At least that was our assumption in writing a book. That is to say: This awareness can feel like a betrayal of the uniqueness of the pain and the place, but as writers it was essential to our job. Disasters knot these patterns up together, even if no two events are wholly alike. In my work as a psychotherapist, I specialize in recovery from personal trauma. Some people say to me: I am struck with how you begin the book with a testimony to renewal. That first story occurred in the Indian Himalaya, and our trip there was probably the most disturbing experience we had.
Paul suggested we begin and end the book with it because the floods there were in many ways the most spectacular and tragic of all the disasters we wrote about. Those who survived have been put to the ultimate test of emotional strength and perseverance—with virtually no help from outside. In June a natural dam holding back a large lake 12, feet up in the Himalayas melted. The entire lake emptied within minutes, and the busy pilgrimage site of Kedarnath a mile down slope was buried by water, mud, and rock.
Ramala barely escaped up the mountainside with his six children; as they fled, they looked back to see thousands being swept to their deaths. With roads and footpaths destroyed, they had to find their way home through the landslide-scoured mountains. It took them six days. Once they had to cross a river on a fallen tree trunk, inches above the still-raging flood. Ramala and his children had passed all the tests, and in this he found the hope he expressed to us.
By the time we arrived, Ramala had become co-owner of a new startup! So with assistance from Adarsh Tribal, a young outsider working for the aid group iVolunteer, Ramala and another man started a soap-making business. Adarsh helped them get the necessary ingredients up to the mountain. It was a low-tech operation, and their product was top-notch. They used a vegetarian recipe—without tallow—and that was a selling point in a pious Hindu region. The closest we reached to Kedarnath was the village where the pilgrimage footpath begins, Gaurikund.
The road having washed away, we had to cling to rocks and tree roots for the final kilometer to get even that far. We were talking to people who were playing carom in front of the only open shop on the half-main-street—the other half had fallen into a chasm along with a number of hotels. Our discussion paused when two outsiders came along the street leading a pair of donkeys. One was wearing a well-tailored wool jacket and the other was carrying a camera. As they passed the second time, the cameraman explained to a local that the visitor was on a government fact-finding mission from New Delhi.
The floods and landslides had not only cut Kedarnath and Gaurikund off from the rest of the world; they had wreaked ruin along the mile road that leads up the valley from the plains. We experienced pure terror on the jeep ride up and back, especially where the road had become a thin shelf hanging off the mountain face and we could see right through potholes down to the valley floor!
Like road-building, the construction of the helipads serving that business worsened the landslides, and almost all of the helipads were damaged beyond usability. The tourism industry was crippled. That was the tragedy: Now three years after our visit, despite recurring monsoon floods, the earthquake in Nepal, and raging forest fires in , slow efforts to piece tourism back together have been the only official response.
Have you been through any such events? I remember filling sandbags there during the Great Midwest Flood of , when I was nine. I remember the pizzas that someone delivered to the crews filling sandbags. That was an early taste of disaster solidarity. What we both can say, though, is that a tornado 80 years ago had a profound impact on our family. It struck downtown in the middle of a business day. Lucille was working in a department store on the town square. My grandfather had a ground-coffee business just off the square.
The tornado left him buried under sacks of coffee beans, which protected him from falling debris. The catastrophe struck a population that was struggling to survive the Great Depression. So everyone in town went through severe times. But it was also the height of New Deal optimism.
President Roosevelt visited twice, and his administration set out to make Gainesville an example of government as a positive force. Reconstruction aid poured in, and the town gained a lasting reputation as a vigorous, progressive city. The psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton spoke of a loss of belief in the future among survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, as the nuclear arms race grew to threaten the entire planet, generalized this response to include all of us.
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I ask this with a view towards the ultra-right presidency of Donald Trump, with his troupe of oil executives and climate-change naysayers. Reporters and videographers are good at communicating pain, and disasters are among their most powerful material. Take the idea of resilience—which has been spectacularly popular in recent years. The resilience doctrine rationalizes that disaster is inherent in everything, and that the most people can hope for is to get better at bouncing back. At heart this attitude has little to promise for the future.
This discourse has been thoroughly critiqued, and we join that critique. But the resilience doctrine is really the stuff of global neoliberal governance, of UN conferences and development cooperation regimes. The election happened in the middle of this conversation with you, Chellis, and we felt it like an earthquake. Or maybe it was more like a forest fire; the fuel had been building up for many years.
