00:11:53,370 the majority of domestic migrants to the city gravitated towards the local bazaar known as Sha or Abadon Town. 97 00:11:53,370 --> 00:11:58,080 And now scholars like Kaveh Ehsani and Rasmus Ayling's show from the late 1920s, 98 00:11:58,080 --> 00:12:07,210 the company sought to control this so-called native town to prevent disease and also ultimately to maintain a disciplined. 99 00:12:07,210 --> 00:12:18,270 Population and this happened through measures such as urban planning and also the provision of municipal infrastructures and leisure facilities. 100 00:12:18,270 --> 00:12:22,740 But these measures also resulted in a deeply divided city. 101 00:12:22,740 --> 00:12:28,620 So, for one, urban life was racially segregated, such that there were separate social clubs, 102 00:12:28,620 --> 00:12:37,050 transport sports facilities and even cinemas for British, Indian and Iranian workers and their families. 103 00:12:37,050 --> 00:12:41,580 In addition, there were deep economic and infrastructural inequalities, 104 00:12:41,580 --> 00:12:47,310 especially especially exacerbated by the British occupation during the Second World War. 105 00:12:47,310 --> 00:12:51,690 So to give one concrete example at this time, 106 00:12:51,690 --> 00:12:56,970 while each bungalow in the British management neighbourhood of Bahrain had its own septic 107 00:12:56,970 --> 00:13:03,600 tank and was connected to a purified water supply system in abadon in abadon town, 108 00:13:03,600 --> 00:13:12,420 that is, there was no water latrine system, no electricity, and there were only seven water standards. 109 00:13:12,420 --> 00:13:22,140 Conditions were even worse in shanty towns like the notorious courthouse about pictured here, which consisted of homes built a mud from scrap metal, 110 00:13:22,140 --> 00:13:30,330 which were also subject to sweltering heat in the summer, flooding in winter and the buildings were also highly flammable. 111 00:13:30,330 --> 00:13:38,170 So, for example, in 1948 49, there was a major fire that destroyed 84 homes. 112 00:13:38,170 --> 00:13:44,710 This infrastructural violence in abadon materialised social divisions along racialized lines, 113 00:13:44,710 --> 00:13:53,410 systematically exposing a section of the population to death, or will in Bombay cause network politics. 114 00:13:53,410 --> 00:13:59,370 The politics of abadon were perhaps best exemplified by pollution. 115 00:13:59,370 --> 00:14:09,660 The refinery's location in the middle of a large city meant that the entire population was potentially exposed to noxious gases like carbon monoxide, 116 00:14:09,660 --> 00:14:17,760 sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which can all gradually cause serious long term health problems such as cancer, 117 00:14:17,760 --> 00:14:22,020 especially in hot temperatures like in Aberdeen. 118 00:14:22,020 --> 00:14:31,860 But the direction of the prevailing winds meant that these gases tended to blow specifically towards the poorer neighbourhoods east of the refinery, 119 00:14:31,860 --> 00:14:36,090 predominantly inhabited by Iranian workers and their families. 120 00:14:36,090 --> 00:14:41,400 And this was something that residents and managers were well aware of at the time. 121 00:14:41,400 --> 00:14:48,020 So, for example, in the summer months, the winds blew in the opposite direction. 122 00:14:48,020 --> 00:14:55,210 And so the British residents actually left the city during this period to escape the pollution. 123 00:14:55,210 --> 00:15:04,540 The delayed effects of pollution damaging bodies at incremental speeds produced uncertainty about the extent of its existence. 124 00:15:04,540 --> 00:15:13,900 But it was undeniably a daily reality, and we see this in the way that visitors talked about it when they when they went to Abdon. 125 00:15:13,900 --> 00:15:23,800 So, for example, that when the famous intellectual challenge on Afrimat went to Aberdeen for the first time in 1943, he did not see the city, 126 00:15:23,800 --> 00:15:34,580 but he could smell it from the boat that he was travelling on, and he characterised the odour as rotten turnips and garlic sat right beneath the nose. 127 00:15:34,580 --> 00:15:37,310 Likewise, the writer, Hassan Cumshot, 128 00:15:37,310 --> 00:15:48,410 recalled that the harsh and pungent odour of the refineries gases afflicted his sense of smell so much that he could never get used to it. 129 00:15:48,410 --> 00:15:53,570 The racialized harm to bodies extended into the refinery itself, 130 00:15:53,570 --> 00:15:57,440 Iranian workers who carried out maintenance work in the refinery were 131 00:15:57,440 --> 00:16:03,490 disproportionately exposed to occupational hazards compared to the British superiors. 132 00:16:03,490 --> 00:16:11,890 Former workers accounts testify that work in the refineries processing areas was highly dangerous due to the constant threat of fires, 133 00:16:11,890 --> 00:16:21,830 explosions and gas leaks. This harm could also take the more incremental and less visible form. 134 00:16:21,830 --> 00:16:31,230 In September 1949, Workers' representatives in the Works Factory Council reported a gas leak in the sulphur dioxide plant. 135 00:16:31,230 --> 00:16:37,410 Management dismissed the concerns and forced the staff to continue working their. 136 00:16:37,410 --> 00:16:42,870 But then in the months leading up to the announcement of oil nationalisation in March 1951, 137 00:16:42,870 --> 00:16:51,320 workers in abaddonn sent a petition to much less and to the Ministry of Justice complaining that they had become sick. 138 00:16:51,320 --> 00:16:58,680 Maslen, as a result of poisoning gases like sulphur dioxide and also exposure to let an acid. 139 00:16:58,680 --> 00:17:04,160 They said that as a result, they were now dying a slow death. 