Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: things you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory.
We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.
This month, we once again feature a debate on eco-fascism—in the limelight once again after the contents of the El Paso shooter’s manifesto were released. From The Guardian to the GQ, many authors sought to explain the phenomenon of white nationalist environmentalism. On the other hand, authors like Jesse Goldstein and Max Ajl called attention to the danger of eco-fascism under the guise of high-tech eco-modernism.
With the panic around the Amazon forest fires, we of course are also featuring some responses and news around it. Many readers may be unaware that their own governments are, despite international outcry, finalizing free trade agreements with Bolsonaro’s Brazilian government as we speak. We also encourage you to look through our past newsletters for more news and analysis on Brazil—we’ve been actively trying to feature the issue since Bolsonaro’s election.
The good news is that there are some inspiring uprisings around the world. In Mexico, the Zapatistas have announced new rebel municipalities. In Puerto Rico, citizens’ assemblies are gathering to address their economic and political crisis. In Sápmi/Sweden, land defenders are setting up blockades against mining. In Indonesia, women and forest people are fighting together to resist land grabbing. And the Black Socialists of America have put together a map of autonomous spaces and initiatives in the United States.
As usual, we also feature articles on new politics around the world and radical municipalism, though news about degrowth was largely absent this August—because the whole movement is on holiday?
Uneven Earth updates
Why a hipster, vegan, green start-up service economy lifestyle cannot be sustainable | Essay
Report card on Bernie Sanders’ Green New Deal | Analysis
Micro effect | Not afraid of the ruins
A toy keyboard for a Coca-Cola bottle of gas: Amadeus’ story | Not afraid of the ruins
The founding of New Crockett, Texas | Not afraid of the ruins
In the land of the rising sun, climate efforts are falling behind | Report-back
Top 5 articles to read
Progress and its discontents A reasoned argument against Steven Pinker’s progress narrative.
Potosí: the mountain of silver that was the first global city
Fight for the Future On Mauna Kea hundreds are holding a refuge and defending land from the proponents of false progress.
The Misogyny of Climate Deniers
Thinking Globally, Acting Locally? An essay by Brian Tokar on contemporary strategies for local-based action and the political theory behind it, with responses by Helena Norberg-Hodge, Jackie Smith, Aaron Vansintjan, David Barkin, David Bollier, Arturo Escobar, Richard Heinberg, and others.
News you might’ve missed
Mexico: EZLN Announces Creation of New Rebel Municipalities. And their statement.
Fracking Boom in U.S. and Canada Largely to Blame for Global Methane Spike, Study Finds
The struggle in Kallak/Gállok In Jokkmokk municipality in Sápmi/Sweden, land defenders protecting Indigenous land and old-growth forest set up a blockade camp to try to stop Beowulf Mining from prospecting for iron ore.
Enemies of the State? How governments and businesses silence land and environmental defenders, a new report by Global Witness. And Environmental Defenders—Often Fighting Agribusiness—Are Being Violently Silenced Around the World.
Climate crisis reducing land’s ability to sustain humanity, says IPCC
Indonesia will build its new capital city in Borneo as Jakarta sinks into the Java Sea
Farmers groan as Chinese firm grabs land in northern Nigeria
How the Women of Indonesia Rose up Against Land Grabbing
Bolsonaro’s Brazil
Thoughts from a political ecologist on the Amazon fires.
Brazil’s indigenous Waiapi tribe guards the Amazon
Leaked documents show Brazil’s Bolsonaro has grave plans for Amazon rainforest
Current negotiations for Free Trade Agreements between Brazil and the West are highlighting the hypocrisy of Western nations in denouncing the wildfires in the Amazon.
EU piles pressure on Brazil over Amazon fires
Brazilian free trade deal ignites fury
Slovakia may block the EU-Mercosur deal over Amazon fires
Canada will continue trade negotiations with Mercosur, despite the current Amazon policy of Brazil
Eco-fascism(s)
In response to the eco-fascist manifesto of the El Paso, Texas shooter, there has been renewed attention to the phenomenon of eco-fascism. We compiled many of the analyses here, thanks to Peter Staudenmaier for the links.
‘Bees, not refugees’: the environmentalist roots of anti-immigrant bigotry
Eco-fascism: justifications of terrorist violence in the Christchurch mosque shooting and the El Paso shooting
What Is Eco-Fascism, the Ideology Behind Attacks in El Paso and Christchurch?
The El Paso Manifesto: Where Racism and Eco-Facism Meet
How Climate Change Is Becoming a Deadly Part of White Nationalism
White nationalism’s solution to climate change: fewer brown people
White nationalists’ extreme solution to the coming environmental apocalypse, by Alexandra Minna Stern, author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination (Beacon 2019).
Don’t Let the Far-Right Co-Opt the Environmental Struggle
The Eco-Fascism of the El Paso Shooter Haunts the Techno-Optimism of the Left
Eco-Fascisms and Eco-Socialisms by Max Ajl, whose “report card” on Bernie Sanders’ Green New Deal was published in Uneven Earth this month.
And this older article by Kate Aronoff is still relevant: The European Far Right’s Environmental Turn
Where we’re at: analysis
Marx’s notebooks and the origins of Marxist ecology
The Anthropocene Is a Joke: On geological timescales, human civilization is an event, not an epoch
Appropriating the Alien: A Critique of Xenofeminism
Just think about it…
Direct CO2 capture machines could use ‘a quarter of global energy’ in 2100
The machine always wins: what drives our addiction to social media
Nuclear power somehow always makes a loss
Unsavoury science behind lab-grown meat
The colonial origins of extractivism in Africa
After the wildfire: treating the mental health crisis triggered by climate change and this other piece on Greenlanders’ crisis of mental health: Life on thin ice: mental health at the heart of the climate crisis
Renewable energy and the power grid: the key is changing when we use energy
Why farming needs a regional planning approach
New politics
Cooperatives see revival amid growing demand for economic democracy
How the Women of Standing Rock Are Building Sovereign Economies
A Charter for the Social Solidarity Economy
Radical municipalism
Puerto Rico: The Shift from Mass Protests to People’s Assemblies. In the wake of the massive demonstrations that forced the resignation of Puerto Rican governor Ricardo Rossello, dozens of people’s assemblies have sprouted across the island to discuss the critical next stage in the struggle for popular democracy.
Socialize the Grid. Energy companies are more concerned with raking in profits than delivering affordable, sustainable energy. We need to wrest control away from them — and socialize the electrical grid.
Montreal’s bottom-up social democracy
Report: high speed rail could help provide affordable housing
Inclusive cities start with safe streets
‘Capital City’ on How Planning Follows Real Estate
An Alternative History of the ‘Radical’ Suburbs
In Medias Res: Local Socialism and Civil Society
Urban flooding is a manmade disaster from top to bottom
‘Bizarre and Wonderful: Murray Bookchin, Eco-Anarchist’
Resources
African Philosophy & the Enlightenment Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yacob came up with philosophy that prefigured Enlightenment thinkers Hume, Descartes, Locke, Kant, and the US Founding Fathers
If You Hate Capitalism You Will Love This Map A feature in Vice Magazine of a map put together by Black Socialists of America of cooperative economy and autonomous democratic initiatives
Highway to Hell: a reading list for our time of climate crisis
Was Sweden Headed Toward Socialism in the 1970s? On the messy making of what is often seen as a Social Democratic utopia: from the post-war boom to the pressure from radical social movements in the 1960s and -70s.
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