Up until Election Day, we thought our biggest worries were well-intentioned international initiatives that would actually make life worse or be band-aids on the catastrophes of climate change. We were concerned about an abundance of optimism that says climatic disaster can be endured if our economies just keep growing. Now it feels like we were the ones in denial! Those angry Americans had no regard for the consequences to be suffered by vulnerable people and communities here or elsewhere.
The rest of the world has pledged to carry the Paris climate agreement forward without the US, but even if they do fulfill their emissions commitments, under the agreement those commitments would still allow warming of 2. Besides, the scholarship on possible links between disasters and political change is tentative about shocks causing positive change. If we can draw a conclusion from our research, it is this: Until there is deep political and economic transformation to roll back climate change, communities like the ones we wrote about will keep paying the price.
Likewise with emissions reduction. Now, in this toxic political atmosphere, many on our side will stop discussing that necessity and seek small compromises instead. That, and a lot of rebellious political activity, will have to do for now. This article was first posted on Alternet. How the world breaks: But the fall promises some exciting new initiatives, so stay in the loop.
We received some feedback that our list just has too much good stuff.
How to read it all? Skip all the rest if you must, these are worth reading surreptitiously at the office. This month, we invited Anthony Galluzzo to offer some of his favorite readings. He is an adjunct professor at New York University, specializing in 19th century literature and the history of utopia. The editors at Uneven Earth asked me to collect those readings that stood out from August Both my recent work and political convictions focus on potential intersections between Marxism and the degrowth movement in the service of a decelerationist program.
Against this dangerous whiggery, I say: Major plan to deal with climate change by geoengineering the Earth would not work, scientists reveal and Rain dancing 2. Also see the enduring nuclear boondoggle, even as various ecomodernist voices on the left are pushing it as THE solution to the energy crisis, once again: Scientists assessed the options for growing nuclear power.
They are grim ; and an older, but still relevant, piece on this matter: Socialists debate nuclear, 4: A green syndicalist view. But what if veganism, with its reliance on industrial farmed monocrops, such as soy, is part of the problem, as organic farmer Isabella Tree argues? The belly of the revolution: Agriculture, energy, and the future of communism and Logistics, counterlogistics and the communist prospect.
Losing Earth , Capitalism killed our climate momentum , and How not to talk about climate change. Plastic straws and the coming collapse. In the same way that magical techno-solutions to the ecological crisis are a morbid symptom—weaponized wishful thinking—so too is the ethical consumerism most recently exemplified by the campaign against plastic straws, as Rhyd Wildermuth demonstrates in her piece.
Pulling the magical lever Link A critical analysis of techno-utopian imaginaries. The social ideology of the motorcar Link This essay on how cars have taken over our cities remains as relevant as ever. Engineering the climate could cost us the earth , by Gareth Dale. The father of modern ecology. The flood in Kerala is only a gentle warning. It will not be enough for us to rue the past, writes Arundhati Roy.
What happened in the dark: Innovative municipal projects are tackling local housing problems worldwide. Samir Amin has died. New report warns dire climate warnings not dire enough. Land grabbing companies becoming more powerful than countries. There is no trash collection there and so through the Coptic Church these people get organized and want to start a platform where people can order trash pick-ups from them, and they would get paid for them. A tiny town in Ecuador battles a palm oil giant. What has caused the number of US worker co-ops to nearly double? Should rivers have rights?
What is democratic confederalism? My generation is radically remaking climate activism. Will it be enough? How a Detroit community overcomes a lack of city services. A range of neighbor-to-neighbor efforts address basic needs, from healthcare to food access, that are going unmet by local government agencies. How do you build a new society, from local places, in the shadow of the old? Symbiosis Collective shows one way. How marginalized communities are getting control over development.
Tenant organizing is picking up steam in Rochester. Public land is a feminist issue. Community housing groups across London are putting women and non-binary people at the forefront of their plans for building affordable housing. Four reasons to consider co-housing and housing cooperatives for alternative living. Small and shared vs McMansions and slums? Degrowth housing experiments demonstrate a different future.