140 00:17:04,160 --> 00:17:13,090 They urged the government to intervene as the company's refusal to pay compensation for illness contravenes the new Iranian labour law. 141 00:17:13,090 --> 00:17:19,600 Even the company's own investigation actually detected constant levels of sulphur dioxide, 142 00:17:19,600 --> 00:17:28,640 sulphur dioxide that would result in serious health problems and sometimes levels even high enough to pose an immediate threat to life. 143 00:17:28,640 --> 00:17:36,350 Yeah, in its commissioned reports, this was completely omitted in its report was published in the British Journal of Industrial 144 00:17:36,350 --> 00:17:43,970 Medicine and concluded that there were no adverse health effects caused by exposure in the plants, 145 00:17:43,970 --> 00:17:51,240 attributing ill health instead to factors external to the refinery. 146 00:17:51,240 --> 00:17:58,230 In this regime of intercept ability, as in the words of the historian of science, Michelle Murphy, 147 00:17:58,230 --> 00:18:05,280 workers lacks the technical instruments needed to prove that their ailments stemmed from the refinery itself, 148 00:18:05,280 --> 00:18:18,870 giving rise to toxic uncertainty that the company was able to exploit by externalising workers health problems as endemic to local society instead. 149 00:18:18,870 --> 00:18:23,250 The controversy reflected a more fundamental division between workers and management 150 00:18:23,250 --> 00:18:29,490 about the legitimacy of different forms of knowledge as a basis for oil expertise. 151 00:18:29,490 --> 00:18:38,510 Since 1946, the company had operated a disciplinary programme to systematically inculcate safety consciousness. 152 00:18:38,510 --> 00:18:44,090 For instance, one former worker recalled that every day workers had to read a safety booklet, 153 00:18:44,090 --> 00:18:51,170 which they all had to have in their pockets, and this contained up to 47 regulations. 154 00:18:51,170 --> 00:18:59,750 The content of these guidelines was focussed on accident prevention through eliminating so-called carelessness. 155 00:18:59,750 --> 00:19:05,300 Management consistently blamed accidents on workers in discipline based on long standing 156 00:19:05,300 --> 00:19:11,510 assertions that Iranians lacked the capacities for acquiring scientific and technical knowledge. 157 00:19:11,510 --> 00:19:20,180 Compared to European and Indian employees and this formed the basis for the company dismissing growing calls for Iranian ization, 158 00:19:20,180 --> 00:19:25,600 which would mean the promotion of Iranians to more senior positions in the company. 159 00:19:25,600 --> 00:19:31,630 It also meant that management claimed to monopolise expertise through helping workers protect 160 00:19:31,630 --> 00:19:38,380 themselves in framing safety expertise in terms of accident prevention management claims. 161 00:19:38,380 --> 00:19:44,680 This could be calculated in advance and also from afar communicated to workers. 162 00:19:44,680 --> 00:19:51,940 Don't top down this relegated the significance of in situ embodied knowledge on the 163 00:19:51,940 --> 00:19:58,180 grounds that might help to detect processional damage that might lead up to accidents, 164 00:19:58,180 --> 00:20:03,960 for example, smelling gas leaks that arise from corrosion. 165 00:20:03,960 --> 00:20:09,190 And this kind of knowledge could be communicated bottom up by workers. 166 00:20:09,190 --> 00:20:15,010 And in fact, this is what workers did, despite management's safety regulations, 167 00:20:15,010 --> 00:20:25,650 workers regularly challenged management's claim to expertise by bringing up problems about inadequate safety provisions. 168 00:20:25,650 --> 00:20:31,440 Nevertheless, the company excluded such technical controversies on the grounds in maintaining 169 00:20:31,440 --> 00:20:37,050 its exclusive claim to expertise as a set of abstract disembodied knowledge, 170 00:20:37,050 --> 00:20:45,930 and use this as the basis for the ongoing marginalisation of workers as political rather than technical actors. 171 00:20:45,930 --> 00:20:50,970 This also extended to the way the company projected its expertise to the wider public, 172 00:20:50,970 --> 00:20:58,140 so in its extensive PR machinery, it represented the refinery as a complex scientific domain. 173 00:20:58,140 --> 00:21:03,720 A black box where only the inputs and outputs were known in various images. 174 00:21:03,720 --> 00:21:10,770 The refinery was depicted as a self-regulating objective system devoid of human subjectivity, 175 00:21:10,770 --> 00:21:17,250 concealing bodily damage within the system caused by toxic exposure. 176 00:21:17,250 --> 00:21:23,370 And this was this was especially how the company started representing the refinery to 177 00:21:23,370 --> 00:21:31,170 the Tehran press following amidst growing scrutiny following the 1946 general strike, 178 00:21:31,170 --> 00:21:34,650 which halted its entire operations. 179 00:21:34,650 --> 00:21:45,150 The company aimed to allay fears about its colonial intentions while demonstrating the indispensability of its expertise to the Iranian nation. 180 00:21:45,150 --> 00:21:51,420 Newspapers were important because they helped create space for Tehran's middle class to discuss national development, 181 00:21:51,420 --> 00:21:56,400 especially in the context of heightened territorial anxiety in the 1940s. 182 00:21:56,400 --> 00:22:04,670 And as Sue Roszak shows, Western science and technology occupied a central place in these debates. 183 00:22:04,670 --> 00:22:15,140 So starting from spring 1947, I invited journalists from Tehran on guided tours of the oil installations, especially the abadon refinery. 184 00:22:15,140 --> 00:22:26,330 And these tools included famous figures such as Ibrahim Khalistan, Halil Maliki, Mohammed Massoud and Abbas Khalili on these tours. 185 00:22:26,330 --> 00:22:35,180 The company took visitors to the main processing plants and emphasised gargantuan nature and at the same time, 186 00:22:35,180 --> 00:22:41,780 marginalised or omitted the contribution of manual labour to the functioning of the refinery, 187 00:22:41,780 --> 00:22:49,490 reinforcing the effects of the refinery as the self-regulating automated system. 