March readings

Phoebe Johnson for Noema Magazine

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.

Our March reading list is ready for you to enjoy, be inspired by, learn from, and use in your teaching and activism! This month, we’re featuring a call by the late David Graeber for a better post-pandemic future, evidence that reducing inequality and solving our ecological crisis go hand in hand, and a beautiful multimedia piece on the ecological imagination of Hayao Miyazaki. We also collected quite a few articles rethinking and offering different insights or perspectives on science from various angles. And, as usual, you’ll find quite a bit of material on radical municipalism and cities, Indigenous struggles, food politics, and COVID-19.

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

Slow violence | This harm is slow, ill-defined, and often perceptible only in retrospect, when its perpetrators are long gone, if they were ever physically present at all

Permaculture | A design system that offers a radical reimagination of the possible


Top 5 articles to read

After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep. In an essay penned shortly before his death, David Graeber argued that post-pandemic, we can’t slip back into a reality where the way our society is organized — to serve every whim of a small handful of rich people while debasing and degrading the vast majority of us — is seen as sensible or reasonable.

Why a more equal world would be easier to decarbonise

Urban fish ponds: Low-tech sewage treatment for towns and cities

Apocalyptic infrastructures

The ecological imagination of Hayao Miyazaki


News you might’ve missed

Global heating pushes tropical regions towards limits of human livability

New study says Earth could see six-month summers 

Record heat, dust, and locusts are plaguing Kuwait

Gridlock at sea and chaos ashore as pandemic snarls trade network

Oil firms knew decades ago fossil fuels posed grave health risks, files reveal

Mining magnets: Arctic island finds green power can be a curse

Why ‘rebound effects’ may cut energy savings in half

Elite minority of frequent flyers ’cause most of aviation’s climate damage’ 

France tested nuclear weapons in Africa. Now radioactive dust is drifting back into France.

Garment workers win historic victory in effort to transform fashion industry

Sweden rejects pioneering solar geoengineering test, under pressure from Indigenous people and environmental groups

Lula is back — and he can save Brazil from Bolsonaro


Where we’re at: analysis

Exposed: The network of polluters funding international climate policy 

Extraction-driven devastation: an interview with Nnimmo Bassey

The victims of Agent Orange the U.S. has never acknowledged

Will the race for electric vehicles endanger the earth’s most sensitive ecosystem?

Is this the end of forests as we’ve known them?

This tiny fishing town was poisoned by a coal plant. The government is trying to replace it with a mine 

De Beers: Destruction is forever

In Suez Canal, stuck ship is a warning about excessive globalization

Want not, waste not. To save the biosphere, Vaclav Smil argues we should curb upstream consumption — not just downstream emissions.

Why more people than ever are living alone – and what this means for the environment


COVID-19

From the Anthropocene to the Microbiocene. The novel coronavirus compels us to rethink the modern concept of the political.

Sea of resilience: how the Pacific fought against Covid

Vaccine nationalism is patently unjust 


Just think about it…

Pablo Escobar’s hippos might be filling an ancient ecological niche

This TikTok star makes foraging a fun — and revolutionary — practice

Climate anxiety is an overwhelmingly White phenomenon

Bill Gates is the biggest private owner of farmland in the United States. Why?

Green investing ‘is definitely not going to work’, says ex-BlackRock executive

How economic behaviour drove witch hunts in pre-modern Germany

Bitcoin is a mouth hungry for fossil fuels

AI: Ghost workers demand to be seen and heard

What if…we banned the intensive farming of animals?


Science, epistemology, and (post-)colonialism

The long shadow of colonial science

How scientific taxonomy constructed the myth of race

Scientists need to face both facts and feelings when dealing with the climate crisis

Decolonizing the hunt for dinosaurs and other fossils

Half-Earth: A biodiversity ‘solution’ that solves nothing

The future of postcolonial thought

Rethinking the social sciences with Sam Moyo


Degrowth

Stimulus is an environmental disaster waiting to happen

We’re hurtling toward global suicide


New politics

Why the environmental justice movement should think locally

A nearly true story: The tale of the Hamlet

Queer and feminist militants are shaping Tunisia’s protests

Building alternative futures in the present: the case of Syria’s communes


(Green) fascism

When futurism led to fascism—and why it could happen again

Ideology and far right ecologism. An episode of the Right Rising podcast in which Balsa Lubarda discusses the history and connections between environmentalism and Far Right ideology.


Indigenous struggles

LandBack: The Indigenous liberation movement. A video explainer.

The Indigenous Kinggo’s struggle to defend Papua’s customary forest

Biodiversity highest on Indigenous-managed lands

Pollution and patriarchy in tribal India


Cities and radical municipalism

US city of Evanston to pay reparation to Black residents

The secret ingredient in Paris’ green public housing 

Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

High ground, high prices

Wildfires, housing crisis, fascist street violence, and an uprising: this municipalist organization in Portland, Oregon was in the middle of it all

All power to the neighborhoods: Greece rises against police barbarity

The coronavirus and a summer of mutual aid in Chicago


Food politics

Agroecology vs. climate chaos: Farmers leading the battle in Asia

Popular peasant feminism

After the flood, the forest. On planting bananas in the warming Gulf Coast.

Resistance against industrial oil palm plantations in West and Central Africa

In King Leopold’s steps: The investors bankrolling the PHC oil palm plantations in the Democratic Republic of Congo 

Pigeon towers: A low-tech alternative to synthetic fertilizers


Resources

Zero Covid networks from around the world working for a solidarian politics of COVID-19 elimination

1M Experiments. A place to browse community-based safety projects for inspiration.

Global Oneness Project. A library of multimedia stories and curricula about cultural, environmental and social issues.

Exploring economics. An open access e-learning platform on pluralist economics.

A material transition. A report by War On Want that sets out a pathway for a globally just energy future.

A blog that deals with decolonising global health


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November readings

Brett Gundlock/the Globe and Mail


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.

Don’t tune out yet: the year 2020 is still full of great, much-needed analysis. This month, we are featuring work that is deeply challenging: against the idea that providing good jobs and protecting the environment are in opposition to each other; highlighting the moral depravity of for-profit, industrial agriculture; and on the revolutionary demand of giving Indigenous land back. Aside from this, there were several essential analyses of current anti-racist movements, and anti-black racist movements in particular, pieces on the power of Indigenous wisdom, and guides on organizing with tenants

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

Work | Work is drudgery for a lot of people, but it can be different and meaningful, if radically reorganised

Political ecology | Like a toolbox to unpack and understand the complexity of the socio-ecological crises we live in, political ecology is dedicated to a more just and inclusive world

Development | For development to truly deliver on its promise—the betterment of life for all—it must engage a multidimensional understanding of poverty



Top 5 articles to read

The industrial exploitation of pigs

Exiting the false “jobs versus environment” dilemma

A history of true civilisation is not one of monuments

Recovering antiracism

Traditional skills help people on the tourism-deprived Pacific Islands survive the pandemic



News you might’ve missed

Denmark to cull up to 17 million mink amid coronavirus fears

1% of farms operate 70% of world’s farmland

Why are Kashmiri Muslim nomads being evicted?

Africa′s debt crisis grows amid COVID-19 pandemic

Advertisements harm the planet, researchers say

The Maya built the Western Hemisphere’s first water filtration system



Where we’re at: analysis

Hoping for a return to normal after Trump? That’s the last thing we need

Joe Biden’s garbage career: A timeline, and Biden’s corporate cabinet: A breakdown 

Let a thousand fiefdoms bloom

No easy answers: a response to Alex Heffron and Kai Heron

Haemorrhaging Zambia: Prequel to the current debt crisis

Europe’s Green Deal offshores environmental damage to other nations

Climate populism & its limits

Andreas Malm’s corona, climate, chronic emergency



Just think about it…

It is time to revolutionise how we talk about the weather

Ecologically and culturally rich deserts, swamps and grasslands must not be labelled ‘wastelands’

Carbon dioxide removal sucks

Mixed farming beats intensive agriculture methods

How hundreds of small ‘Gardens of Eden’ guard against total deforestation in Ethiopia

Lithuania’s trade-in program is swapping people’s old cars for new e-bikes

Skywoman falling



Black Lives Matter

Cars, riots & Black liberation

Life, war, and politics: After the George Floyd rebellion



Indigenous struggles: #LandBack

What is the Indigenous landback movement — and can it help the climate?

Hunting the hunt

Land Back: The matrilineal descent of modern Indigenous land reclamation

‘Land Back’ is more than a slogan for a resurgent Indigenous movement



Degrowth

Sufficiency: the missing ingredient for sustainable digitalisation

Outgrowing growth: why quality of life, not GDP, should be our measure of success

Escaping the growth and jobs treadmill



New politics

Winning back the Internet by building our own

Why the Green New Deal needs mobility justice

What is libertarian socialism?

An economy that works for everyone

A caring economy: What would it take? The November-December 2020 New Internationalist issue asks: With the world in the midst of a deepening crisis of care, accelerated by Covid-19, what would it mean to have an economy that valued them and the people they care for?