A call for socialists to connect the dots between housing, racial, migrant justice, and climate change. The lure of elections: From political power to popular power. Ecomodernism and nuclear power: No solution for climate change. How green groups became so white and what to do about it. Exiting the anthropocene and entering the symbiocene. Who really pulls the strings? The director of Global Witness asks who really is responsible for corruption and extractive industry crimes. The problem is neoliberal economics. A sufficiency vision for an ecologically constrained world. Human waste is a terrible thing to waste.
If major global cities repurposed human waste as crop fertilizer, it could slash fertilizer imports in some countries by more than half. Almost everything you know about e-waste is wrong. The ugly truth of ugly produce by Phat Beets collective. A call for public discussion of the role of deindustrialization in building an alternative to the catastrophic course of 21st century capitalism.
There is nothing green or sustainable about mega-dams like the Belo Monte. On the labor of animals. The place of animals in relation to left movements. Bitcoin shows the scale of change needed to stop the climate crisis. The cryptocurrency produces as much CO2 a year as a million transatlantic flights — and that number is set to grow. Why all fiction should be climate fiction: A conversation with Lauren Groff. By preserving top predators to control populations of herbivores, we can limit grazing, which reduces CO2 absorbed by ecosystems. Even the smallest urban green spaces can have a big impact on mental health.
The Pueblo Revolt is about Native Resistance. As Pueblo People, how do we develop a common political consciousness around our unique history and present situation? Meet the companies that are trying to profit from global warming. People have to do that. Imagining a world with no bullshit jobs. Seaside reads to change the world. Wayne Yang is now available to read for free online. In June, we read stories about new political strategies, decolonial re-imaginings, community resilience, and revolutionary ideas around the world.
We also included articles about the escalating climate crisis and the root causes of climate and environmental injustice. Anna Biren , who has been working on these newsletters for the past 6 months, is now on board as a new editor at Uneven Earth! The promise of radical municipalism today Link Politics is about bringing people together and taking control of the spaces where we live. Science fiction between utopia and critique Link On different perspectives used in science fiction narratives, situated knowledge, and how discontent is useful. Advances in clean energy expected to cause a sudden drop in demand for fossil fuels, leaving companies with trillions in stranded assets.
San Francisco residents were sure nearby industry was harming their health. Rural poor squeezed by land concessions in Mekong region: India faces worst long term water crisis in its history. Trees that have lived for millennia are suddenly dying. That is simply not true. Why grandmothers may hold the key to human evolution. How our colonial past altered the ecobalance of an entire planet. Researchers suggest effects of the colonial era can be detected in rocks or even air. Tracking the battles for environmental justice: How the environmental justice movement transforms our world.
The town that refused to let austerity kill its buses. A sense of place. Mel Evans and Kevin Smith interview US-based organiser and author Jonathan Smucker, whose new book Hegemony How-To offers a practical guide to political struggle for a generation that is still ambivalent about questions of power, leadership and strategy. Building autonomy through ecology in Rojava. A socialist Southern strategy in Jackson. How Jackson, Mississippi is making the economy work for people.
This land is our land: The Native American occupation of Alcatraz. How a group of Red Power activists seized the abandoned prison island and their own destinies. The environment as freedom: Decolonization towards a well-being vision with Pablo Solon. A world more beautiful and alive: A review of The Extractive Zone. An Interview with Silvia Federici. What would we eat if food and health were commons?
Seeding new ideas in the neoliberal city. Worker-owned co-ops are coming for the digital gig economy. Letter to America , by Rebecca Altman. Everything is going to have to be put back. Our plastic pollution crisis is too big for recycling to fix. Corporations are safe when they can tell us to simply recycle away their pollution.
The remaking of class. It is living downhill of the pond where fracking fluids are stored. How the Enlightenment created modern race thinking, and why we should confront it. And a brief history of race in Western thought. The enlightenment of Steven Pinker: Eco-modernism as rationalizing the arrogance and violence of empire.
Tag: environmental justice
While healthcare, the public school system and infrastructure in Puerto Rico are flailing nine months after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, wealthy investors have descended on the island to turn a profit. How climate change ignites wildfires from California to South Africa.
The left in Syria: From democratic national change to devastation. A new era of uranium mining near the Grand Canyon? Rent strikes grow in popularity among tenants as gentrification drives up rents in cities like D. Increased deaths and illnesses from inhaling airborne dust: An understudied impact of climate change. An Indigenous feminist analysis of the connections between industrial capitalism and colonialism, imperialism, and the pollution and destruction of human and nonhuman worlds.