188 00:22:49,490 --> 00:22:54,470 In subsequent reports, these journalists then reproduced this image of the refinery, 189 00:22:54,470 --> 00:23:00,470 praising the installations as the most modern in the world and a source for emulation. 190 00:23:00,470 --> 00:23:05,870 In contrast, they criticised the living conditions in the town and blame this on the company. 191 00:23:05,870 --> 00:23:15,470 So what was happening was that they were distinguishing between the apolitical nature of the refinery and then the quasi colonial enclave around it. 192 00:23:15,470 --> 00:23:20,300 Notably, absent in these accounts were reports of pollution emanating from the refinery, 193 00:23:20,300 --> 00:23:29,580 and in some articles even praised will be expressed all at the sight of smoke coming out of these tall smokestacks. 194 00:23:29,580 --> 00:23:38,610 These messages were important in shaping the emerging nationalisation movement, simultaneously fuelling growing opposition to the company. 195 00:23:38,610 --> 00:23:44,040 At the same time as reinforcing the legitimacy of its expertise. 196 00:23:44,040 --> 00:23:49,260 Many publications of the Emerging Pro Nationalisation Coalition, the Premier League, 197 00:23:49,260 --> 00:23:56,530 the National Front delineated between IOCs technical accomplishments and its politics. 198 00:23:56,530 --> 00:24:06,250 For instance, even the agitation and anti-imperialist newspaper Shaw had admitted that despite its disgust for IIRC quote, 199 00:24:06,250 --> 00:24:12,280 the administrative and technical organisations of the company are amongst the most perfect in the world. 200 00:24:12,280 --> 00:24:23,130 End quote. So the point was to gain access to iox expertise rather than to reformulate its contents. 201 00:24:23,130 --> 00:24:27,450 While these pro nationalisation newspapers did feature complaints of workers in 202 00:24:27,450 --> 00:24:34,350 Aberdeen about poor living and labour conditions throughout 1950 and early fifty one, 203 00:24:34,350 --> 00:24:43,710 they did not acknowledge their expertise in any way, thereby rendering them as political and non-technical actors, much like the oil company had done. 204 00:24:43,710 --> 00:24:49,020 Indeed, the National Front often expressed an ambivalent attitude towards the workers, 205 00:24:49,020 --> 00:24:57,360 even condemning the general strike in April 1951 for fear that it would damage the installations. 206 00:24:57,360 --> 00:25:06,600 And these dynamics really came to a head when the much less mixed oil committee investigated exactly how nationalisation could be implemented. 207 00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:16,920 This was in early 1951, so Mosaddek, who was then chair of the committee, draughted a questionnaire enquiring into the feasibility of nationalisation. 208 00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:24,000 And this questioner explicitly separated technical considerations from political ones. 209 00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:32,130 He sent this to engineers who had not even visited abadon instead of those who'd worked there for many years. 210 00:25:32,130 --> 00:25:40,860 Significantly, despite the oil workers petition about toxic exposure, which had been submitted recently been submitted, 211 00:25:40,860 --> 00:25:47,000 no mention was made about pollution or toxicity in the questionnaire. 212 00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:58,740 In response, the engineers advised that nationalisation would not be possible without retaining IOCs existing foreign experts, especially in refining. 213 00:25:58,740 --> 00:26:05,880 Hence, as the newly established national Iranian oil company NAOC took over operations in June 51, 214 00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:14,440 the foundations were set for the continuation of IOCs practises, even as the company itself was expelled. 215 00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:19,330 Although, Mosaddek, did Alex iOX, British staff in September, 216 00:26:19,330 --> 00:26:25,480 the national Iranian oil company maintained the existing employment structure, training schemes and crucially, 217 00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:35,020 the safety policies in the two years leading up to the 1953 coup, which ultimately allowed for the reintroduction of multinational oil companies. 218 00:26:35,020 --> 00:26:43,460 The following year. Fundamentally, then the Iranian government reproduced the expertise of the very oil company it expelled, 219 00:26:43,460 --> 00:26:48,440 acting on the premise that oil expertise was exclusively an apolitical, 220 00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:53,330 standardised set of knowledge that could be applied regardless of local particularities. 221 00:26:53,330 --> 00:26:58,200 And crucially, regardless of the embodied knowledge of workers. 222 00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:09,960 So just to wrap up, I think this history, the history of how this comes about can provide free main lessons for environmental politics today. 223 00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:13,740 So first, we see the role of imperialism in spreading pollution, 224 00:27:13,740 --> 00:27:20,580 and this seems quite obvious when looking at the material construction of these oil infrastructures, 225 00:27:20,580 --> 00:27:28,830 these polluting oil infrastructures, which still operate today. But it was also in the role of the company in concealing this pollution. 226 00:27:28,830 --> 00:27:39,120 True racing workers, bodies in the technical system and this laid the foundations for the reproduction of epistemology in which 227 00:27:39,120 --> 00:27:46,610 the environment was this external domain to be exploited rather than something entangled with human bodies. 228 00:27:46,610 --> 00:27:50,330 So, so let me thinking about environmental politics today. 229 00:27:50,330 --> 00:27:56,660 It needs to factor in this historical culpability and the active work done to erase it. 230 00:27:56,660 --> 00:28:05,060 Second, it points to the importance of including so-called lay actors in environmental policy policymaking today. 