Indigenous languages as cures of the Earth. This article is part of the #CuraDaTerra essay series, focused on Indigenous perspectives and alternatives to industrial capitalism.

Interrelations. Julian Brave NoiseCat has called eight expert witnesses to a tribunal to examine capitalist and colonial relationships to the land and one other. These testimonies endeavor to understand what has gone awry in our human societies, as well as to inquire into what other forms of knowledge, values, and interrelation might form the basis of a more just and reciprocal relationship between land and people.



Cities and radical municipalism

Barcelona launches 10-year plan to reclaim city streets from cars

Ontario is mass evicting tenants, in as little as 60 seconds

This is what energy transition looks like: L’Amassada eviction one year later

L.A. tenants union rejects legislative compromises, affirms dual power

Barricades, boulders, and how LA’s public space became a battleground for the commons

Democracy is in decline. Here’s how we can revive it

‘Covid created an opportunity’: Lisbon to turn tourist flats into homes

New Foundational Infrastructures: economic policies for a radical municipalism?

Finland ends homelessness and provides shelter for all in need



Food politics

Joel Salatin’s unsustainable myth

When beef testing is surveillance, sacred cows are tools of the state

Incubated futures



Resources

Wealth, shown to scale 

A copy editor’s education in Indigenous style

How to organize your building



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July readings

Indigenous Brazilians stand chained to a post in front of the Ministry of Justice in Brasilia, May 29, 2014, to demand a meeting with Justice Minister Eduardo Cardozo to discuss the demarcation of their ancestral land and respect for their rights. (Joedson Alves /REUTERS, via RCI)

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, we are featuring articles illustrating what decolonial ecology could look like—and, in the corollary, analyses of racism in the environmental movement and climate denial by liberals. As real estate markets become unstable, investors are looking for safe places to put their money—farmland and extractive industries. So we are putting the spotlight on fights for land reform, anti-extractivist struggles, and Indigenous movements around the world. Finally, with the start of a new school year and online education, we noticed an uptick of radical syllabi for making sense of the world—we collected these in our resources section. 

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

Population | “Neo-Malthusian promotion of family planning as the solution to hunger, conflict, and poverty has contributed to destructive population control approaches, that are targeted most often at poor, racialized women.” 

Littoral Drift: Coastal currents and industrial echoes mingle to shape the landscape in Southern France | Photographer and filmmaker Neal Rockwell explores new natures on the Landes coast 

The Revolution Will Not Be “Green” | A truly equitable and sustainable conservation movement must abandon both green capitalism and the idea of pristine nature 



Top 5 articles to read

Cogs in the climate machine. A short course in planetary time, for planetary survival.

The coronavirus-climate-air conditioning nexus

Poultry and prisons

The dollar and Empire

Agro-imperialism in the time of Covid-19



News you might’ve missed

‘A critical situation’: Bangladesh in crisis as monsoon floods follow super-cyclone, and Monsoons slam South Asia, displacing millions in Bangladesh and India

Privatisation ‘wave’ hurts global poor as pandemic heightens risks

To fill vacant units, Barcelona seizes apartments

South Korea backtracks on green promise

Belgian Green parties introduce ecocide bill

Surprise discoveries in Mexico cave may double time of peopling of the Americas

Theoretical physicists say 90% chance of societal collapse within several decades. Deforestation and rampant resource use is likely to trigger the ‘irreversible collapse’ of human civilization unless we rapidly change course.



Global land struggles

New Brazilian map unmasks its illegal foresters

After the war, before the flood, in Colombia

An oil spill in the time of coronavirus

Land Back, the unheeded lesson of ‘Oka Crisis,’ 30 years on

Dakota Access Pipeline decision: The Standing Rock generation triumphs

The Supreme Court ruling on Oklahoma was welcome, but Indigenous people deserve more: To realize a complete vision of Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice takes people power

Environmental activists face high risk of violence and assassination: study

Communities in West and Central Africa resist industrial oil palm plantations, even in times of Covid-19

Beyond biological warfare: Why COVID-19 is a matter of land distribution in Latin America 



Coronavirus

COVID-19 and border politics

How epidemics end

Ecology and economics for pandemic prevention

Lessons from the pandemic for the municipalists in Spain

Uneven development and the coronavirus crisis

It’s time to tell a new story about coronavirus—our lives depend on it



Where we’re at: analysis

Himalayan hydropower is not a green alternative 

The racist double standards of international development

‘Defund the police,’ ‘cancel rent’: The Left remakes the world

Has 2020 marked the end of progressive left electoralism?

Examining the wreckage

Beyond the Green New Deal: A review of Stan Cox’s new book

From neoliberalism to necrocapitalism in 20 years

Is Deep Adaptation flawed science?



Just think about it…

Automation is for the bosses

Towards the ‘Walden wage’

Twitter thread: “The summer heat continues. Let’s have a look at how the ancient Romans built themselves a cool, breezy, indoor climate

When France extorted Haiti – the greatest heist in history

Trump has brought America’s dirty wars home

In Mexico City, the coronavirus is bringing back Aztec-era ‘floating gardens’



Decolonial ecologies

The hungry people

Decolonizing ecology

The forest as farm

Growing sovereignty: Turtle Island and the future of food

Agroecology is solution to Nigeria’s food, farming challenges, say experts



Environmentalism, racism, and the right

Environmental group Sierra Club reckons with John Muir’s racism

Beware the rise of Far-Right environmentalism

Confronting the rise of eco-fascism means grappling with complex systems

The willful blindness of reactionary liberalism

Bad science and bad arguments abound in ‘Apocalypse Never’ by Michael Shellenberger. See also: ‘False Alarm’ and ‘Apocalypse Never’ book reviews



Cities and radical municipalism

I’ve seen a future without cars, and it’s amazing

Political organizing in the 21st century

Another town is possible: community wealth building in the Basque Country

Forget basic income—in Canada, the new normal should bring a public housing revolution

Cities versus multinationals

Green structural adjustment in the World Bank’s resilient cities

The “Camden model” for community policing is not a model. It’s an obstacle to real change.

Public transportation is a human right

Assembled in Detroit. An interview with Mason Herson-Hord about community organizing in Detroit, Michigan. 

Poppies. “The land we’re standing on was a golf course. Three years have passed since it was last used as one, and nature has made little headway in claiming it back.”

Why Miami is doomed—and what it would take to save it



Resources

Interface special issue on organising amidst COVID-19

The Ecoversities Alliance is committed to radically re-imagining higher education to cultivate human and ecological flourishing

Mexie’s positive Leftist news roundup, a monthly series on YouTube

System change: A basic primer to the solidarity economy

Pandemic syllabus

Decolonising methods: A reading list

Green New Deal(s): A resource list for political ecologists



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March & April readings

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.

All of March and April, we’ve collected lots of articles on coronavirus. And we thought that, now, two months after the World Health Organization declared it a global pandemic, is a good moment to reflect on where we are and take stock of where we are going. So, this reading list, we’re only featuring articles on coronavirus.

First, we’re highlighting guides and resources for how to organize during the crisis. Second, we highlight the political actions and movements that are responding to the crisis around the world. Third, we feature articles focusing on the wave of mutual aid that has emerged following the pandemic. We are also including analysis of what caused the pandemic. Other topics include: its effects in the Global South, the importance of care & care work, its impact on cities, degrowth as a key response to the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, its effect on food systems, the emergence of eco-fascism in response, and analysis of what the world will look like after this all.



Uneven Earth updates

The only thing to last forever | An endless repetition had taken hold of the world

Where did coronavirus come from, and where will it take us? | An interview with Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu

Pandemic strike | Rob Wallace says we need new tactics to show that people’s lives matter more than profit

Exploring transformative change on the brink | In moments such as these, the landscape of possibility shifts. How can activists engage on the ground?

This pandemic IS ecological breakdown: different tempo, same song | Comparisons between the toll of COVID-19 and climate change are not helpful because they view each as two separate “things”

Our contributing editor Vijay Kolinjivadi also appeared on the podcast This Is Hell! to talk about his article.