Moore on the human impact on the world ecology. Vollmann on the hot dark future. A review of William T. Commons in the pluriverse. An essay by Arturo Escobar. The mask it wears. Pankaj Mishra reviews and compares the propositions about how to work for equality in The People v. Laziness does not exist, but unseen barriers do. The Transition Towns movement… going where? The dark side of nature writing. The recent renaissance in nature writing also revives an overlooked connection with fascism.
It takes a village, not a European, to raise a child. White people, through systematic oppression, actively create, profit from and maintain a market that institutionalizes children throughout Africa. The unbearable awkwardness of automation. The power of giving homeless people a place to belong. Anthony Galluzzo — Utopia as method, social science fiction, and the flight from reality Review of Frase, Four Futures. The community resilience reader. Essential resources for an era of upheaval, available for free.
Visualizing the prolific plastic problem in our oceans. Want to receive this as a newsletter? Save Save Save Save. Instead I would like to propose a collective thought experiment. Let us imagine that in this assembly that unites delegates from all the human nations of the world, delegates from the non-human world were also here with us. Let us welcome the delegates from the Animal nations, the Plant nations and the Rock nations. While we may not understand their language, let us try to listen to their claims and to hear their interests.
In this task we have of course much to learn from Indigenous communities in Turtle Island and elsewhere who have maintained such relationships with other life-forms for millennia. Their treaty included principles such as: These relations are founded on responsibility and reciprocity and ensure the health and flourishing of both parties. We are here today in commemoration of Earth Day to discuss how we can rebuild these relationships with the community of life.
How can we transform our systems of production and consumption in harmony with nature and other humans? How can we move from extraction to restoration? From overconsumption to reproduction? From domination to care? What would an Earth Jurisprudence economy look like? Over the past 10 years my work has entailed examining these questions through the experiences of those defending the environment and their health and livelihoods.
We have been collecting these stories in the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice http: To date we have documented such ecological conflicts. Environmental justice includes the right not to be polluted, to have a safe environment to live, work, and play. It also includes justice for the greater web of life, acknowledging the inseparability between justice for nature and justice for humans.
This work has brought me to some of the most polluted and to some of the most pristine places on the planet, to the barricades with communities blocking pipelines, Indigenous groups defending sacred mountains against mining, pastoralists opposing land-grabbing, and recyclers fighting incinerators that would burn the waste they depend on.
While some dismiss these communities on the frontlines as anti-development, they are stepping in and resisting because they feel their leaders are not taking the necessary actions. Their call for systemic and structural change is not addressed in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which fall short in arresting the driving forces that cause poverty, such as wealth concentration, corporate control and impunity, and ongoing racism and colonialism.
We know that the current economic paradigm constrains our ability to tackle these forces. Economic growth, resource efficiency, and the green economy cannot address the poverty caused by environmental damage and the commodification of life. Ecological economics, which is an economics grounded in biophysical reality that respects the laws of thermo-dynamics, rejects the possibility of limitless economic growth on a finite planet. We must acknowledge that the economy is embedded in nature and its expansion will always require fresh resources and new sinks for wastes.
Thus the need to continually colonize new areas for extraction and waste disposal, leading to conflicts, environmental degradation and increased inequality. We must abandon growth because pursuing it mindlessly instead of focusing on equality, distribution and justice is a driving cause of poverty, not a corrective to it. The good news is that a new paradigm is already emerging and citizen movements, North and South, as well as governments are already thinking beyond growth.
There is a growing international movement for de-growth which argues that those countries who are occupying more than their fair share of environmental space must downscale production and consumption but that they can still increase human flourishing while devoting more time to nature, culture, and community. Above you can see the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice.
I invite the reader to go to the atlas and to see what is happening in your countries. The data is not complete, but it gives us a broad picture of who suffers the impacts stemming from the underside of economic growth. And it is primarily women, Indigenous communities, peasants, fishers and other marginalized people who are being polluted and dispossessed.
They do not all want to follow a single path to development. Together they constitute a global environmental justice movement. The atlas also shows that it is possible to stop these life-threatening activities. That it is possible to find billions of barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there. Costa Rica, in defense of the plant and animal nations in that mega-biodiverse country, has decided that fossil fuel extraction is too great risk for their collective health and put in place a moratorium.