231 00:28:05,060 --> 00:28:16,190 This is because toxic exposure in the abadon refinery was detected fruit in body situated knowledge, rather than from some calculation from afar. 232 00:28:16,190 --> 00:28:23,840 So we should expand the scope of knowledge that we deemed to be a legitimate basis for environmental expertise. 233 00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:29,990 Any environmental expertise that's based exclusively exclusively on abstract knowledge of macro level 234 00:28:29,990 --> 00:28:37,580 processes runs the risk of overlooking the unequal distribution of environmental hazards on the local level. 235 00:28:37,580 --> 00:28:45,800 And finally, I think that this history indicates that environmentalism cannot be detached from wider issues of social justice. 236 00:28:45,800 --> 00:28:52,940 Workers in Aberdeen did not articulate an environmentalism passé but rather situated an 237 00:28:52,940 --> 00:28:58,820 environmental issue within wider issues of workers rights and infrastructural inequality. 238 00:28:58,820 --> 00:29:05,000 And in this way, I think they expressed what Ramachandra Guha has called an environmentalism of the poor, 239 00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:15,050 which does not treat the environment as a discrete domain, but instead is intertwined with questions of survival and lived human experience. 240 00:29:15,050 --> 00:29:22,340 Any environmentalism that delineates between environmental and political issues runs the risk of reproducing this 241 00:29:22,340 --> 00:29:31,730 view of the environment as this external entity to be calculated to be managed and ultimately to be utilised, 242 00:29:31,730 --> 00:29:38,090 rather than rather than something we have any ethical obligation towards. 243 00:29:38,090 --> 00:29:43,400 So I will leave that leave there and thank you for listening. 244 00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:49,160 I look forward to your questions. Thank you very much for that, Martin. 245 00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:57,440 You have a huge amount of information and theoretical perspective here. 246 00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:07,340 I have a question of my own, but perhaps we'll begin with a question from Dr. Abdul Razak in the audience. 247 00:30:07,340 --> 00:30:11,000 Thank you, Martin. 248 00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:18,560 She said I was wondering if you can comment on the two to the trade unions, whether they had any interest in environmental issues in at the time. 249 00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:27,620 This is actually something that I also wanted to ask you about a slightly different angle because I know by the time of the war, the Second World War, 250 00:30:27,620 --> 00:30:32,720 British trade unions and the British Labour Party were beginning to be a little 251 00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:37,700 bit concerned about the oil companies treatment of its workers in Iran. 252 00:30:37,700 --> 00:30:39,800 And I wondered if you had any, 253 00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:48,140 if you found any evidence of contacts between Iranian trade unions and British trade unions about generally living conditions 254 00:30:48,140 --> 00:30:55,250 and obviously the way you you posed the issue of embeddedness and environmental issues within within the bigger picture, 255 00:30:55,250 --> 00:30:59,270 it's quite interesting, but I think there were one or two reports, 256 00:30:59,270 --> 00:31:05,720 maybe towards the end of the war, about dissatisfaction on the part of the Brits about conditions. 257 00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:11,780 So I wonder if you've shown that. Yes, thank you very much. 258 00:31:11,780 --> 00:31:13,850 And yeah, 259 00:31:13,850 --> 00:31:27,050 I noticed in the I think the first time I actually came across this issue of sulphur dioxide or sort of toxic exposure in refinery was actually in. 260 00:31:27,050 --> 00:31:39,170 It was sort of passing reference was made to it in a parliamentary commission that was sent to abadon to investigate labour conditions. 261 00:31:39,170 --> 00:31:47,720 And this was from the Labour governments and basically after the 1946 strike, 262 00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:55,280 the British government was was trying to investigate and and put pressure on the company to reform its Labour policy. 263 00:31:55,280 --> 00:32:04,250 And they picked up on this issue of there being exposure to sulphur dioxide. 264 00:32:04,250 --> 00:32:13,970 And I think that this we can kind of see this within the context of growing awareness of toxic exposure in the West. 265 00:32:13,970 --> 00:32:22,340 In the 1940s, we really see in the trade union movement and in the labour movement more generally that 266 00:32:22,340 --> 00:32:34,010 there's this growing awareness of the need to control and pollution in industrial workplaces. 267 00:32:34,010 --> 00:32:40,010 So it's not framed as such as like an environmental issue, but more alive issue, really. 268 00:32:40,010 --> 00:32:53,660 And so, yeah, in terms of direct correspondence between trade unions in Britain and in the Tudor party, I didn't necessarily see that. 269 00:32:53,660 --> 00:33:00,640 But certainly, I think you can situate this within a global moment in which. 270 00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:07,360 Toxic exposure becomes a more central labour issue. 271 00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:11,110 And in fact, this is reflected in the Iranian labour law, 272 00:33:11,110 --> 00:33:28,090 which is create it's draughted in 1946 and this kind of puts it actually makes industrial hygiene like a central issue as well. 273 00:33:28,090 --> 00:33:38,680 I should say, if people have questions put, they put them through the Q&A function, because that's the only way I can access them. 274 00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:42,460 I noticed that there was someone who had a hand up, 275 00:33:42,460 --> 00:33:50,020 but we can't actually allow people to put their own questions directly so that you could use the Q&A function. 