Now is the time to end the climate emergency | Reading The Green New Deal and beyond in the middle of a global crisis

To organize in times of crisis, we need to connect the dots of global resistance against Imperialism | Moving beyond a politics of confusion towards Internationalism

When viruses shatter limits | Viruses are invisibly small, cause monumental pandemics, and force us to rethink our taxonomies



Top 5 articles to read

In light of the global pandemic, focus attention on the people. A 16-point list of demands from the International Assembly of the Peoples and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Within and beyond the pandemic, demanding a care income and a feminist Green New Deal for Europe

Social reproduction theory and why we need it to make sense of the coronavirus crisis

No new normal

Pandemic insolvency: Why this economic crisis will be different



Guides, how-tos, and resources

List of resources and guides on how to do mutual aid during a pandemic

Useful list of Covid-19-related information and explanatory guides

COVID-19 tenant organizing guide

Resources on strikes during COVID-19

How to fight fascism while surviving a plague

How to organize your workplace against COVID-19

COVID-19 Left perspectives: A reading list

Feminist resources on the pandemic

Food safety and coronavirus: A comprehensive guide

Post-capitalist reading in a time of pandemic



Political actions and demands

Call of the Indigenous peoples, afro-descendants and peoples’ organizations of Latin America

A call to action: Towards a general strike to end the COVID-19 crisis and create a new world

Organizing under lockdown: online activism, local solidarity

Imagining protest in a quarantined world

Defining a space for resistance: Countering the disempowering effects of social distancing 

Essential workers: Class struggle in the time of coronavirus 

Rent strike nation

Our towns: Public libraries respond to COVID-19

Social movements in and beyond the COVID-19 crisis: sharing stories of struggles

Coronavirus has transformed the climate movement into something new

To our friends all over the world from the eye of Covid-19 storm



Mutual aid

Five quick thoughts on the limits of Covid-19 mutual aid groups & how they might be overcome

Don’t forget: disasters and crises bring out the best in people

People are fighting the coronavirus with mutual aid efforts to help each other

Autonomous groups are mobilizing mutual aid initiatives to combat the coronavirus

From mutual aid to dual power in the state of emergency

Mutual aid groups respond to coronavirus and climate change threats

Amid coronavirus pandemic, neighbors delivering what government cannot

The global guardians: Volunteering in Milan’s neighborhoods



What caused the pandemic?

‘Tip of the iceberg’: is our destruction of nature responsible for Covid-19?

Profits above all: world’s largest pork company propagates global pandemics

Think exotic animals are to blame for the coronavirus? Think again.

New research suggests industrial livestock, not wet markets, might be origin of Covid-19

COVID-19 and circuits of capital

Ten theses on farming and disease from Rob Wallace

Is factory farming to blame for coronavirus?

‘A common germ pool’: The frightening origins of the coronavirus



The pandemic in the Global South

Coronavirus hits the Global South

IMF, World Bank urge debt relief for poor nations battling virus

For autocrats, and others, coronavirus is a chance to grab even more power

Indigenous groups in Canada, Australia, Brazil brace for coronavirus

Dispatch #6 from Palestine on COVID-19, curfews & mutual aid

Stories from Kerala’s spirited virus fight

The pandemic can be a catalyst for decolonisation in Africa

Negligence, injustice, and insensitivity – Peasant situation under coronavirus crisis



Thinking about the pandemic: analysis and theory

The coronavirus pandemic, capitalism, and nation-states 

Peter Linebaugh on the long history of pandemics

The coronation by Charles Eisenstein

Coronavirus and the world-economy: The old is dead, the new can’t be born

Coronavirus and the need for a social ecology

Oxana Timofeeva, Georges Bataille: A pandemic read

Academia in the time of Covid-19: Our chance to develop an ethics of care

How the world became place where we remembered breath

Mike Davis on COVID-19: The monster is finally at the door

#CoronaCapitalism: How corporations are responding to the coronavirus crisis

COVID-19 and the neoliberal state of exception

In conflict with disease



Care during a pandemic

On social reproduction and the covid-19 pandemic

Social reproduction and the pandemic, with Tithi Bhattacharya

COVID-19 pandemic: A crisis of care

Care in the time of covid-19 

A crisis like no other: social reproduction and the regeneration of capitalist life during the COVID-19 pandemic

Asian American feminist antibodies. A zine that makes meaning of the coronavirus crisis through long-standing practices of care that come out of Asian American histories and politics.

The coronavirus fallout may be worse for women than men. Here’s why

The coronavirus is a disaster for feminism



Coronavirus and our cities

How cities can adapt to Covid-19

‘Idiocy of our current urban systems’: Inequality, not high-density cities, to blame for COVID-19’s spread

Disinvestment made our cities a powder keg in a pandemic

For urban poor, the coronavirus complicates existing health risks

Coronavirus is revealing the harm Airbnb did to urban rental markets



Growth, degrowth, and corona-crisis

Pandenomics: a story of life versus growth

In the midst of an economic crisis, can ‘degrowth’ provide an answer?

Coronavirus and degrowth

Is the economic shutdown what degrowth advocates have been calling for?

A degrowth perspective on the coronavirus crisis

Jason Hickel on Twitter: “Just to be clear: the economic contraction that’s happening right now is *not* degrowth. If you’re ever confused, you can consult this handy list of questions.”

Or, if you’re still confused, check out this handy online quiz: Is this degrowth?



How are food systems affected?

Farmworkers are risking their lives to feed a nation on lockdown

IPES special report: COVID-19 and the crisis in food systems

5 lessons for food systems thinking from COVID-19



Eco-fascism and the pandemic

Fake animal news abounds on social media as coronavirus upends life

It’s not “ecofascism”—it’s liberalism

‘We’re the virus’: The pandemic is bringing out environmentalism’s dark side

What the ‘humans are the virus’ meme gets so wrong

Coronavirus and the radical right: conspiracy, disinformation, and xenophobia



What the world will look like after coronavirus

The coronavirus is rewriting our imaginations

Technocracy after COVID-19

The coming debt deluge

Will coronavirus signal the end of capitalism?

It was the virus that did it

Coronavirus will require us to completely reshape the economy

The coronavirus is leading to a whole new way of economic thinking

COVID19 is changing the ideas that we consider politically possible

Owning the future: After COVID-19, a new era of community wealth building

We can afford to beat this crisis

What will the world be like after coronavirus? Four possible futures



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February readings

Left to right: Dinï ze’ Knedebeas, Warner William, Dinï ze’ Hagwilnegh, Ron Mitchell, Dinï ze’ Woos, Frank Alec, Dinï ze’ Madeek, Jeff Brown, Dinï ze’ Gisday’wa, Fred Tom. In back is Dinï ze’ Ste ohn tsiy, Rob Alfred. Wet’suwet’en territory near Houston, B.C. on Saturday, January 4, 2020. Amber Bracken (Source: macleans.ca)


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 February, we’ve collected–once again–articles that go beyond the front-page analysis of Covid-19, otherwise known as the ‘coronavirus’. Some excellent and useful pieces in there, including an intervention by Chuang, a radical Chinese journal. You might have also seen that Indigenous warriors in Wet’suwet’en were being forcibly removed from their land by Canadian armed forces–leading to blockades of key infrastructure by other Indigenous nations in solidarity with them. We’ve collected all kinds of pieces on the issue, including basic explainers, maps, background about Indigenous struggles in Canada, and deeper dives. We’re also featuring pieces on transportation and mobility, underlined by the growing call for free public transit around the world. Finally, this month, we’re highlighting rural struggles and politics



Uneven Earth updates

Remembering | Link | “I remember rent being low. But water was expensive. A lot of electricity went into the desalination plants.” 

A post-growth Green New Deal | Link | To decarbonize we must degrow, decommodify, and democratize the economy

A Wood Wide Web Story: an Apple Tree in Daegu | Link | “The surrogate mothers could only be married to the earth.” 

Who owns the Green New Deal? | Link | Making sense of remote ownership problems and place-based governance 



Top 5 articles to read

Centuries of fire: Rebel memory and Andean utopias in Bolivia

Staring at hell: The aesthetics of architecture in a ruined world

Water is life: Nick Estes on Indigenous technologies

Mapping the end of the world

Breaking development. Our concept of “development” is destructive and irrational.



News you might’ve missed

Planned fossil fuel production rise locks in dangerous levels of warming

‘History disappears’ as dam waters flood ancient Turkish town

Heathrow third runway ruled illegal over climate change

Renewable energy could power the world by 2050

Sweden’s indigenous groups report death threats after landmark court win and Reindeer tortured after threats towards Sámi community in northern Sweden (see this on the court case about land rights)

How Hindu supremacists are tearing India apart

A cobalt crisis could put the brakes on electric car sales

Fates of humans and insects intertwined, warn scientists

Is this the end of Rojava? Also: Rojava after Rojava

Agribusiness company with financial support from UK, US and Netherlands is dispossessing thousands

The quiet start of Brazil’s war on the Amazon

Europeans now have the right to repair – and that means the rest of us probably will too

Armed ecoguards funded by WWF ‘beat up Congo tribespeople’

Speeding sea level rise threatens nuclear plants



Everything you need to know about Wet’suwet’en actions

Explainers

Map of Wet’suwet’en solidarity actions

Country erupts into Wet’suwet’en solidarity demonstrations: A week in pictures

The Wet’suwet’en protest and the coastal GasLink pipeline

‘What cost are human rights worth?’ UN calls for immediate RCMP withdrawal in Wet’suwet’en standoff

In Kanesatake, women are the face of Mohawk resistance

Indigenous resistance shakes the Canadian state

Rail blockades are proving to be an effective non-violent response to state violence

GasLink, the Wet’suwet’en people and Canada’s ongoing colonialism

Background

Wet’suwet’en protests a revolutionary moment in Canada: Mohawk scholar Gerald Taiaiake Alfred

Beyond bloodlines: How the Wet’suwet’en hereditary system at the heart of the Coastal GasLink conflict works

Indigenous-led CN rail blockades could cost ‘billions’ and that’s the point: Pro-Wet’suwet’en organizers

The Wet’suwet’en are more united than pipeline backers want you to think

What does “land back” mean? A thread from âpihtawikosisân on Twitter.