France, Quebec, and Tunisia and some other territories have banned fracking. What if instead of economically recoverable reserves of minerals we talked about ethically recoverable reserves? To reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change most fossil fuels reserves have to be kept underground. An Earth jurisprudence economy would include policies and laws to halt extraction of these reserves for both local and global well-being. An Earth jurisprudence economy would accept that there are places on Earth that should not be ripped open by mines or bulldozed for highways no matter the potential profits.
One path to restructuring our economy in harmony with nature is to shift the emphasis from production of things to the reproduction of life. Reproductive labour includes work in the home, child-care but also the work of peasants, fishers and Indigenous peoples who work directly with nature to meet the everyday needs for the majority of people on Earth. This work, done mostly by women, is integral to the functioning of our economies and yet it is primarily unpaid and unrecognized.
As the mother of a 5-month old newborn I can assure you that breastfeeding is a full time job on its own. An Earth jurisprudence economy, instead of producing more consumer goods, would invest more resources in teachers, nurses, mothers and other care-workers. Farmers would not be pushed off their lands to make way for industrial plantations.
This is a concern. Yet instead of more consumption to remedy this, what if we began rethinking work? This would include diverse initiatives. They seek work which allows them to be creative, to improve their communities, to problem solve collectively. These are the jobs of an Earth jurisprudence economy. I began this essay asking us to acknowledge the presence of the Animal, Plant and Rock nations with us in this room.
My hope would be that henceforth politicians continue to include these nations in their thoughts and deliberations. In closing I would therefore like to acknowledge those who dare to speak out for our more-than-human nations. Above you will see some of their faces. These are all environmental defenders killed in the last year murdered for their defense of the planet.
According to Global Witness, four environmental defenders were killed per week in I would like to applaud the recent regional Latin American and Caribbean Escazu accord which guarantees the right of environmental human rights defenders to carry out their activities without fear, restrictions or danger.
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This agreement will be open for signatures here at UN headquarters in September. I would urge world leaders to put forward such an initiative for all members and to ensure compliance. We are here to talk about living in Harmony with Nature but the reality is that we are murdering those who aim to defend life. The journey towards an Earth jurisprudence economy, rather than being seen as an insurmountable challenge, can serve as a uniting force in our defense of the global commons. It can reawaken an ethic of care, reinforce livelihoods and create meaningful work.
In these times of great divisions, the protection of our shared home can serve as a convergence issue where we can jointly challenge multiple forms of oppression, including racism, sexism, speciesism and violence and where new solidarities and new worlds can be born.
She is the founder and co-director of the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice www. It always feels like things are happening all at once: Weirdly, just at this moment, some are latching on to an idealized vision of modernity and the Enlightenment to defend the status quo. This month, we read articles that complicated the idea of modernity and offered ways to think about society and nature that incorporate, but go beyond, the Enlightenment tradition. We also highlighted international environmental justice movements, showing that not everything is rosy—but people are fighting and thinking in creative ways, imagining different kinds of modernity and new kinds of internationalism.
How to navigate the disorientation of a seismic world Link Taking inspiration from past revolutions to build a new framework for the future. The migration crisis and the imperial mode of living Link Notes toward a degrowth internationalism. Climate change mitigation and adaptation of the poor Link A call for decolonial responses to climate change. Avatar revisited Link Gesturing at decolonization of the great epistemological divides. It can not save us from climate catastrophe. UN moves towards recognising human right to a healthy environment.
Latin American countries sign legally binding pact to protect land defenders. Their forefathers were enslaved. Now, years later, their children will be landowners. A rare victory for the Brazilian poor, as record Amazon land tract is handed over to descendants of escaped enslaved people. German newspaper publishes names of 33, refugees who died trying to reach Europe. The battle for paradise: Naomi Klein reports on the uneven legacy of the hurricane. A reign of terror: How big cities are gentrifying their neighbours.
Afrin in Kurdish Syria has been occupied by an invading Turkish army. Here are some articles providing some further context. The fight for Afrin is a struggle for radical democracy. Under fire from the forces of reaction, Afrin is the frontline in the fight for democracy. And by the same authors, a longer piece: Confronting authoritarian populism with radical democracy.