276 00:33:50,020 --> 00:33:55,070 That would be quite helpful. So, Martin, 277 00:33:55,070 --> 00:34:06,320 you're you're you're very carefully modulated presentation actually conceals quite a damning indictment of the National Front and also in particular, 278 00:34:06,320 --> 00:34:10,220 which you didn't really expand upon. 279 00:34:10,220 --> 00:34:19,220 I wonder, have you had any pushback on this question because people don't like to see the idols criticising this way, 280 00:34:19,220 --> 00:34:24,380 and it's quite a serious criticism. So that's one thing that I lied to. 281 00:34:24,380 --> 00:34:32,760 That is. Is it too strong to say that the oil nationalisation made no difference to the workers? 282 00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:39,600 Or is it too much? 283 00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:51,390 Well, firstly, I of course, I'm anticipating there will be pushback, and I think we need to um, 284 00:34:51,390 --> 00:35:02,500 I think that it's important to acknowledge the systematic efforts to prevent nationalisation from really happening on the ground. 285 00:35:02,500 --> 00:35:08,040 So when oil was was nationalised, there was a British blockade. 286 00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:15,870 There was a systematic effort to deny spare parts from entering abaddonn. 287 00:35:15,870 --> 00:35:21,750 And so it made it. Yeah. So in that sense, I I am sympathetic. 288 00:35:21,750 --> 00:35:29,980 Um? I in terms of did it, did it actually make much difference? 289 00:35:29,980 --> 00:35:35,050 I think that the again, it comes back to this question. 290 00:35:35,050 --> 00:35:45,270 Were they allowed to? And act much difference, but certainly workers at the time, they did see the relevance of the National Front and Mossadeq, 291 00:35:45,270 --> 00:35:57,420 so they did actually sense this opportunity to finally realise a lot of their aspirations for promotion and for better living in labour conditions. 292 00:35:57,420 --> 00:36:02,340 And they saw that they they situated their struggle as part of this sort of wider anti-imperialist 293 00:36:02,340 --> 00:36:08,850 moment in which they could redress these grievances that they'd held for for many years. 294 00:36:08,850 --> 00:36:14,640 So I don't think it's yeah, in that sense, I don't I. 295 00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:20,310 In terms of political consciousness, I see it as being very significant. 296 00:36:20,310 --> 00:36:30,950 The National Front was attacked. It was very the national front was very important in terms of political subjectivity. 297 00:36:30,950 --> 00:36:38,940 Whether or not it's translated into. Improve living in labour conditions on the ground. 298 00:36:38,940 --> 00:36:44,580 I think that's more open for debate. Yeah. Thank you. 299 00:36:44,580 --> 00:36:50,400 Okay. So we have a question from Frank de Monet. 300 00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:56,700 And he says typically I would expect differential health records to exist in cities due to pollution. 301 00:36:56,700 --> 00:37:03,090 I would expect to see raised cancer, respiratory and other bad effects downwind of sources of pollution. 302 00:37:03,090 --> 00:37:09,720 Part of smart city design includes monitoring and cross-reference and cross-referencing to health records. 303 00:37:09,720 --> 00:37:15,210 Do such records exist in Abidjan or other Iranian cities? 304 00:37:15,210 --> 00:37:20,760 And there's a follow up question which I'll give you at the same time in the case of the Bhopal disaster. 305 00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:27,360 There was never a liability trail that the parent company in the US, if that in international law, 306 00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:34,110 any redress to Iranian citizens harmed by the pollution promotion of any. 307 00:37:34,110 --> 00:37:45,240 Well, thank you very much for that question. What we see is that in terms of systematic records, it's very difficult to come by. 308 00:37:45,240 --> 00:37:49,530 There was no kind of systematic systematic monitoring. And in fact, 309 00:37:49,530 --> 00:38:03,150 I think this is a wider methodological problem in doing environmental history is being able to kind of historically measure things like pollution. 310 00:38:03,150 --> 00:38:09,510 And I think this it doesn't really become recorded into in Iran until much later until the 60s, 311 00:38:09,510 --> 00:38:16,020 when pollution starts entering the sort of political consciousness in Tehran. 312 00:38:16,020 --> 00:38:24,540 What we do see in Ogden is a very sort of localised investigation, which was conducted by the company. 313 00:38:24,540 --> 00:38:30,270 So the company commissioned this report after these complaints were made by workers. 314 00:38:30,270 --> 00:38:50,250 And the reports did actually show that there was increased rates of cancer, not cancer, but respiratory diseases, bronchitis, tuberculosis. 315 00:38:50,250 --> 00:39:06,290 And so in this kind of local small scale report, we do see there is kind of some kind of correlation between exposure and and ill health and. 316 00:39:06,290 --> 00:39:15,110 And yet your second question is that in international, any any redress to Iranian citizens harmed by the pollution for the refinery? 317 00:39:15,110 --> 00:39:26,930 As far as I know, I'm not. And this is the thing that actually the oil company, when it published this report, when it did this investigation, 318 00:39:26,930 --> 00:39:36,800 there were already international standards agreed upon about acceptable levels of exposure to gases like sulphur dioxide. 319 00:39:36,800 --> 00:39:39,170 And this was being done in the U.S. and Europe. 