January readings

On Cop City, Lützerath, and biodiversity & colonialist conservation

Photo: Jesse Pratt López via Vice

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.

Belated new year’s greetings and welcome to our first newsletter of 2023! This time, you’ll be able to read up on biodiversity and colonialist conservation; the battle to save Germany’s Lützerath from being swallowed by a coal mine; the ‘Cop City’ protests in Atlanta, Georgia to save the South River Forest; nuclear fusion; why fake meat is just another food fad; psychedelics and climate activism; international struggles for justice; and so many other important topics.

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!



Top 5 articles to read

Beyond Meat (BYND), Impossible Foods burgers are just another food fad

‘We’ll fight until the end’: a journey through the centre of Peru’s uprising

Another uprising is in the making in Tunisia

Canada birthed a mining industry in Chinese-occupied Tibet

We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction



News you might’ve missed

How Ghana, Africa’s rising star, ended up in economic turmoil

OpenAI used Kenyan workers on less than $2 per hour to make ChatGPT less toxic

Death in the marshes: environmental calamity hits Iraq’s unique wetlands

Sweden’s shameless pursuit of ”green minerals” generate a conflict with the Sami people



Where we’re at: analysis

Contesting cannibal capitalism. Nancy Fraser on the destructive nature of our system.

Paying for an overheating Earth. The euphoria over the creation of a loss-and-damage fund was well justified, but the struggle is far from over.

The labor of land. In order to better resist contemporary, neocolonial accumulation, we need to historicize land grabs in Africa.

Ecomodernism on its own terms



Biodiversity and colonialist conservation

The world is losing its biological complexity

The collapse of insects

‘We used to have everything’: Western conservation models threaten Indigenous rights, says new report

Why 30×30 would be the worst possible outcome of COP15

Harriet Friedmann reviews George Monbiot’s Regenesis

Decolonizing nature: How “wilderness” dispossesses Indigenous People



Global struggles

Fighting Amazon’s neo-colonialism in Cape Town

An unsolved murder amid Costa Rica’s Indigenous land disputes

Inside the battle to save the sacred peyote ceremony: ‘We’re in dire straits’

What we are saying is freedom, not the veil 

Turkey is starving the Rojava revolution

Mennonites deforest Peruvian Amazon, encroach on Indigenous lands

Land conflicts targeting Indigenous communities intensify in Northern Guatemala

‘How are we going to live?’ Families dispossessed of their land to make way for Total’s Congo offsetting project



Lützerath, Germany

HSBC’s secretive loan to a coal company bulldozing a village 

Beating, kicking, tearing down houses – how police, RWE, and the German state are causing climate catastrophe in the German Rhineland



Cop City in Atlanta, Georgia

Activists occupying the woods to block ‘Cop City’ face terrorism charges

Documents show how 19 ‘Cop City’ activists got charged with terrorism

‘Assassinated in cold blood’: activist killed protesting Georgia’s ‘Cop City’

Stop Cop City! Revisiting degrowth & permanent ecological conflict



Cities and radical municipalism

Luisa Cáceres: Commune-building in urban Venezuela

Why knowing your neighbors could save you in the next climate disaster

Tiny Free Stores & Libraries of Everything: Steps towards a post-capitalist future

‘You’re not welcome’: Mexico City residents decry Airbnb

Greener cities promote social and climate inequalities: 28-city study

Zimbabwe plans a new city for the rich as Harare decays

Barcelona offers free transit to residents who ditch their cars 



Fusion

Fusion net gain is manufactured ignorance

Nuclear fusion: Don’t believe the hype!

Clean energy or weapons? What the ‘breakthrough’ in nuclear fusion really means

Fusion power may run out of fuel before it even gets started



Just think about it…

The 1 percent are many times worse than the rainforest wreckers

How much should inequality be reduced?

Reliance on hi-tech solutions to climate crisis perpetuates racism, says UN official

On nuclear energy

The hidden underwater forests that could help tackle the climate crisis

BlackRock says we’re all doomed. It’s being optimistic

Casteism and climate change: a deadly combination in South Asia

Tripping for the planet: Psychedelics and climate activism



Degrowth

All we are saying is give degrowth a chance. A decade ago, a container shipping worker had an epiphany, and it caused him to question the very basis of his business.

Degrowth can work — here’s how science can help

Degrowth will be fun!



Sci-fi, art and storytelling

The definitive climate fiction reading list – 20 books to explore cli-fi



Resources

Comic: The corporate capture of food systems 



Want to receive this as a newsletter in your inbox? Subscribe here.