October readings

Activists of “Just Stop Oil” glue their hands to the wall after throwing soup at a van Gogh’s painting “Sunflowers” at the National Gallery in London, Britain October 14, 2022. Just Stop Oil/Handout via REUTERS

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.

In October, the infamous soup incident – in which two young Just Stop Oil activists threw soup on a Van Gogh painting at the National Gallery in London as a form of climate protest – was on everyone’s lips, so we decided to dedicate a section in this newsletter to discussions around activism and strategy. We also unfortunately lost three great thinkers: philosopher and anthropologist Bruno Latour, Leftist urban theorist and historian Mike Davis, and ecological economist Herman Daly. We featured readings on their legacy in the ‘theory’ section. For some good news, we have a huge victory to celebrate this month: Lula won the Brazilian election, and while this is only the beginning, the dystopian era of Bolsonaro is over! Finally, we read great articles on convivial technologies and the deep history of work, and enjoyed a two-part podcast series on what a just green transition might look like; and, as usual, we turned the spotlight on struggles around the world, and compiled a section on fake climate solutions and real reparations.

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

Green growth | Capitalist and neocolonial fantasies are hampering a just transition



Top 5 articles to read

A two-part series from the Upstream podcast: The green transition part 1 (the problem with green capitalism) and The green transition part 2 (a Green Deal for the people)

How Lula and the Brazilian Left can save the Amazon

Lessons from the deep history of work. What anthropological research on early human societies can teach us about improving our jobs today.

These technologies help you live lightly on a fragile planet



News you might’ve missed

Enormous emissions gap between top 1% and poorest, study highlights

559 million children currently exposed to high heatwave frequency, rising to all 2.02 billion children globally by 2050 

Business groups block action that could help tackle biodiversity crisis, report finds

World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies

Climate crisis: UN finds ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’



Fake climate solutions and real reparations

Greta Thunberg on the climate delusion: ‘We’ve been greenwashed out of our senses. It’s time to stand our ground’  

Nova Scotia touted its huge ‘green’ energy plant. Turns out it’s powered by coal

Nuclear power is a dead end. We must abandon it completely.

In seaweed, climate capitalists see green

The Middle East is going green — while supplying oil to others

How a Quebec graphite mine is dividing a community’s support for the EV revolution

Phantom forests: Why ambitious tree planting projects are failing

‘It’s got nasty’: the battle to build the US’s biggest solar power farm 

World Bank criticized as poor countries talk reparations

As UN climate talks near, a showdown on reparations looms

What African governments must fight for at COP27



Where we’re at: analysis

Interview with Marc Edelman: How rural America’s assets have been systematically stripped away and The capitalist transformations of the countryside

The world has one big chance to eliminate plastic pollution

What if polluters footed the climate bill?

Who holds up half the Earth?: A review of Half-Earth Socialism

The colonial roots of present crises. An interview with Amitav Ghosh. 



Global struggles

The climate crisis is driving poorer nations to desperate measures

Nigerian flood victims decry government’s response to disaster

West accused of double standards over oil and gas exploration in DRC

Sudan’s hidden resistance: ‘The day that can no longer wait’

A new Iran has been born

Women Life Freedom – the revolutionary call of the Kurdish Women’s Movement

The climate injustices—and solutions—shared by Puerto Rico and Jackson, Mississippi

In Chile, even water is privatized. The new constitution would change that 

US-backed foreign intervention has led to the disaster in Haiti. And from the Progressive International: Hands off Haiti!



Cities and radical municipalism

Ban cars on Halloween

Stockholm thinks it can have an electric bikeshare program so cheap it’s practically free 

How the indoor air quality in our buildings is making us sick



Food politics

Bangladesh farmers revive floating farms, as seas rise 

The challenges to food sovereignty in the West Bank are political

Has fake meat already peaked?



Just think about it…

Born to swim: the Bajau offer a glimpse into how humans may have adapted to an aquatic way of life

The return of Aztec floating farms

Bears, fungi and global warming

Stop erasing transgender stories from history

The pipeline from elite universities to Wall Street and Silicon Valley

Why experts say you shouldn’t bag your leaves this fall



Degrowth

Liz Truss’s economic growth delusion

The case for degrowth

Degrowth is growing in popularity – but what even is it? 