Dive deeper

Being with the land, protects the land

Canada’s battle against First Nations shows slide toward authoritarianism

Here’s some resources on Indigenous rights in the context of Wet’suwet’en solidarity

‘Reconciliation is dead and it was never really alive’

Yellowhead Institute’s Land Back report delivers devastating critique of land dispossession in Canada

Wet’suwet’en: Why are Indigenous rights being defined by an energy corporation?

A short introduction to the Two Row Wampu

The ideology of reconciliation



Coronavirus

Preparing for coronavirus to strike the U.S.

Coronavirus + capitalism = sad face. Why the American capitalist system will make the coming coronavirus pandemic worse.

Social contagion: The production of plagues

Race, epidemics, and the viral economy of health expertise

Coronavirus: product of a sick system

The coronavirus’s lesson for climate change

The state of exception provoked by an unmotivated emergency

Coronavirus: China’s air pollution levels, smog show hit to the economy

Covid-19 will mark the end of affluence politics



Just think about it…

William Gibson — the prophet of cyberspace talks AI and climate collapse

The U.S. military is not sustainable

The Trump era is a golden age of conspiracy theories – on the right and left

Tech startups are flooding Kenya with apps offering high-interest loans

Biodiversity highest on Indigenous-managed lands

The war on food waste is a waste of time

A spider’s web is part of its mind, new research suggests

Crimea, Kashmir, Korea — Google redraws disputed borders, depending on who’s looking

We are drowning in a devolved world: An open letter from Devo

The volatile economics of natural vanilla in Madagascar

The climate crisis is like a world war. So let’s talk about rationing

The word ‘Anthropocene’ is failing us



Where we’re at: analysis

The illusion of centrist ecology

The EU’s green deal is a colossal exercise in greenwashing

Colonialism, the hidden cause of our environmental crisis

New Deal for Nature: Paying the emperor to fence the wind

White supremacy goes green

The fate of the planet rests on dethroning the IMF and World Bank

Feeding China is wrecking the Amazon

The struggle for democracy and socialism in Latin America



New politics

The growing global movement to end outdoor advertising

Puerto Rico’s energy insurrection

Planetary health and regeneration

Modern monetary theory in the periphery

Across the North, Indigenous communities are redefining conservation



Rural politics

An enormous land transition is underway. Here’s how to make it just.

What if we’re thinking about agriculture all wrong?

The youth are fleeing the farms: Aspiration and conflict in Kurram, Pakistan

How capitalism underdeveloped rural America

An Interview with Max Ajl on agrarian change in Tunisia

What if we only ate food from local farms?



Cities and radical municipalism

Cities fighting climate woes hasten ‘green gentrification’

Urbanist lessons from the densest neighborhoods across Europe

The case for truly taking back control – by reversing the privatisation of our cities

As sea level rises, Miami neighborhoods feel rising tide of gentrification

The ‘street food’ swindle: fake diversity, privatised space – and such small portions!

Housing discrimination made summers even hotter

Ancient ‘megasites’ may reshape the history of the first cities



Transportation

Luxembourg makes history as first country with free public transport 

In defence of fare evasion

The ride-hail utopia that got stuck in traffic

Cities turn to freewheeling public transport

Paris mayor pledges a greener ’15-minute city’



Degrowth!

Degrowth toward a steady state economy: Unifying non-growth movements for political impact

Why “de-growth” shouldn’t scare businesses

Beyond redistribution—confronting inequality in an era of low growth

India should stop obsessing about GDP, and start focusing on what matters



Resources

Extraction syllabus

Gender in academia resources

Documentary on the solidarity economy in Barcelona



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January readings

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, via Counterfire


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. 

We’re back from our break with fresh new readings for you! The world moves fast, and a lot has happened over the past two months. Jane Goodall’s comment at the World Economic Forum that most of our environmental problems wouldn’t exist if human population growth were at the levels they were 500 years ago sparked another debate about the validity and dangers of ‘overpopulation’ arguments. We featured a critique of her claim here. We also collected resources around green colonialism: the push to ‘green’ the Global North at the expense of the Global South. And of course, we’re sharing a couple of articles about the Wuhan coronavirus which has been dominating the news, on top of the usual news and discussions about global and Indigenous struggles, cities and radical municipalism, and degrowth.



Uneven Earth updates

Energy and the Green New Deal | Link | The complex challenge of powering societies 

Swedish colonialist neutrality | Link | A tradition of double standards from historical colonialism to current environmental injustice 

Public money for environmental justice | Link | We’ll never fund a transformative Green New Deal with money designed for capitalism 

Hayashi-san’s Green Headband | Link | “In Tokyo, New York, Montreal, Rome, Paris, Beijing, Kinshasa, millions of people were wearing green headbands … this has made you a martyr and brought the environmental movement to a level never before reached.” 

Show me the money | Link | How will we pay for the Green New Deal?

A just food transition | Link | Why the Green New Deal should give farmers a Basic Income 

Birth | Link | “Maybe then we’ll regain the access to the river, the river that is now controlled by the insiders and their obsession with energy resources.” 



Top 5 articles to read

Why we should be wary of blaming ‘overpopulation’ for the climate crisis

What if Darwin’s ideas about competition aren’t as correct as we’ve long thought?

A repair manual for Spaceship Earth

Life under the algorithm

Back to the land



News you might’ve missed

Nuclear power ‘cannot rival renewable energy’

The plastics pipeline: A surge of new production is on the way

Our pathetically slow shift to clean energy, in five charts

It’s not just Australia — Indonesia is facing its own climate disaster

Perpetual debt in the Silicon Savannah



Coronavirus

Notes on a novel coronavirus

Bat soup didn’t cause the Wuhan virus. Racist memes target Chinese eating habits, but the real causes of the coronavirus are more mundane.



Global struggles

In Hong Kong, the art of resistance and erasure

‘This place used to be green’: the brutal impact of oil in the Niger Delta

Don’t mess with French pensions

The popular assemblies at the heart of the Chilean uprising

A Mexican indigenous town’s environmental revolt

COP25, social movements and climate justice 

Rojava is a laboratory that links the environment and society with municipalism

‘This movement is just beginning’: homeless moms evicted after taking over vacant house

  • The fight for mom’s house. This is the story of a group of homeless mothers who for 58 days occupied a vacant home in Oakland, and eventually claimed a historic victory in the struggle for housing justice.

Stories of global environmental justice

Zapatista update: Forum on Defense of the Territory and Mother Earth

How the Global North’s Left media helped pave the way for Bolivia’s right-wing coup

Can Extinction Rebellion survive?




Indigenous struggles

Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs evict coastal GasLink from territory

Canada police prepared to shoot Indigenous activists, documents show

Indigenous Colombians escalate fight to rescue ancestral lands

The Wounded Knee massacre and the long tradition of Indigenous resistance

‘On my ancestors’ remains’: The fight for sacred lands

With a thousand ancestors front and back



Just think about it…

Climate change and deforestation: These 3 supertrees can protect us from climate collapse

The dark side of the Nordic model. Scandinavian countries may top every ranking on human development, but they are a disaster for the environment. 

Want to double world food production? Return the land to small farmers

Performative environmentalism won’t reverse climate change

Automation isn’t wiping out jobs. It’s that our engine of growth is winding down

Ganges River: Giulio Di Sturco’s photos capture environmental decline

A surge of new plastic is about to hit the planet

Nightmares on wax: the environmental impact of the vinyl revival

Humans will never colonize Mars

Library socialism: A utopian vision of a sustaniable, luxuriant future of circulating abundance

A future with no future: Depression, the Left, and the politics of mental health

Will Finland introduce a four-day week? Is it the secret of happiness?

Time, work and wellbeing. “Efforts to achieve decent work must encompass not just the quantity but also the quality of working time – not just time as a commodity but also as a lived complexity.”



Where we’re at: analysis

A Green New Jail

Europe’s Green Deal is a tepid response to the climate crisis 

When are we going to address the climate crisis?

A critical look at China’s One Belt, One Road initiative

Where is the rift? Marx, Lacan, capitalism, and ecology

Uber’s path of destruction

The palace of the future is nearly complete

Climate change and technology define the rural future. “No city is an autarky. For their survival, they rely on the countrysides they conveniently ignore.”



New politics

In 2030, we ended the climate emergency. Here’s how

Socialism, capitalism and the transition away from fossil fuels

The Lebanese Intifada, or the growth of an anti-capitalist mass movement 

Austria’s new anti-immigrant green government stokes fears of climate ‘nightmare’ 

What is the Green New Deal? A climate proposal, explained 

Portugal has found an antidote to right wing populism. Facing the policies of socialist Prime Minister António Costa, which include properly supporting the welfare state and investing in the public sector instead of austerity measures, right wing populists don’t stand a chance. 

The Hague must recognise ecocide 

Feminism and the social solidarity economy: A short call to action 

Moving towards low-carbon lifestyles: A question of collective action 



Green colonialism (and decolonialism)

What green costs. Deep in the salt flats of Chile lies the extractive frontier of the renewable energy transition.  