320 00:39:39,170 --> 00:39:48,740 So there was already some kind of regulation, and the company knew this and were well aware of it, but still. 321 00:39:48,740 --> 00:40:00,800 Contravened these standards, so in other words, they they they were meeting standards where there was more, where it was harder to contravene. 322 00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:06,620 But in a place like Abaddon, they they were able to kind of circumvent these standards. 323 00:40:06,620 --> 00:40:15,940 Yeah. OK, can you hear me? 324 00:40:15,940 --> 00:40:28,360 Yes, yes. OK. Can you tell us whether you think the Islamic Republic has got a better record in in in this kind of area or not? 325 00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:32,380 Is it possible? 326 00:40:32,380 --> 00:40:40,980 It's I mean, certainly we see that there have been quite a few. 327 00:40:40,980 --> 00:40:54,490 Air pollution measures during the tunnel, Islamic Republic, for example, you know, focussing especially on like. 328 00:40:54,490 --> 00:40:59,530 Cars driving cars, for example, alternating. 329 00:40:59,530 --> 00:41:08,460 No, no plates. You can only drive a car into this number plate one day and so on. 330 00:41:08,460 --> 00:41:14,910 It. It's difficult to. 331 00:41:14,910 --> 00:41:21,450 It's difficult to really say whether this is because of something particular in this Islamic Republic 332 00:41:21,450 --> 00:41:28,560 or more a reflection of globally there being increasing awareness of air pollution because even in, 333 00:41:28,560 --> 00:41:39,490 you know, like the US and Europe, even though there was. Awareness of air pollution and its dangers. 334 00:41:39,490 --> 00:41:52,060 You're going back to the 19th century. We don't really see a systematic effort to regulate it or control it until like the 60s and 70s. 335 00:41:52,060 --> 00:41:58,470 So it's difficult to know. Yeah, it's difficult to say, is it? 336 00:41:58,470 --> 00:42:06,990 You know, to give credit, or, you know, I mean. 337 00:42:06,990 --> 00:42:15,360 But also, I mean, we certainly see, for example, this instance of toxic exposure. 338 00:42:15,360 --> 00:42:26,730 This is an ongoing issue. I mean, we've seen, for example, major gas leaks recent in recent years in petrochemical complexes. 339 00:42:26,730 --> 00:42:33,210 We also see that the workers, the major oil workers strike this year. 340 00:42:33,210 --> 00:42:43,010 One of the main demands, one of the main grievances was over working conditions, safety essentially and hazardous hazards. 341 00:42:43,010 --> 00:42:52,200 So, yeah, so of course it's not. It's not like it's. 342 00:42:52,200 --> 00:43:02,310 It's dead, yet it's still there, still continuities there. You should have the car in river was quite shocking. 343 00:43:02,310 --> 00:43:10,470 I hadn't seen that before. It's quite ironic that you have a province with no water, not so much oil. 344 00:43:10,470 --> 00:43:20,420 And I wonder, to what extent were you able to find anything out about the recent political turmoil that we know that was on 345 00:43:20,420 --> 00:43:29,370 the order issues is is this impossible to investigate or have you been able to work out what was going on? 346 00:43:29,370 --> 00:43:43,050 I mean, it's not my it's not my area of expertise, but certainly, I mean, I know a lot of people I've been writing about this and of course, 347 00:43:43,050 --> 00:43:53,310 environmental activism or, you know, the grassroots environmental activism in Iran drawing attention to this. 348 00:43:53,310 --> 00:44:00,930 We can obviously see that there's a combination of macro level factors to do with climate change, 349 00:44:00,930 --> 00:44:14,730 but also more local level issues to do with mismanagement, diversion of water extraction from groundwater sources. 350 00:44:14,730 --> 00:44:25,470 So it's definitely this combination as far as the exact details, I can't, I can't say. 351 00:44:25,470 --> 00:44:35,920 OK, I can encourage anyone who has a question to put it through the Q&A before we have to close. 352 00:44:35,920 --> 00:44:40,330 Want to take you back to the bigger picture, if we can. 353 00:44:40,330 --> 00:44:48,160 Can you give us a sense the Iranian studies is not something which has a long record of research and environmental humanities. 354 00:44:48,160 --> 00:44:56,800 What do you think Iranian studies can bring to the table regarding environmental studies generally? 355 00:44:56,800 --> 00:45:01,060 Yeah, I mean, I actually I think that the in general, 356 00:45:01,060 --> 00:45:13,270 the environment for humanity's energy humanity is that the burgeoning fields, but they are still dominated by a Eurocentric ism. 357 00:45:13,270 --> 00:45:19,000 There's still a big focus on the global north. 358 00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:27,040 Of course, there are some like. So for example, there's a lot of work being done in South Asian studies, 359 00:45:27,040 --> 00:45:34,840 Latin American studies on environmental humanities, but still the Middle East and Iranian studies, less so. 360 00:45:34,840 --> 00:45:43,860 And I think that given that. Iran is one of the major oil producers. 361 00:45:43,860 --> 00:45:51,210 I think this is a major problem because it means that we hardly know anything about, uh, 362 00:45:51,210 --> 00:46:00,630 in terms of environmental humanities learns about a region that is actually centrally responsible for this global environmental crisis. 363 00:46:00,630 --> 00:46:08,850 And this is, I think, reflect reflected in a lot of the major environmental histories completely erasing 364 00:46:08,850 --> 00:46:16,020 or brushing over lived experiences of environmental crises in the region. 365 00:46:16,020 --> 00:46:21,090 So, for example, some of the major histories of pollution in the 20th century, 366 00:46:21,090 --> 00:46:30,390 they actually make these big claims that oil production in the region happens in these remote settings in these deserts, 367 00:46:30,390 --> 00:46:38,130 far away from any communities completely overlooking the fact that, uh, 368 00:46:38,130 --> 00:46:44,880 there are these huge populations living in the vicinity of these oil installations. 