Degrowth in 7 minutes. A video explainer. 

How degrowth can save the world. A video essay.

Podcast: The future is degrowth. Our editor Aaron Vansintjan was on the Srsly Wrong pod to talk about degrowth!

Rethinking work for sustainability and justice 

European project to explore pathways towards post-growth economics



Sci-fi, art and storytelling

The climate films shaping society

They Live is a timeless anti-capitalist horror classic 



Activism and strategy

Is breaking things the best way forward for climate activists?

Are Just Stop Oil’s dramatic art museum protests hurting their own cause?

Also, Movement soup. History may absolve the soup throwers. And We’re talking about soup. Finally, in the soup throwers’ own words: An interview with Just Stop Oil

Armchair strategists, the climate movement needs you

Just beans. What was ethical consumption under capitalism? 

Undaunted by DeSantis, immigrant workers are heading to Florida to help with hurricane cleanup

What we can learn from Indigenous communities about conservation

The people’s mayor is an abolitionist



Theory

A Twitter thread summarizing some of Herman Daly’s best ideas, and an in-depth interview 

On Mike Davis’ life and work: Mike Davis, City of Quartz author who chronicled the forces that shaped L.A., dies, California’s ‘prophet of doom’ on activism in a dying world, and Mike Davis could see the future

Bruno Latour showed us how to think with the things of the world



Resources

Don’t tell me to just breathe. An animation that speaks to the spiralling levels of anxiety and depression in the UK and other rich nations by revealing the often silenced links between these mental health crises and the current economic system, including not only the increasing pressures upon people’s basic needs, but also the ‘capitalist realism’ that allows climate breakdown to unfold before our very eyes.

Decolonising Utopia resource list



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May readings

Palestinian demonstrators burn tires near the Israeli barrier surrounding Gaza in solidarity with Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem on 8 May. Mohammed Zaanoun ActiveStills, via The Electronic Intifada

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.

This month, Palestine and Israel were all over the news. We collected some useful reading lists, essays and photo stories so you can dig deeper beyond the bite-size tweets and Instagram posts. Photography runs like a thread through our May readings: we featured a photo essay that documents the deep scars mining has left on our planet, and another on China’s ‘Cancer Villages’. We do have reasons to celebrate this month, though: a court in the Netherlands has ruled in a landmark case that the oil giant Shell must reduce its emissions, and Germany has formally recognized the atrocities committed against the Herero and Nama people of what is now Namibia as genocide, paying reparations of €1.1 billion ($1.3 billion). On top of that, we included our editor Aaron Vansintjan’s new piece on the insights on the imagination and the practice of democracy that the late David Graeber has left us with, an explainer on how Nigeria’s forests are being decimated to make charcoal for barbecues in Europe and the United States, and much more.

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

GDP | What is GDP, and why should we learn to live without it?

Brave New Normal | Cultivating cooperative, self-sustaining communities can undermine destructive economic systems and offer meaningful responses to social-ecological crises in the wake of the pandemic



Top 5 articles to read

Eye-catching abstract photos reveal mining’s scars on our planet

Do you know where your grilling charcoal comes from?

David Graeber: The power of the imagination. “For many people, Graeber turned the concept of democracy on its head. Rather than a bureaucratic process that must be engaged in every few years, democracy for Graeber was imaginative, active, and intensely personal. There is no inevitable arc of progress towards more or deeper democracy. Rather, democracy must be fought for, actively built into institutions, protected, and constantly renewed.”