The coming green colonialism

The eco-fascists are coming

The path to net-zero emissions must include divestment, decolonization and resistance

Why a ‘Green New Deal’ must be decolonial

Decolonization requires a new economics

A view from the countryside. Contesting and constructing human rights in an age of converging crises.

Why stopping wars is essential for stopping climate change

Walls on a drowning world

Playing with fire, securing the borders of a Green New Deal

When the Green New Deal goes global

Development: A failed project 




Cities and radical municipalism

The case for making low-tech ‘dumb’ cities instead of ‘smart’ ones 

‘We’re setting a clear stop sign’: Berlin passes five-year rent freeze law

‘My Parkdale is gone’: how gentrification reached the one place that seemed immune

Study says rent control is good for cities, debunking conventional economists’ wisdom 

Tenant organizing when rising rent isn’t the (main) issue

Islands in the illiberal storm: central European cities vow to stand together 

Reclaiming the commons: The case for public bike libraries 

The case for cohousing: Where responsibilities are shared and life is a little less lonely

Time for public power for New York 

Should public transit be free? More cities say, why not? 

Ten zero-waste cities: How Thiruvananthapuram cleaned up its act 

When capital threatens to strike in your city 

The municipalist moment. Movements on the left are increasingly looking to build power at the local level. The question is how we can leverage municipal gains to transform the system at expanding scales.

Municipalism: the next political revolution? 

Heroes of the 2010s: Kshama Sawant, the socialist who beat Amazon 



Degrowth!

Ford v. Ferrari v. Malthus

Rethinking fashion: A confession of a degrowth advocate

Deadly growth: Capitalism versus life on Earth

Is degrowth an alternative to capitalism?



Resources

Case studies from The Rules about different topics related to environmental justice and alternative economics.

Economics for people. A free online lecture series from Ha-Joon Chang.

Degrowth of aviation. A report.

Regenerative farming and the Green New Deal. A policy memo.

Dual power: Issue 9 of ROAR Magazine

Diversify and decolonise your holiday reading list

How to follow the news without burning out  



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September readings

Illustration by Delcan & Company + Julia Grayson, via The New Republic


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’re featuring a lot of analysis on climate politics: the climate strikes, climate apartheid, and the rise of fascism along with it. We are also featuring, as usual, many reports and articles documenting the ongoing Indigenous and land rights struggles around the world. We also highlight a debate that started with Jonathan Franzen’s article in the New Yorker, which mixes climate “realism” with a denial of the power of collective power, in favor of individual action.

We continued to collect analyses about the Amazon forest fires and Bolsonaro’s Brazil. A month after the crisis hit the news, articles coming out now are much more measured and well-researched, digging into the connections between global capital, our very own pension funds, and deforestation in the Amazon. 

Finally, analysis and debate about degrowth is picking up again. On the left, there was surprising coverage of the movement in The New Republic and Current Affairs. World-famous scientist and analyst, Vaclav Smil, has just released an authoritative book on the science of degrowth. There was also an interesting debate where Leigh Phillips, author of Austerity Ecology, published an article denouncing degrowth. In four separate replies to his piece, scientists and authors took apart each of his arguments and countered them pretty effectively. We feature the debate here. 



Uneven Earth updates

Last stand on Ménez Hom | Link | At the top of the Ménez Hom, between the earth and the sky, history had displayed the ability to repeat itself. 

Life in flames | Link | On pain and hope in the aftermath of catastrophic fires in Bolivia’s Chiquitanía and Amazon regions 

The vine underground | Link | “The unthinkable had happened. No one plans for the end of their own world.” 

Destructive space-time | Link | How war bombs and resource extractivism compress past, present, and future 



Top 5 articles to read

Indigenous people are already working “green jobs” — but they’re unrecognized and unpaid

Wendell Berry’s lifelong dissent

Rethinking cities, from the ground up – Whose society? Whose cohesion?

The Toxic Valley. How global industry turned a once green Turkish province into an environmental wasteland.

First as tragedy, then as fascism. Ecologist Garrett Hardin’s enduring gift to the nativist right.



News you might’ve missed

From Qatar to Vietnam, global heating is making the workplace deadly for millions

$1m a minute: the farming subsidies destroying the world – report

Suddenly, the world’s biggest trade agreement won’t allow corporations to sue governments

Nuclear cannot help against climate crisis

Jakarta’s sea level prompts a move – at a price. And also, where they are planning to build the new capital, there seems to be a conservation forest in the way… 

‘When is this going to end?’: Indonesians shrouded in toxic haze

The sinking class: the New Yorkers left to fight the climate crisis alone

Surveying archaeologists across the globe reveals deeper and more widespread roots of the human age, the Anthropocene



Where we’re at: analysis

Climate apartheid will only lead to more tragedies in the Mediterranean 

10 ways that the climate crisis and militarism are intertwined 

Open borders must be part of any response to the climate crisis

Naomi Klein: ‘We are seeing the beginnings of the era of climate barbarism’

Dark crystals: the brutal reality behind a booming wellness craze. Demand for ‘healing’ crystals is soaring – but many are mined in deadly conditions in one of the world’s poorest countries.

Socialism with a bit of greenwash can’t save the planet either

What went wrong with African liberation?

Failed decolonisation of South African cities fuels violence



Bolsonaro’s Brazil

Brazil’s Amazon crisis is rooted in its fascist past

Blackstone CEO is driving force behind Amazon deforestation

Revealed: major banks and investors including Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock are pouring money into global forest destruction

As the Amazon burns, students call on Harvard to divest from farmland holdings

Understanding the fires in South America

Amazon crisis: Warring tribes unite against Bolsonaro plans to devastate Brazil’s rainforests for cash

Amazon fires: Follow the money



Land and water protectors and Indigenous struggles

We can’t ‘drink oil’ Indigenous water activist tells UN 

‘Our water is our gold’: Armenians blockade controversial mine

Eco-protesters fight Moscow’s attempt to ‘trash’ Russia’s north

A Brazilian Indigenous leader shares his climate solutions

Revolutionary socialism is the primary political ideology of the Red Nation. Position paper from the Third General Assembly of the Indigenous organization The Red Nation.

Interactive: Plundering Cambodia’s forests

In 2003, a farmer killed himself to protest globalization. Little has changed.

Thai activists risk murder, abduction in fight for land rights

Communities in Africa fight back against the land grab for palm oil



Climate strikes

Twenty-five years before Greta, there was Severn and we ignored her. Time is running out to make transition to low-carbon future safe, just and inclusive.

The climate strikes are about so much more than green colonialism. Solutions to the environmental crisis won’t come in the shape of a battery – they come in the shape of justice, reparations and equity.

About the climate strike and the dark side of the ‘green new deal’ from Rojava.

Why citizens’ assemblies on climate change work

The potential for art as a vehicle for transformation



Climate de-nihilism versus climate rage

What if we stopped pretending? by Jonathan Franzen sparked an online debate about the merits of and issues with claims that it’s too late to take meaningful climate action. Franzen’s take: “The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.” This Twitter thread by climate activist Dr. Genevieve Guenther takes apart Franzen’s article and argues for an activist approach. And Mary Annaïse Heglar writes that Home is always worth it and that “doomer dudes” are “climate de-nihilists.”



Green fascism

The far right’s eco-fascism — greenwashing hate

Ecofascism: When far-right ideology fuses with ecology

The dawn of climate fascism

Why white supremacists are hooked on green living

The regrowth of eco-fascism



Just think about it…

Humanity and nature are not separate – we must see them as one to fix the climate crisis

To decarbonize we must decomputerize: why we need a Luddite revolution

Capitalism ‘solves’ the nitrogen crisis: A brief history

The limits of clean energy

For Rachel Carson, wonder was a radical state of mind

The hellish future of Las Vegas in the climate crisis: ‘a place where we never go outside’



New politics

‘Development’ is colonialism in disguise. A review of the new book, Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary.



Cities and radical municipalism

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor says there is no housing crisis: ‘It’s just housing under capitalism’ 

Why are American homes so big? 

Barcelona’s car-free ‘superblocks’ could save hundreds of lives 

How the fight for this immigrant neighbourhood became a fight for all immigrant neighbourhoods

Mutual aid networks go beyond disaster relief. They offer community empowerment.

Notes on process for assemblies

French city of Dunkirk tests out free transport – and it works

What went wrong for the municipalists in Spain?

“Pan-African social ecology” illustrates liberation in direct democracy



Degrowth!

Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’

‘Mindless growth’: Robust scientific case for degrowth is stronger every day

Önsketänkande med grön tillväxt – vi måste agera. An op-ed by earth-system scientist Johan Rockström of Stockholm Resilience Center cites the article “Is green growth possible?” by Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis. Rockström retreats from his earlier advocacy of green growth and argues that we need to act politically for more far-reaching change—starting with setting a final date for all fossil fuels.