The young feminist who died for my people. All we are asking for is action that will stop Turkey from flying its warplanes over the heads of our children. Love in a hopeless place. A first-hand account from a German internationalist YPG fighter from the now nearly forgotten battle of Raqqa. The Kurds need Canada: A letter to a British national who died in Afrin. How a subversive form of mapmaking charts the stories and customs of those who would otherwise be ignored. How Cooperation Richmond is empowering marginalized communities to build an equitable economy.
The wind of change: Katie Laing explores the fight for the right to community renewables on the island of Lewis. On one hand is a system that brings direct community control and builds a local economy, on the other one that extracts profit, control and resource from the islands. An interview with David Bollier on the meaning of the commons for social transformation. The Barcelona city government is trying to remunicipalize its water system from a private company. The rising tide for the democratic control of water in Barcelona.
Realising an emancipatory rural politics in the face of authoritarian populism. Ostrom in the city: Carving out the commons. An exchange on capital, debt, and the future with David Graeber and Thomas Piketty. Why are water wars back on the agenda? He disentangles moral and material issues without favouring one or the other, keeping both in focus.
Deleting our Facebook accounts following the recent privacy scandal is not enough: On the digital and social networks supporting authoritarian populism , and what can be done to resist them. For those who are active on Facebook, an instruction on how to use it while giving it the minimum amount of personal data. Loneliness and poor mental health still reign around the world. How American masculinity, by sending the message that needing others is a sign of weakness and that being vulnerable is unmanly, creates lonely men.
A story on those who push, protest, and privately suffer as a result ; and the personal account of an environmental professor whose battle with cancer helped her cope emotionally with the reality of climate change.
Capabilities
The necessary transience of happiness. Why Americans should give socialism a try. Against the commodification of life and relationships: Bodies, time, energy, creativity, love — all become commodities to be priced and sold. There is no room for sustained contemplation and little interest in public morality; everything collapses down to the level of the atomized individual.
United States as energy exporter: Archaeologists find early democratic societies in the Americas. Economics has an Africa problem. From , but still relevant. Why race matters when we talk about the environment. Is the way we think about overpopulation racist? Corporations do damage to poor women with their global philanthropy. Companies like to focus their corporate social responsibility work on girls because supporting women is, in theory, noncontroversial.
But such charitable efforts actually harm girls and women in the Global South by depoliticizing their problems, which are inherently political. Climate change and the astrobiology of the Anthropocene. Human rights are not enough. We must also embrace the fight against economic inequality. How six Americans changed their minds about global warming. The tragedy of the commons. Common, a new housing startup, creates cities without qualities—but it will order your toilet paper. Women are on the frontlines of climate change around the world: But they are also active agents in fighting back against the climate crisis and other forms of environmental injustice.
Indigenous activists of the Chaco movement — the most vital branch of which may be young, Native American women — try to quell a rising tide of oil and gas exploration in Chaco Canyon. In India, women resist plantations that uproot them from their customary forests. Female writers and naturalists. When nature and society are seen through the lens of dialectics and systems thinking: This is in part because of a linear, reductive understanding of the world. But there is an alternative. Dialectical, systems thinking views nature and society through the lens of complexity, contradiction and phase transitions.
In this essay Murray Bookchin warns against overly spiritual, reductive, and mechanistic approaches in ecological thought, injecting a political analysis into the discussion of what it means to think ecologically. In particular, he directs his ire against various strains of new age environmentalism as well as systems thinking. Mentalities of greening, governing, and getting rich. The idea is that humans should be kicked out of half the planet and inhabit the rest in super-dense and ecological cities.
To celebrate, Federico Demaria writes about the rise — and future — of the degrowth movement. From , a history of the Limits to Growth thesis and the World3 model, which was ridiculed in the 80s but turned out to be correct. Beyond growth or beyond capitalism? Introduction to an ecosocialist approach to production and consumption.
We need to ditch our addiction to GDP growth. Here are a few rebuttals: You can deny environmental calamity — until you check the facts. There never was a West or, democracy emerges from the spaces in between. In , Anthony Galluzzo wrote a series of articles analyzing the literature of Promethean modernism—worth giving them a read. A tale of two Prometheuses in many parts: A tale of the industrialization of rural America and country music as resistance.