369 00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:49,020 So I think that's that's a major problem. 370 00:46:49,020 --> 00:47:01,740 And of course, Iran is a very diverse country ecologically, and there's a rich tradition of environmental activism in the country. 371 00:47:01,740 --> 00:47:08,890 I think that the environmental humanities, which gained a lot from the. 372 00:47:08,890 --> 00:47:17,470 The insights in challenging these kind of Eurocentric views of of environment and also these diffusion is narratives because you 373 00:47:17,470 --> 00:47:26,380 also see that there's this prevailing narrative that environmentalism spread from the West and then to the rest of the world, 374 00:47:26,380 --> 00:47:31,240 especially Rachel Carson's famous book The Silent Spring. 375 00:47:31,240 --> 00:47:36,490 After that, it's supposedly then the rest of the the rest of the world gets inspired, 376 00:47:36,490 --> 00:47:48,710 and this completely overlooks kind of the local indigenous traditions that were already in existence. 377 00:47:48,710 --> 00:47:55,360 Thank you. Well, we have a couple of questions. One from three. 378 00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:59,000 Well, it's not a question of the comment, which I'll summarise, 379 00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:08,660 which she says the attitude of the British was very much the same towards their own people, which I think is probably the case. 380 00:48:08,660 --> 00:48:14,390 But it might be quite interesting to have some comparative study with other oil 381 00:48:14,390 --> 00:48:22,730 producing areas such as Venezuela to see how they dealt with similar issues arising. 382 00:48:22,730 --> 00:48:29,090 Let me have a question, a comment from my knowledge to. 383 00:48:29,090 --> 00:48:35,820 Thank you for your excellent talk. She agrees with your last comment that we don't know enough about the oil producers. 384 00:48:35,820 --> 00:48:38,850 But we should also note that the record of the Islamic Republic, 385 00:48:38,850 --> 00:48:49,800 the use of the energy subsidies over the years has contributed to some of the world's highest energy use and per capita emissions levels. 386 00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:54,140 So legit reasons for this, absolutely. 387 00:48:54,140 --> 00:49:04,110 And that's thank you very much for raising that point. And I don't mean to when I'm talking about the historical culpability of the global north. 388 00:49:04,110 --> 00:49:14,380 That's not to let countries like Iran off the hook. And we know Iran is one of the world's great emitters as well. 389 00:49:14,380 --> 00:49:17,850 So thank you. Thank you for raising that. 390 00:49:17,850 --> 00:49:36,720 And we see that also. Iran's involvement in COP 26 isn't exactly hasn't been that pivotal ever again. 391 00:49:36,720 --> 00:49:45,560 I will ask another question and then let's see if we will ask questions from the audience. 392 00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:52,230 Yes, this is environmental history that you've written that is it a social history of political history? 393 00:49:52,230 --> 00:49:58,440 Well, how would you locate yourself in terms of ordinary? 394 00:49:58,440 --> 00:50:02,400 Well, I mean, I embarked on the project, you know, 395 00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:08,790 knowing nothing about environmental history and is very much it was for a labour history, land and social history lands. 396 00:50:08,790 --> 00:50:15,420 And it's it's through this specific. 397 00:50:15,420 --> 00:50:23,100 These industrial issues over toxic exposure that then led me to seeing this. 398 00:50:23,100 --> 00:50:33,540 Trying to link this to an environmental history as well. And I think that that's part of the problem is in kind of treating environmental history when 399 00:50:33,540 --> 00:50:42,180 environmental history is this kind of discrete sub field that isn't connected to social political history, 400 00:50:42,180 --> 00:50:44,670 et cetera, which the best environmental issues are not like that. 401 00:50:44,670 --> 00:50:56,340 I don't mean to mischaracterise it, but that that's exactly part of the problem is when we divide environmental issues from social political ones. 402 00:50:56,340 --> 00:51:02,580 And for me, environment is completely in this history that I've looked at. 403 00:51:02,580 --> 00:51:12,540 Environment is completely intertwined with issues of social justice in terms of, you know, who experiences. 404 00:51:12,540 --> 00:51:24,810 The adverse effects of pollution is intricately linked with questions of class, gender, race, questions of power and I. 405 00:51:24,810 --> 00:51:34,710 Yeah. So in that way, I kind of see that being a natural compatibility. 406 00:51:34,710 --> 00:51:39,920 And ultimately, I mean. I see both as being quite. 407 00:51:39,920 --> 00:51:51,200 Critical projects, social history, environmental history, the boat ultimately about critiquing power structures. 408 00:51:51,200 --> 00:51:56,690 Ultimately, they kind of both arose out of the new left and that rewriting history from below. 409 00:51:56,690 --> 00:52:05,060 And in that sense, they also have quite similar methodological issues in terms of what's erased from the archive. 410 00:52:05,060 --> 00:52:16,430 And, you know, being trying, you're forcing yourself to find alternative sources like oral histories, traditions etc. 411 00:52:16,430 --> 00:52:26,630 But the archives of the oil company are a pretty good resource in terms of reading against the grain and extracting material from them. 412 00:52:26,630 --> 00:52:34,640 I mean, I think you can find quite a lot there to produce the counter-narrative to what the company presented itself. 