We need a fair way to end economic growth. The recent mainstream endorsements of degrowth ideas might be a good thing, but: “The left should be monopolizing a controlled and deliberate degrowth strategy because if it doesn’t do it, the rich and their authoritarian, ideological vanguard will. And it will be ugly.” And a similar argument from The New Republic: The delusion and danger of infinite economic growth

The sequel: life after economic growth

The degrowth delusion. The critique of degrowth by Leigh Phillips as “unnecessary, unjust, and the end of progress”. 

And the four responses: 

Growing pain: the delusion of boundless economic growth

Is the degrowth movement delusional? 

Why degrowth is the only responsible way forward

In defence of degrowth



Utopia, sci-fi, and the apocalypse

Ursula K. Le Guin’s revolutions. Le Guin’s work is distinctive not only because it is imaginative, or because it is political, but because she thought so deeply about the work of building a future worth living.

We should all be reading more Ursula Le Guin

Latin American film series offers a decolonial look at science fiction



Resources

Minim Municipalist Observatory. A database with links to articles, reports and academic papers on municipalism, and updates on the municipalist movement.

Tracking your plastic: Exposing recycling myths. A CBC news documentary about the plastics recycling industry and its environmental impact in Malaysia.

A guide to disrupting white nationalists in your community

A blueprint for Europe’s just transition




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June readings

A Latvian ecovillage based on The Ringing Cedars of Russia. (Santa Zembaha/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA)

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.

Not Afraid of the Ruins is back! In June, we launched the second season of our series of science fiction with an environmental justice twist. And we have two excellent new articles for you, one on women’s organizing against extractivism in southern Africa, another continuing the debate on utopia and science, by Max Ajl. We also highlight more articles criticizing Fully Automated Luxury Communism, and feature a discussion on the merits of and problems with utopian thinking. Finally, we are featuring an older article by Peter Staudenmaier on fascist environmentalism—something every ecologist should be aware of. 

 

Uneven Earth updates

The right to say no | Link | Women organizing against extractivism in southern Africa

All the water | Link | “Everything was on autopilot; the only thing the operator had to do was push a virtual button to engage the missiles.”

Dispatch from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec | Link | What it will take to build alliances with our neighbors to the South

How much will the US Way of Life © have to change? | Link | On the future of farming, socialist science, and utopia


Top 5 articles to read

Ecofascism / fascist ideology: the “green wing” of the Nazi Party and its historical antecedents

Social collapse and climate breakdown

Climate change, dust bowls, and fishery collapse: metabolic rifts of capitalism and the need for socialism

“Batshit jobs” – no-one should have to destroy the planet to make a living

Why a hipster, vegan, green tech economy is not sustainable


News you might’ve missed

State projects leave tens of thousands of lives in the balance in Ethiopia

Dam in Ethiopia has wiped out indigenous livelihoods, report finds

Only 60 years of farming left if soil degradation continues

Climate change-fueled valley fever is hitting farmworkers hard

340+ organisations call on the EU to immediately halt trade negotiations with Brazil on the grounds of deteriorating human rights and environmental conditions.

Faces of war: Kurdistan’s armed struggle against Islamic State

Carbon emissions from energy industry rise at fastest rate since 2011

African city heat is set to grow intolerably

To stop destruction of Liberia’s rainforest, he put his life on the line. Alfred Brownell had to flee Liberia after challenging the powerful palm oil and other extractive industries that were clearing its forests. But he remains committed to seeing that the West African nation’s biodiverse lands be developed sustainably and the rights of its indigenous peoples respected.

Public concern over climate crisis reaches record high in UK



Indigenous struggles

Old neighbors, new battles

White allies, let’s be honest about decolonization

The shoreline still provides dinner, despite climate change and private property



Utopia, sci-fi, and the apocalypse

Change is divine: How sci-fi visionary Octavia Butler influenced this Detroit revolutionary

Utopia isn’t just idealistic fantasy – it inspires people to change the world

The end of the world will be a non-event

The empty radicalism of the climate apocalypse



Where we’re at: analysis

The Great Wheel.  A 2015 article debating accelerationism vs. autonomism. 

The dictatorship of the present

Touted as ‘development,’ land grabs hurt local communities, and women most of all

Largest animal epidemic in history is due to industrial farming

US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries – shrinking this war machine is a must

The significance of the Sudanese revolution

One hundred years after World War I, are we heading back to the abyss?

Connecting the dots: Insane trade and climate chaos

The roots of the French far right’s rise

The European far right’s environmental turn

How to truly decolonise the study of Africa

A Chernobyl guide to the future

Who owns tomorrow?



Just think about it…

Will climate change kill everyone — or just lots and lots of people?

Ancient water-saving can help modern Peru

Decentralized microgridding can provide 90% of a neighborhood’s energy needs, study finds

Carmageddon: it’s killing urban life. We must reclaim our cities before it’s too late

Why ‘Game of Thrones’ was about ecomodernism

The mindfulness conspiracy. It is sold as a force that can help us cope with the ravages of capitalism, but with its inward focus, mindful meditation may be the enemy of activism.

Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes

The easy way out: How the pursuit of convenience produces new forms of inconvenience

How a ‘repair economy’ creates a kinder, more caring community

How ‘maintainers’, not ‘innovators’, make the world turn. “The vast majority of technologies that surround us and underpin our lives are not innovations, and the vast majority of labor in our culture is not focused on introducing or adopting new things, but on keeping things going.”

The Chinese government should support small scale agriculture for a green China

Think prairie grasslands are just “boring grass”? Think again

As climate change worsens, some people might decide to DIY a solution

The reason Australia doesn’t have nuclear power: the workers fought back

Steven Pinker is selling Reason™, not reason



Fully automated luxury communism—and its critics

Fully Automated Luxury Communism

Artificial stupidity

Gee Whiz! Communism is sure gonna be keen!

A utopian vision of communism’s techno-future



New politics

To free ourselves, we must feed ourselves. Leah Penniman on bringing people of color back to the land.

Building the new left economics: public-commons partnerships and new circuits of ownership

We don’t just need a Universal Basic Income, we need a Universal Basic Services System. Here’s what it would look like.

Agroecology: a systems approach. How scientists propose that we feed the future… and solve a host of other problems at the same time.

Modern Monetary Theory: meet the economists fighting the economy

Paper straws won’t save the planet – we need a four-day week

I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle. Fight the oil and gas industry instead.

The new left economics: how a network of thinkers is transforming capitalism

Why I’m no longer Vegan™. A video essay on why vegan activism needs to be anti-capitalist.



Radical municipalism

Is Strong Towns NIMBY, YIMBY, or what?

Every NIMBY’s speech at a public hearing

What if a city decides it can live without a freeway?

How a Montreal working-class neighbourhood’s activists changed Quebec and Canada 

Tenants won this round

From green gentrification to resilience gentrification: An example from Brooklyn

Berlin senate approves a five-year rent freeze

Follow the carbon. The case for neighborhood-level carbon footprints.



Degrowth and the Green New Deal

Is it time to end our fixation with GDP and growth?

Economic growth: a short history of a controversial idea

The Green New Deal: whither capitalism?

10 pillars of the Green New Deal for Europe

New study dismisses green growth policies as a route out of ecological emergency

Degrowth: a call for radical socio-ecological transformation

The “do more” mindset is ruining the planet. A video explainer.



Plastics and waste

We might not have enough materials for all the solar panels and wind turbines we need

The economy of wastefulness: the biology of the commons

The feminist, anti-colonialist scientific approach to micro-plastics and pollution

Where does your plastic go? Global investigation reveals America’s dirty secret

Boom goes the plastics industry

Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950. This is the illustrated story of where it’s gone



Resources

An alternative economics summer reading list

Against militarism on Mother Earth. A collection of readings.

Caring labor. An archive of resources.




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May readings

Illustration by Annie Xing Zhao

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’re highlighting a few articles on the work of activist organizing, the work of gestation, and… on doing less work. There’s also been a flurry of conversation about futurism on the left, spurred on by the release of Aaron Bastani’s new book, Fully Automated Luxury Communism. We highlight several critiques. From the recent setback to the municipal movement in Barcelona, to urban environmental justice struggles, we once again feature lots of pieces on radical municipalism. And, our section on the Green New Deal and Degrowth has basically become permanent, as the debate between them rages on.


Top 5 articles to read

Spadework. On political organizing.

The radical plan to save the planet by working less

Aaron Bastani just released his book, Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Read two critical reviews of the book: Cookshops of the future and Climate, communism and the Age of Affluence?. And two previous articles on the subject by our co-editors Aaron Vansintjan and Rut Elliot Blomqvist here: The shitty new communist futurism, Where’s the ‘eco’ in ecomodernism?, and Pulling the magical lever.

How a beloved Bay Area bakery is tackling the housing crisis

Labor does you



News you might’ve missed

Let’s be clear, says Mexico environment minister, ‘parasitic and predatory neoliberalism’ to blame for climate crisis

The rise of the superbugs – and why industrial farming is to blame

Sudan protesters plan general strike as talks falter. And an update. And another (bad news).

