April readings

On Extinction Rebellion, climate stories, and industrial farming

Source: Ecohustler

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’ve focused on the ongoing debates over different takes on ecological politics in connection to Extinction Rebellion, the Green New Deal, and degrowth. And there are quite a few articles about how capitalists are reacting to climate change –  like blaming you for having children while they are continuing to spew out carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and prepping for disaster. You will also find the usual range of themes, including radical municipalism, Indigenous resistance, alternative politics, farming, and the limits to extractivism.


Uneven Earth updates

Degrowth is utopian, and that’s a good thing | Link | A response to Socialist Forum on degrowth by Giorgos Kallis


Top 5 articles to read

All crises, THE crisis (the industrial agri-food system is central to all of them)

It gets worse. What’s in store as the planet heats up.

Heaven or high water. Selling Miami’s last 50 years.

Climate chaos is coming — and the Pinkertons are ready

Degrowth vs. the Green New Deal



News you might’ve missed

Restoring forests rules out growing crops

Resource extraction responsible for half world’s carbon emissions

Major victory for Indigenous rights. On April 26th 2019, the Waorani people won a historic legal victory to protect 500,000 acres of their rainforest from oil extraction.

‘It’s a groundswell’: the farmers fighting to save the Earth’s soil

The mass movement that toppled Omar al-Bashir

Women are leading the protests in Sudan

Bolsonaro’s three-month rule is a disaster

‘Decades of denial’: major report finds New Zealand’s environment is in serious trouble

Half of England is owned by less than 1% of the population


Extinction rebellion

Let’s talk about Extinction Rebellion. What can we learn from it? And how can we build on its momentum?

Extinction Rebellion: inside the new climate resistance

The origins and rise of the Extinction Symbol

The life of Extinction Rebellion. The lifelike DNA, structure and story of Extinction Rebellion can be used to revive socialist organisation.

If politicians can’t face climate change, Extinction Rebellion will. “If real passion and vision are necessary, they will have to come from outside the system.”

Only rebellion will prevent an ecological apocalypse. Mass civil disobedience is essential to force a political response.


Where we’re at: analysis

Western industrial farming is eating our forests and accelerating climate change

How robots became a scapegoat for the destruction of the working class

What Karl Marx has to say about today’s environmental problems

Agrarian social movements: The absurdly difficult but not impossible agenda of defeating right‐wing populism and exploring a socialist future


Green New Deal

Between the devil and the Green New Deal

A comradely critique of Jasper Bernes’ “Between the devil and the Green New Deal” in Commune Magazine

It begins with the land

The Green New Deal must have a zero waste policy

What’s the deal with the Green New Deal?

Could a Green New Deal make us happier people?

Organizing to win a Green New Deal

How to build the zero-carbon economy. The Green New Deal sets an ambitious goal. Here’s how to get there.


Limits to extractivism

The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust

U.S. nuclear power plants weren’t built for climate change

Going 100% renewable power means a lot of dirty mining

Rotten eggs: e-waste from Europe poisons Ghana’s food chain

Political ecologies of waste: Salvaged livelihoods and infra-structural labour

No more Hoover dams: Hydropowered countries suffer higher levels of poverty, corruption and debt

The dirty truth about green batteries


Just think about it…

The story we’ve been told about America’s national parks is incomplete

What lies beneath: Robert Macfarlane travels ‘Underland’

Who owns the country? The secretive companies hoarding England’s land

When the hero is the problem.“Positive social change results mostly from connecting more deeply to the people around you than rising above them, from coordinated rather than solo action.”

Imagining social movements: from networks to dynamic systems

The tragedy of “the tragedy of the commons”

Uprooted: old tree transplants for China’s new cities – in pictures

A case for small climate stories

The real estate sector is using algorithms to work out the best places to gentrify

Don’t bother waiting for conservatives to come around on climate change

Don’t blame the babies. “It’s hard to think of a more neoliberal bit of gaslighting than telling a young woman to take responsibility for the crimes of capital by making a huge personal sacrifice — one that for some people would feel as unnatural and inhuman as giving up on love or sex — while letting those with all the money and power off the hook.”

Names and locations of the top 100 people killing the planet


Radical municipalism

A collective hub in Ridgewood wants to realign your gaze away from the abyss

Shade

These neighbors got together to buy vacant buildings. Now they’re renting to bakers and brewers

The anarchists who took the commuter train

The alarming state of civic space in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sudan and Venezuela: a global trend

How gentrification impacts community bonds

Barcelona and urban planning: the ultimate potential of superblocks

Superblocks: Barcelona’s radical urban plan to take back streets from cars

The Airbnb invasion of Barcelona

Why grocery co-ops build strong towns and how to start your own

Where it hits, gentrification hits hard

New Orleans gentrification tied to Hurricane Katrina

This is how borrowing things from our neighbors strengthens society. A comic.

How to design our neighborhoods for happiness

How to make friends, build a community, and create the life you want

The healing power of gardens


New politics

Patterns for cooperative networks and associations

What’s in a just transition?

Youths strike for climate change

A new social contract for the 21st century

Gilets Jaunes may be the start of a worldwide revolt against climate action

A new chance for climate justice? New climate movements are demanding equity, not just urgent action. They need to get even bolder about global demands for climate justice.


Sci-fi and climate change

17 writers on the role of fiction in addressing climate change


Resources

Get up and get going: How to form a group

10 tips on receiving critical feedback: A guide for activists

The MappingBack network. Mapping has long been used as a tool for colonial dispossession; MappingBack seeks to reverse this by using mapping as a tool to fight back. Using maps as a weapon to resist extractive industries on Indigenous territories.

Learning: Exploring post-extractivism

Areas of the world where biodiversity collapse is being driven by US consumption patterns

A guide to climate violence


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