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 lot happened this month. As always, while putting together this list, we tried to strike a balance between stressing how serious the state of the world is, while also elevating solutions, optimism, and better visions for the future. COP26 took place in Glasgow, and we collected a bunch of articles analysing and critiquing the conference itself and the various issues it raised. We’re highlighting discussions on technological colonialism and liberatory technologies, as well as Indigenous and decolonial perspectives on the future. We read an important article on how climate denial is being replaced by a dangerous ‘green-cloaked nativism’ on the Right. People did a lot of free advertising for Spotify, so we’re sharing an article on the costs of streaming music. And in the midst of all this chaos, Rebecca Solnit reminds us of the power of pleasure, art and beauty as forms of resistance.
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
Remembering the Ogoni Nine. In 1995, nine activists from the Ogoni region of Nigeria were hanged after a campaign against oil giant Shell – decades later, their struggle for environmental justice is more relevant than ever.
Rebecca Solnit on the politics of pleasure
Climate denial is waning on the right. What’s replacing it might be just as scary
What would it look like if we treated climate change as an actual emergency?
The hidden costs of streaming music
News you might’ve missed
Delhi shuts schools as it mulls ‘pollution lockdown’
Land and life: Feudalism and environmental change in the Philippines
Life in Pakistan without a digital ID
Greenland’s government bans oil drilling, leads Indigenous resistance to extractive capitalism
Connecting the dots between B.C.’s floods, landslides and clearcut logging. And The cost of waiting
Lee Maracle, revolutionary Indigenous author and poet, dead at 71 Also read: Inspiring and uncompromising, Lee Maracle could raise you up or eviscerate you. Read one of her essays: The lost days of Columbus
Indigenous and decolonial perspectives on the future
How Indigenous peoples are fighting the apocalypse
Indigenous cultures must not be forced to bear the brunt of global climate adaptation
Rethinking the apocalypse: An Indigenous anti-futurist manifesto
Taking the fiction out of science fiction: A conversation about Indigenous futurisms
Also read: An Old New World. When one people’s sci-fi is another people’s past
Utopia’s settler colonialism problem
COP26
At U.N.’s COP26 climate summit, Indigenous voices are calling for more than lip service
The climate crisis is about the Global South’s present
Never mind aid, never mind loans: what poor nations are owed is reparations
The US is blocking climate reparations
Technology fetishism reigns at COP26. It’ll keep us burning fossil fuels.
Q&A: Can ‘nature-based solutions’ help address climate change?
Where we’re at: analysis
The forgotten oil ads that told us climate change was nothing
More than 2 billion workers make up the informal economy
Western monopoly of climate science is creating an eco-deficit culture
What economists get wrong about climate change
Will climate change itself derail plans to reduce emissions?
Ruptured worlds: a photo essay on the Lower Se San 2 Dam, Cambodia
Dead white man’s clothes. In Accra, Ghana, imported second-hand clothing—or “dead white man’s clothes”—represents a massive industry with complex environmental, social, and economic implications.
Just think about it…
Forgive humans, not oil companies. It might seem like prison abolition and fossil fuel abolition have nothing in common, but they couldn’t be more related.
Do we need to work? The history of what we call work.
Congested, contested, and competitive: Are we running out of room in outer space?
Why trying to clean up all the ocean plastic is pointless
The need to trespass: let people in to protect nature, says guerrilla botanist
The moral case for destroying fossil fuel infrastructure
On technological colonialism…
Mining the planet to death: The dirty truth about clean technologies
Green hydrogen: The new scramble for North Africa
The headache of ‘crypto colonialism’
What to know about the frantic quest for cobalt
…and liberatory technologies
On the movement for the right to repair: Opening this article voids warranty
Activists are designing mesh networks to deploy during civil unrest
Degrowth
Perpetual growth is an impossible fantasy – even if we wanted it
Infinite economic growth caused the environmental crisis. Degrowth will help us fix it
Sand and gravel: Rethinking aggregate consumption and distribution
Cities and radical municipalism
Where are the municipalists in the US and Canada?
Sindicat: evading eviction in one of Europe’s most densely populated cities – a documentary
Play the game: Can you get a city to zero emissions?
Sci-fi and utopian imaginings
The metaverse: colonial fantasies of the wild West
The science fiction origins of the Metaverse
Artists must confront the climate crisis – we must write as if these are the last days. “If you knew you were at the last days of the human story, what would you write?”
Shifting the narrative. Music and storytelling for a future earth.
Kim Stanley Robinson on science fiction and reclaiming science for the Left
Resources
Global Indigenous newsletter: Chemicals, climate and consultation
Here’s how to support Wet’suwet’en land defenders
Managing mental health in the age of climate change: Diagnosing climate disorder, Diagnosing climate trauma, 7 resources to help manage climate anxiety, and Mental health professionals on processing climate anxiety
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