The Yellow Vests of France: six months of struggle

MPs make history by passing Commons motion to declare ‘environment and climate change emergency’

New Zealand’s world-first ‘wellbeing’ budget to focus on poverty and mental health

Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the environment

Corporate trade tribunals used by mining companies against communities and governments

The West has been dumping tens of millions of tons of trash in Southeast Asian countries for more than 25 years – now they want to send it back



Indigenous struggles

The long read: bullet ants and stolen land

The Yurok nation just established the rights of the Klamath river

Brazilian Indigenous peoples propose boycott

Native knowledge: What ecologists are learning from Indigenous people

Dam violence against environmental defenders

The Zapatista women’s revolutionary law as it is lived today



Where we’re at: analysis

The ruin of the digital town square

The price of meat. And Two amputations a week: the cost of working in a US meat plant.

Far-right identity politics and the task for the Left

Time’s up for capitalism. But what comes next?

The problem of the Left is its reactive position in politics

It may not be fully visible, but we’re in the final years of the American Empire

The reason renewables can’t power modern civilization is because they were never meant to

Favelado’s diary. “The criminalization of poverty is the strategy to keep the system functioning against black populations in Brazil and in the world, because if the favela exists and is marked by the stigma of social violence, it does not come free or without interest.”



Just think about it…

The Blackfoot/Maslow connection. How Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was stolen from Indigenous Blackfoot spirituality.

New Yorkers’ poop will soon be used to fuel their own homes

How to make wind power sustainable again

Psychedelic socialism

Loving a vanishing world. I want to move this away from the instrumental question of what you can do about climate change, important though that is, and back to the intrinsic value of what it means to love the world.

Why green pledges will not create the natural forests we need

International Relations Theory and ‘Game of Thrones’ are both fantasies

AirPods are a tragedy. If AirPods are anything, they’re future fossils of capitalism.

Could you give up flying? Meet the no-plane pioneers

When climate change starts wars. Rising temperatures are bringing ethnic tensions to a boil in Central Asia.



New politics

For the love of winning: An open letter to Extinction Rebellion

How to build a sustainable food system

Solidarity economy: Case studies from Rojava and Jackson, Mississippi

Cymru burns, but Northern Syria may help us douse the flames

‘Now is the time of monsters’: The future at a crossroads in Rojava

Inside the growing Indonesian anarchist movement

Water democracy. Farmers in New Mexico have banded together to protect scarce water resources from developments that could end their way of life. Their collective activity is a model for grassroots politics in the age of climate change.



Radical municipalism

Can Barcelona rekindle its radical imagination? Barcelona En Comú narrowly lost the popular vote, and possibly the city government. But there is much more to life than governance.

Why America can’t solve homelessness

NYC’s segregation was carefully planned. Its integration must also be.

Dozens died from heat in Montreal, yet zero in Ontario. Here’s why

How parks help cities adapt to climate change

How communities are contesting green inequities

Rebel Cities 24: How Catalonia’s CUP party is helping reclaim towns, cities and nation

Mobile home residents are trying to save affordable housing

Why councils are bringing millions of pounds worth of services back in-house

Which US cities have concrete strategies for environmental justice?



Degrowth and the Green New Deal

A ‘Green New Deal’ needs to be global, not local

Plan, mood, battlefield – reflections on the Green New Deal

A Green New Deal beyond growth (II) – Some steps forward

How the Green New Deal happened: the view from 2030

Our obsession with growth is ruining the planet. A Green New Deal can save us

An Indigenous critique of the Green New Deal

The ‘green new deal’ supported by Ocasio-Cortez and Corbyn is just a new form of colonialism. And a prior companion piece: A Green New Deal must deliver global justice.

Between ecosocialism, extractivism, the future and the Left in power

Time for Europe to stop growing and grow up

Debate between Giorgos Kallis (Degrowth) and Ted Nordhaus (Ecomodernism)



Resources

Elements of the democratic economy

History from below: a reading list with Marcus Rediker

Global tapestry of alternatives. An initiative seeking to create solidarity networks and strategic alliances amongst radical alternatives to the dominant capitalist, patriarchal, racist, statist, and anthropocentric regime on local, regional and global levels.



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January readings

Photo: Amber Bracken for The New York Times

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’re once again featuring analysis about radical municipalism, degrowth and the green new deal. We’ve also published another piece about the Gilets Jaunes movement in France. Most importantly, though, we are featuring analysis about the Indigenous struggles against pipelines in Canada, the threat of a coup d’état in Venezuela, and farming politics. We’ve also collected some resources on Indigenous allyship. Enjoy!

Uneven Earth updates

Gilets Jaunes: A slap in the face of our vocabulary | LinkA report from an observer


Top 5 articles to read

Twelve step method to conduct regime change

Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

Her left hand, the darkness

An interview with Max Liboiron on what it means to do anti-colonial, feminist science

The political economy of Half-Earth


Venezuela

Venezuela crisis: Former UN rapporteur says US sanctions are killing citizens

There is nothing more undemocratic than a coup d’état. Former UN Rapporteur speaks to Democracy Now and talks about the threat of civil war.

US Coup in Venezuela Motivated by Oil and Corporate Interests – Militarist John Bolton Spills the Beans | The Grayzone

The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela’s Coup Leader | The Grayzone

Venezuela Speaks Out against the Coup | Venezuelanalysis.com


News you might’ve missed

The United Nations backs seed sovereignty in landmark small-scale farmers’ rights declaration | GreenBiz

Gilets Jaunes “Assembly of Assemblies” calls for massive strike | Roar Magazine

Brazil’s grief turns to anger as death toll from Vale disaster hits 60 | Reuters

Bolsonaro government reveals plan to develop the ‘Unproductive Amazon’

Poor southerners are joining the globe’s climate migrants | Scalawag

Vancouver City Council votes to declare ‘climate emergency’ | Globalnews.ca

How Police Are Preparing for a Standoff Over Enbridge Line 3


The future (and past) of farming and energy

How Aquaponics, A.K.A. Fish Poop, Can Grow Food Using Less Water And Land | HuffPost Canada

Can we ditch intensive farming – and still feed the world? | News | The Guardian

We need regenerative farming, not geoengineering | Guardian Sustainable Business | The Guardian

What would Australia look like powered by 100% renewable energy? | Nicky Ison | Opinion | The Guardian

Mexico’s Energy Transformation? — THE TROUBLE. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised a “fourth transformation” of the Mexican state and is taking back control of the national oil and gas firm. Workers, indigenous groups, and the environmental movement in Mexico and internationally can push the agenda further.

Farm Women, Dairymaids, and the Welfare State: Story of an International Collaboration | Rural Women’s Studies

‘Freedom Farmers’ Tells the History of Black Farmers Uniting Against Racism | Civil Eats


Where we’re at: analysis

Headless populism and the political ecology of alienation | ENTITLE blog

Climate Change, Not Border Security, Is the Real National Emergency

The Problem Isn’t Robots Taking Our Jobs. It’s Oligarchs Taking Our Power

REDD+: A lost decade for international forest conservation | Heinrich Böll Foundation

The zombie technofix: Carbon capture and storage | The Ecologist

George Orwell said the world’s bureaucrats couldn’t take spring from us, but they are | Jeff Sparrow | Opinion | The Guardian

Davos and ‘capitalist time’

Vampire finance sucks the lifeblood out of the economy: An interview with Saskia Sassen | Red Pepper

A mad world: capitalism and the rise of mental illness | Red Pepper

Silvia Federici: Every Woman Is a Working Woman | Boston Review

Degrowth and the Green New Deal

Opinion: Sooner or later, we have to stop economic growth | Ensia

Discussing Degrowth with Giorgos Kallis – Plan A Academy

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Green New Deal’ is actually an old socialist plan from Canada | Fox News

That Green Growth at the Heart of the Green New Deal? It’s Malignant – Resilience

Inequality and the ecological transition — Jason Hickel

Economic expansion boosts carbon emissions, despite green-tech gains


Indigenous struggles

The women fighting a pipeline that could destroy precious wildlife | US news | The Guardian

Canadian teen tells UN ‘warrior up’ to protect water | CBC News

‘The Nation Has Stood Up’: Indigenous Clans in Canada Battle Pipeline Project – The New York Times

Using Art to Explore Indigenous Rights, Activism and Environment | The Tyee


Just think about it…

Fascinating new map shows EVERY river basin on the globe with a different colour | Daily Mail Online

Scientists are working on a pill for loneliness | US news | The Guardian

PTSD is a western concept, says Palestine’s head of mental health services — Quartz

Collapse: You cannot prepare for what remains unthinkable – Jussi Pasanen


Radical municipalism

Fate of castles in the air in Turkey’s £151m ghost town | World news | The Guardian

Rebel Cities 18: Eight Years After Jasmine Revolution, Jemna Is Tunisia’s Oasis of Hope | Occupy.com

Did a green development project drive up the rent in a Montreal neighbourhood? | National Observer

‘Shared equity’ model for U.S. housing boosts home ownership for poorer families | PLACE

The municipalist revolution | International Politics and Society – IPS. The ‘new municipalism’ might just be the only really innovative process inside the European left.