Ancient Indigenous forest gardens still yield bounty 150 years later: study

COVID-19 could end our dependence on cars — if we ‘build back better’



News you might’ve missed

Rich countries drained $152tn from the global South since 1960

Germany will pay Namibia $1.3bn as it formally recognizes colonial-era genocide 

Shell: Netherlands court orders oil giant to cut emissions / Shell loses climate case that may set precedent for Big Oil 

Climate tipping points could topple like dominoes, warn scientists 

Four-day working week would slash UK carbon footprint, report says 

Cali takes on mantle of Colombia’s ‘capital of resistance’



Justice for Palestine

Resources

Decolonize Palestine reading list 

Palestine: Sheikh Jarrah, expulsion, occupation, and settler colonialism

The Fire These Times reading list on Israel-Palestine

Visualizing Palestine

Discard Studies reading list on waste colonialism and Palestine

Stories and explainers

Palestine in pictures: May 2021

Peaceful coexistence in Israel hasn’t been shattered – it’s always been a myth

‘To say goodbye is to die a little’: Palestinian farmers struggle for survival

Human waste spills on to Gaza’s blacked-out streets as crisis looms

The architecture of violence. A short film on architecture’s key role in the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the evolution of urban warfare.

The power of the cultural boycott of Israel 



Where we’re at: analysis

How Senegal fought Covid-19 with lessons learned from Ebola and HIV/AIDS prevention

A climate dystopia in Northern California

When climate disaster and mass incarceration collide

We still blow up mountains to mine coal: Time to end the war on Appalachia

The curse of white gold? An interview with political ecologists Francisco Venes and Stefania Barca explores debates around lithium mining in Portugal.

Brazil aerial photos show miners’ devastation of Indigenous people’s land

The brutal reality of life in China’s most polluted cities. A photographer documents China’s ‘Cancer Villages,’ telling the human story of pollution.

Johan Rockström: ‘We need bankers as well as activists… we have 10 years to cut emissions by half’ 



Food politics

Why aren’t we talking about farmers in India? They are fighting in a global war over the future of agriculture.

Regenerative agriculture needs a reckoning

Between promise and peril: Can fake meat save the planet? 



Just think about it…

Cottagecore, colonialism and the far-right

Naomi Klein on climate change and family life. Here she shares her ideas on the big question of whether to have children and how we might begin the monumental work of saving the planet—and maybe even one another.

Civilizations don’t really die. They just take new forms. 

For peat’s sake: How saving Scotland’s peatlands could be the key to saving the planet

The intellectual labour of social movements



Degrowth

Giving up on economic growth could make us cooler and happier

Global climate change cannot be tackled without addressing economic inequality 

There’s a simple answer to climate change. But will capitalism allow it? 

The climate crisis requires a new culture and politics, not just new tech 

Degrowth and the pluriverse: continued coloniality or intercultural revolution?

How we end consumerism. A video that looks at how degrowth and ecosocialism can work in tandem to stop consumerism and overconsumption.

The only way to hit net zero by 2050 is to stop flying



New politics

A People’s Green New Deal. Max Ajl’s new book is an overview of the various mainstream Green New Deals, and a vision of a radical alternative: a ‘People’s Green New Deal’ committed to degrowth, anti-imperialism and agro-ecology.



Cities and radical municipalism

New municipalism, property and freedom: The battle for rent regulation in Spain 

The New Isaan Movement in Thailand is igniting protests and change in the poorest region of the country 

Driving cars out of our cities. The Car Free Megacities campaign sets out to transform London, Paris and New York.

To save the planet, kill minimum parking mandates. California was a pioneer in minimum parking mandates, which drive up housing costs and climate emissions. Now the state is ready to lead the nation in reclaiming our cities from parking lots.

How ‘gendered’ city budgets aim to boost equality 

How Vienna built a gender equal city. “In practice, gender mainstreaming takes many forms, such as ensuring government bodies use gender-sensitive language to communicate, or that public transportation includes illustrations of men with children to signal seats reserved for parents. A visitor to the capital might also notice the wide pavements for mothers navigating the city with prams or children, or the fact that a large proportion of the city, including the whole public transportation network, is wheelchair accessible.” 

Wetter the better: Gothenburg’s bold plan to be world’s best rainy city

The race to reinvent cement. What if we could transform the material that built the modern world from a climate wrecker into a carbon sponge?


Resources

Feminist resources on the pandemic

The pedagogy of transition: Educating for the future we want

Midnight Sun. A new online magazine of socialist strategy, analysis and culture.

EARTHRISE Spring 2021 issue 

Open-access Funambulist issues on Reparations and Futurisms

20 quotes from “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”



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