Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.
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.
A little late this month, but we’re back with our August readings! We hope you enjoy what we put together. On top of the usual themes like degrowth, global environmental justice struggles, cities, and food politics, this list features a section on the (un)sustainability of fashion, an awesome piece on Marxism by Stuart Hall, and a free Leftist film archive.
If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Uneven Earth updates
Class struggle or degrowth? | Without class struggle the emancipatory potential of degrowth will fail to be realized. A revolutionary pedagogy can help to unify them
News you might’ve missed
The world’s top coal trader is cashing in on the Ukraine war
Climate change is making over 200 diseases worse and our immune systems weaker, study finds
Wildfires destroy almost all forest carbon offsets in 100-year reserve, study says
‘The new normal’: how Europe is being hit by a climate-driven drought crisis
France drought: Parched towns left short of drinking water
‘We borrow our lands from our children’: Sami say they are paying for Sweden going green
A new energy crisis brews in the Caribbean: The U.S. Virgin Islands
Aotearoa or New Zealand: has the moment come to change the country’s name?
Food politics
Nature-friendly farming does not reduce productivity, study finds
Agroecology, from Palestine to the Diaspora
Land grabs and conservation propaganda
Renewing the land question: Against greengrabbing and green colonialism
Beyond rescue ecomodernism: the case for agrarian localism restated
Where we’re at: analysis
West Africa is drowning in plastic. Who is responsible?
The plastic crisis has deep corporate roots: to protect our planet, they need to be exposed
Congo’s oil auction: foiling climate colonialism or filling the coffers?
Sri Lanka collapsed first, but it won’t be the last. Western debt killed the country; others will fall too.
Inherit the dust. The Colorado River is running out of water. No place will be more affected than the arid metropolis of Phoenix.
The Greenland ice sheet’s terrifying future
Revealed: how climate breakdown is supercharging toll of extreme weather
Global struggles
Africa revives push for colonial-era reparations
Kicking oil companies out of school
Native American tribe gets its land back after being displaced nearly 400 years ago
‘We look deeper’: the Native court settling cases outside the justice system
Nuclear waste ravaged their land. The Yakama Nation is on a quest to rescue it
A series on Indonesia’s women land defenders: The women of Kendeng set their feet in cement to stop a mine in their lands. This is their story, ‘Turning fear into strength’: One woman’s struggle for justice in Sulawesi, and The battle for the mountains of Mollo
Testing transnational labour solidarity in the laboratory of Bangladesh
From resistance to power: Building climate justice in Colombia
Trying to keep the roof on in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley
The new fight over an old forest in Atlanta
The (un)sustainability of fashion
From attire to ashes: Clothing waste in the Atacama Desert
Mountains of clothes washed up on Ghana beach show cost of fast fashion
Fast fashion: why your online returns may end up in landfill – and what can be done about it
Fashion and colonialism. From sourcing and manufacturing to exporting waste, this class with Céline Semaan explores current practices that reproduce colonialism and exploitation in fashion, and how we can avoid such practices.
Why can’t fashion brands just make less stuff?
Early Majority: Fashion’s first degrowth brand. Can its community-driven membership model make degrowth principles work in fashion?
Sara Arnold & Sandra Niessen on moving toward defashion and degrowth
Degrowth
Taming the greedocracy. American elites want magical technological fixes to climate change because they refuse to confront the truth that seriously addressing the problem would require limits to their own power and luxury.
Climate change, scarcity chip away at degrowth taboo
‘A new way of life’: the Marxist, post-capitalist, green manifesto captivating Japan
‘Creation care’ isn’t enough. We need degrowth.
Reversing the freight train: The case for degrowth
Fifty years after ‘The Limits to Growth’: Dennis Meadows interviewed by Juan Bordera
The ‘progress recession’ has been here for decades
Moving beyond GDP is key to tackling the economic crises we face
Cities and radical municipalism
The city that pioneered Europe’s car-free future
The case for making public transit free everywhere
The solution is the problem. A response to the UK Prime Minister’s plan to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.
Silicon Valley’s push into transportation has been a miserable failure
Spain bans setting the AC below 27 degrees Celsius
Near-term ideas and examples for incorporating green politics into cost-of-living campaigns. A Twitter thread.
Just think about it…
I’m a psychologist – and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health. And a good companion piece on the politics of mental health from earlier this year: There is no moral imperative to be miserable
What is “ecofascism” — and what does it have to do with the Buffalo shooting?
Red flags for environmental movements. An Instagram thread.
‘A truce with the trees’: Rebecca Solnit on the wonders of a 300-year old violin
Wrong road. The phone is a car: a symbol of freedom and convenience that transforms into an inescapable burden.
Supply chains as a game-changer in the fight against climate change
Theory
For a Marxism without guarantees by Stuart Hall
Alyssa Battistoni on care work, organizing, and the “free gift of nature”
Ruth Wilson Gilmore on abolition, the climate crisis and what must be done
“Neither liberal nor social democratic policies have a structured approach to understanding imperialism, including its ecological history”. An interview with Max Ajl.
Sci-fi, art and storytelling
Miyazaki’s Marxism – the politics of anime’s legendary director
Resources
Solidarity cinema. A free film archive of struggle and solidarity.
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