413 00:52:34,640 --> 00:52:38,930 When you look at the archives, it's a different story. Yes. 414 00:52:38,930 --> 00:52:50,000 Yeah, that's very true, actually. And even like the BP archive, for example, you have to you'll find, you know, 415 00:52:50,000 --> 00:53:00,330 environmental issues or problems only come up incidentally like it would be in a miscellaneous folder or an industrial relations folder. 416 00:53:00,330 --> 00:53:07,110 Yeah, and likewise, you know, these, for example, you have to then you have to, 417 00:53:07,110 --> 00:53:13,430 you know, measure them against salt archival sources from like the Iranian archives. 418 00:53:13,430 --> 00:53:20,340 Hmm. You know that the petition for it sent from the workers was run from Iran. 419 00:53:20,340 --> 00:53:26,760 It's quite interesting that in this this age, looking at whether the Tudor and its trade unions were quite important, 420 00:53:26,760 --> 00:53:34,680 but workers are still using this very old fashioned traditional medicine that does address petitions to the. 421 00:53:34,680 --> 00:53:42,120 You know, so they they carry on. I mean, this is again, it's it's an indigenous tradition which is often overlooked. 422 00:53:42,120 --> 00:53:46,770 This is how people make that protest and. Absolutely. 423 00:53:46,770 --> 00:53:54,450 There's a couple more questions which will probably take us to the end of our time from Frank Delaney again. 424 00:53:54,450 --> 00:54:02,490 Yeah, won't plant side samples, trees, etc. give a history of pollution in there, cause it is where I would be looking. 425 00:54:02,490 --> 00:54:12,930 So that's one of the rather technical questions. In fact, we have two more comments question Manuel. 426 00:54:12,930 --> 00:54:18,270 She's saying. Indeed, Iran and other oil producers don't have the largest emissions level globally, 427 00:54:18,270 --> 00:54:22,530 while the industrial nations are historically responsible for climate change. 428 00:54:22,530 --> 00:54:29,100 No, not Iran promised in its submission to the UNFCCC to reduce 12 percent of emissions. 429 00:54:29,100 --> 00:54:36,120 But the cost to do that is very large constrained by sanctions and was made dependent on financial support from abroad. 430 00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:46,600 Does Martin have any insights from this historical studies on what can be done domestically to improve the effects on environment? 431 00:54:46,600 --> 00:54:58,780 And just so you can. Just the final comment. 432 00:54:58,780 --> 00:55:05,920 As a general comment, Fariba would say the richest Americans do have particularly strong journalistic attitudes. 433 00:55:05,920 --> 00:55:09,610 She used to work for NAOC in the late 1970s, 434 00:55:09,610 --> 00:55:16,240 and at that time there was an effort which I was a part to break away from the influence and control not of themselves, 435 00:55:16,240 --> 00:55:18,520 which is, I think is now well-known. But we can. 436 00:55:18,520 --> 00:55:27,820 And when the Shah discovered that the consortium had a secret deal under the table, which in effect dictated to have Iran's economy could operate. 437 00:55:27,820 --> 00:55:34,210 So I'll leave you two to deal with those. I'm sorry to solve them all at once. 438 00:55:34,210 --> 00:55:38,600 Reaching the end. Not to make. Yes, sir. 439 00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:46,070 Thank you, Frank, for mentioning the the and tree samples. 440 00:55:46,070 --> 00:55:53,990 And this is one of the thing that environmental history has to do is kind of bridge with the natural sciences and use things like tree samples, 441 00:55:53,990 --> 00:55:59,900 ice cores to kind of show this historical record. 442 00:55:59,900 --> 00:56:08,540 So it's an inherently an interdisciplinary project. Manuel, thank you for raising that point. 443 00:56:08,540 --> 00:56:14,180 And also, yeah, of course, the it's not even like a historical culpability. 444 00:56:14,180 --> 00:56:26,510 The global north is still predominantly contributes to global emissions and is actually, of course, the transition to green technologies. 445 00:56:26,510 --> 00:56:32,940 The global office has pledged to provide that money 100 billion per year, and it's still unable to do that. 446 00:56:32,940 --> 00:56:44,080 So that's that's that's, uh, the failing and then insight from historical studies and what can be done domestically to improve the effects. 447 00:56:44,080 --> 00:56:54,740 And that's perhaps where I'm going next in my in the direction in terms of thinking more broadly about. 448 00:56:54,740 --> 00:57:03,390 History of environmental policy in Iran, the early stages of that. 449 00:57:03,390 --> 00:57:18,150 Um. This. 450 00:57:18,150 --> 00:57:29,370 Thank you very much for your comment. Very burned, John, about the the imperialist attitude of the oil company. 451 00:57:29,370 --> 00:57:37,230 And I mean, that's something that that's the thing that kind of continues the 50s 60s. 452 00:57:37,230 --> 00:57:47,440 We see this kind of abadon is still kind of this foreign enclave. 453 00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:55,330 But with that, it's kind of there's a lot of nostalgia about it as well as it's very cosmopolitan place, 454 00:57:55,330 --> 00:58:01,660 which, you know, the moat still, you know, the most modern city in Iran. 455 00:58:01,660 --> 00:58:14,230 Yeah, I mean, not today, but at the time. OK, I think we've reached in the last session. 456 00:58:14,230 --> 00:58:25,090 Thank you very much, Maxine. And that was extremely informative, and I hope you don't mind the grilling that we gave you some of the questions, 457 00:58:25,090 --> 00:58:33,080 but it's it's obviously it's an immensely important subject, and I very much look forward to seeing your future work. 458 00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:37,690 So thank you very much. Thank you very, very much for having me here. 459 00:58:37,690 --> 00:58:45,030 And it's a pleasure. OK, and we'll see you when your book comes out and you can tell us, hopefully, yes. 460 00:58:45,030 --> 00:58:55,911 Yes. Thank you very much. All right, thank you.