Degrowth and the City – e-flux Architecture – e-flux

How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor – The New York Times

Suburb Socialism – Dispatchula – Medium


New politics

Space the Nation: Dissing Utopia | SYFY WIRE. Conservatives aren’t just arguing against having to part with individual wealth, they’re arguing against change; they’re not just dismissing utopia, they’re rejecting the future itself.

Some Notes On Mass Refusal: Kim Kelly Interview with IGD – It’s Going Down

Remembering Erik Olin Wright | Dissent Magazine

A Black-Owned Food Co-op Grows in Detroit | CityLab

Chile’s feminists inspire a new era of social struggle | ROAR Magazine

Seeing Wetiko: An interview with Alnoor Ladha – Ecologise

If we want to solve complex environmental and social problems, we need to think in terms of systems | Ensia


Resources

When your research is attacked | Discard Studies

What Is Settler-Colonialism? | Teaching Tolerance

Montreal non-profit launches toolkit on how to be an Indigenous ally | CBC News

Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books with a Powerful Message of Social Justice – The B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog

An Annotated Bibliography on Structural Racism Present in the U.S. Food System, Sixth Edition – Center for Regional Food Systems

New book, Fearless Cities edited by Ada Colau and Debbie Bookchin. The first book written by and for the global municipalist movement.

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Does The Climate Movement Have A Leader?

Bill McKibben during his "Do the Math" tour
Bill McKibben during his “Do the Math” tour.                 Source: rollingstone.com

by David Gray-Donald

Climate change is big. As is the climate movement seeking to confront the issue, though it is not yet as powerful as the fossil fuel industry. People all over the world are standing up in very different ways, as evidenced by a quick glance at the over-800 partner organizations for the Peoples’ Climate March in New York City on September 21. It’s a real challenge to bring together these very different groups.

In Canada alone examples abound of the diversity of people and range of strategies being used to address the problem. Many people at the Unist’ot’en camp are returning to their lands and effectively blocking pipelines. At universities, people like McGill Environment student & Divest McGill organizer Kristen Perry are demanding endowment funds become fossil fuel free. Shaina Agbayani and others are focusing on the relationship between migrant justice and climate change. In Toronto’s Bay Street offices people like Toby Heaps are selling low-carbon investment strategies. Amanda Lickers, a Haudenasaunee environmental organizer, is working to oppose fossil-fuel infrastructure (including pipeline) projects destroying native communities. The scale of the challenge has been responded to with many strategies from diverse groups that together are sometimes called the climate movement.

In this movement, there is no central leadership, no intelligentsia behind closed doors like in Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man. Ellison’s protagonist, an unnamed young black man who becomes a spokesperson for what could be called the civil rights movement, is told what to do and what to say by a small group of white men using supposedly scientific formulas that perfectly guide the movement. Thankfully this is not how the climate movement works: it is more decentralized and people have more autonomy to act as they see fit. This comes with its own set of challenges, as seen recently during Occupy and a few decades ago with the leaderless women’s liberation movement.

But wait, interacting with climate activism may give you the feeling that there is a centralized organization and a mastermind leader.

When someone hears “350” mentioned and asks what it is, I’ve often heard the response that 350.org is the climate movement and Bill McKibben its leader. This is easy to believe when articles on environmental news sites like Grist and RTCC announcing the Peoples’ Climate March include only McKibben and 350.org by name as leaders and planners. The RTCC article begins “Led by Bill McKibben…”, and it is his thoughtful articles that appear in youth-targeted Rolling Stone. The 350.org “Do The Math” tour description reads “In November 2012, Bill McKibben and 350.org hit the road to build a movement strong enough to change the terrifying math of the climate crisis.” The notion that McKibben is the leader and 350.org the movement is in large part due to the way the organization has framed itself from the start.

The story of 350.org is similar to that of many NGOs in that it began with a core dedicated group and a compelling call to action. As McKibben himself likes to point out, it started out at a college in Vermont with 7 people, and they decided to each take a continent and build a movement.

The organization has been acting out that global narrative ever since. They’ve gained prominence and power that most grassroots groups would never dream of through a combination of millions of dollars of support from the Rockefellers and others and a persistent mentality that they lead the worldwide movement-building process. Following a notable lack of discussion with other groups, 350.org called out for and selected 500 people to gather in June 2013 in Turkey for a Global Power Shift and claimed it as “the starting point for a new phase in the international climate movement.”

The well-intentioned Americans of 350.org venturing overseas to be the global umbrella for the movement have created an organization that has unfortunately bulldozed over other voices in the climate movement and has come to be seen by many as the movement itself. So while the movement is bigger and more complex than 350.org, having this unofficial and unaccountable focal point limits how we think about and interact with climate activism.

Take, for example, the problem that those who have the least wealth will likely face the worst of climate change-caused catastrophes including drought, flooding and storms. This means that those who already face deep injustices will have very different demands from those who simply want to preserve the earth as it is. We need spokespeople who can be accountable to these groups. Unfortunately, 350.org’s insistence that they represent the movement while they don’t actually respond to these diverse demands ultimately hurts the movement.

In fairness, considerable credit is due to 350.org and to Bill McKibben for building momentum. McKibbon is a good writer, if over-simplifying, as seen in his very widely read July 2012 Rolling Stone article. Recently he has been sitting down to have serious conversations with powerful people like university presidents to push the divestment agenda. As a celebrity in the climate world he is drawing big crowds to the Peoples’ Climate March in NYC, and at hype talks in recent months 350.org has used his draw to put the spotlight on some local groups and individuals. The staff of 350.org seem very motivated, with their hearts in the right place, and the problems of being a big international NGO are not unique to 350.org.

That said, constructive criticism is what will help the movement learn and improve. At a September 2 event in Montreal organized by 350.org and local campus groups, some issues were clearly visible. First, there were two lines of French spoken by all the speakers combined, a shame for an event happening in French-speaking Quebec, a hotbed of radicalism in North America. Thankfully the audience did hear some Kanien’keha (Mohawk), the language native to the area, from Ellen Gabriel. At one point McKibben attributed the initiation of the fossil fuels divestment campaign one half to journalist and 350.org board member Naomi Klein and one half to Nelson Mandela. Hopefully Klein, a thorough researcher, would dismiss such a claim outright as disinvestment is not a particularly new tactic for showing disapproval of an activity, even in the climate world. Throughout his talk, McKibben perpetuated the idea that 350.org was the movement, that it was the umbrella organization connecting everyone, that the 7 people from Vermont who went out build a worldwide movement had been more or less successful.

Near the end of his presentation, while he has talking about getting things right, Amanda Lickers, mentioned above, interrupted McKibben. He at no point tried to cut her off. She brought up the lack of acknowledgement of the centrality of indigenous contributions to the front-lines struggle to resist extraction and pipelines, the erasure of indigenous history in the planning of the upcoming much-hyped Peoples’ Climate March in New York City, concerns about inclusion of people most affected by climate change, and more. This drew many cheers of support from the audience. After she spoke, McKibben did not responded to her comments directly. He was visibly uncomfortable and while he briefly and generally mentioned the importance of front-line communities he unfortunately treated Amanda Lickers and everything she said as an interesting aside that was easy to ignore. In a place like North America, indigenous groups have been expressing and acting on their understanding of the earth for many centuries longer than the 25 years since McKibben’s first big book came out. In many ways, indigenous groups are at the front of the struggle here and in much of the rest of the world. They are more central than to the side, but they keep being pushed out, which is part of the injustice of worldwide colonialism. And if justice is not the goal in this movement, what is? A spokesperson better understanding the movement and the forces at play in our society, and conscious of the way they themselves perpetuate those forces, may have been able to better address Lickers’ comments and build a constructive dialogue with the audience.

It’s not that McKibben is a bad guy. It’s that he is currently not a good spokesperson for the climate movement, which is effectively what he is now given how he and 350.org project themselves and are seen by the media and general public. Naomi Klein will fully share the spotlight once her book is released. As with most of us (myself included), McKibben needs to undo his colonial mindset. As evidenced by Lickers’ interruption, when he speaks it is not on behalf of the whole movement and not on behalf of the most affected nor those fighting the hardest like the Unist’ot’en. The lack of confidence and imagination within the movement to put forward spokespeople intentionally but instead allow McKibben to remain at the front limits what it can do.

McKibben writes uncomplicated articles and speaks in ways comfortably relatable to American liberal-arts college audiences. While it is important to talk to those people, we need a movement with broader scope bringing forth dialogues about justice from different perspectives. We need to think hard about how the movement is represented, we need to listen to the voices in it, and to identify leaders intentionally. Being seen as spokespeople, McKibben and Klein could stress that they don’t represent anybody, that the main resistance is being done by others often completely separate from 350.org, and they can point to some of those struggles. 350.org can choose to stop over-extending itself in trying to be the movement and to not play the role of selecting who gets put forward as a leader. While not perfect, the Peoples’ Climate March appears to be a good collaboration between groups, and there are exciting possibilities for where the movement can go from here.

David Gray-Donald studied Environment & Biology at McGill University then worked there facilitating community sustainability projects. He is actively part of the struggle to undo our reliance on fossil fuels and is trying to educate himself on how to be a responsible adult male. He lives in Montreal and Toronto.