Urban development in India: The million city: The risks are rising for cities in Anthropocene era. Downtown is for people. A nuclear warning designed to last 10, years. The science fiction of this century is one in which great existential threats are known: An atlas of real utopias. Introducing the Atlas of Utopias , which highlights 32 stories of radical transformation that prove that another world is not only possible in the future, but already exists. Moving beyond the gospel of eco-efficiency , a report by Friends of the Earth Europe. Whose land is it anyway?
A manual for decolonization. The Decolonize issue of YES! Capitalism Nature Socialism issue on power, peace and protest: We are currently facing the most severe migration crisis in history. In Europe, the debate on how to tackle the root causes of migration, including forced migration, happens mainly amongst established political actors such as political parties, state institutions, and large international NGOs. This debate focuses on wars, catastrophes, arms trade, and terror, which are all framed as a state of emergency.
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For these actors, it is difficult to find practical, immediate solutions to the problem, because this would require addressing the root causes of those wars, going against the immediate interests of European states and international organizations. Left-leaning critical migration researchers rightly critique this approach for misusing development co-operation as a tool for migration management. One common response on the left is to, on the one hand, highlight the hypocrisy of trying to solve the crisis through development aid while continuing to drive these crises through arms deals and Western involvement in regional wars, and, on the other hand, framing the migrant crisis in terms of the right to free movement and the human rights of migrants.
A ddressing the refugee crisis requires questioning the dominant notions of what it means to live a good life, to think global when it comes to social welfare. But this responds to only one dimension of a broader civilizational crisis. Anti-racist and migrant justice movements should not focus solely on issues of human mobility rights, the failure or even adverse effects of development aid, or Western military involvements. In this sense, addressing the refugee crisis requires questioning the dominant notions of what it means to live a good life, to think global when it comes to social welfare and to link up with movements such as eco-feminism or degrowth.
It is urgent to fight the accelerated destruction of livelihoods in the Global South. However, can migration be something principally unproblematic that is to be welcomed and even increased? Does the defense of the right to migrate necessarily have to lead us to ignore the manifold coercions that force people to migrate?
Must we not, on the contrary, acknowledge the real-life scenarios in the geopolitical Global South and our historical, economic and political contribution to these? Today, a counter-hegemonic project must necessarily result from a collective construction process between the global North and South, which understands their interdependencies. It is just as urgent to fight the accelerated destruction of livelihoods in the Global South, as it is to fight for open borders and dignified living conditions for those who have already fled.
The decision of a German who prefers to live in the USA is radically different from that of a Nigerian who faces the dangers associated with fleeing and entering the EU undocumented. At the end of , over 65 million persons were displaced globally —a historical record. In light of this situation, it is just as urgent to fight the accelerated destruction of livelihoods in the Global South, as it is to fight for open borders and dignified living conditions for those who have already fled.
This greed for raw materials has led to a massive expansion and acceleration of extractivism: As the reports of several human rights organizations show, these processes destroy the material conditions necessary for the lives of increasing numbers of people. The destruction is not only environmental, but often includes the very social fabric of the concerned regions. People are forced to migrate, and are dispossessed of their social bonds and cultural contexts and knowledges. At the same time, the globalized world market ensures that production chains and power relations, and effects like environmental destruction and exploitation which are inscribed in all consumer goods, remain abstract or are systematically obscured.
However, those global value chains and power relations constitute a causal link between the imperial mode of living in the geopolitical North and the root causes for flight and migration in the South. Many of those people who play cat and mouse with the European border-regime today would rather have stayed in their own cultural and socio-economic contexts, if this had been a viable option. The imperial mode of living divides the North from the South, because the prosperity of the former is historically rooted in the exploitation of the living environments and often unpaid workforce of the latter.
These are deeply embedded in the day-to-day practices of the majorities in the global North and increasingly find their ways into the upper and middle classes of countries in the global South. This mode of living is imperial insofar as it assumes unlimited access to all resources — the space, nature, cheap labor, and sinks of the entire planet — only for a small and privileged minority of the global population.
This mode of living is only possible while such unlimited access is secured either by political and judicial means, or by military means and violence. But at the same time, it divides the North from the South, because the prosperity of the former is historically rooted in the exploitation of the living environments and often unpaid workforce of the latter.
Without doubt, open borders and global mobility have to be fought for, especially against nationalist or right-wing environmentalism. But new questions arise around these claims if we consider the global division of labor and nature and the imperial mode of living. Does the claim to open borders and the right to move translate into the right for every human to participate in this mode of living, including those from the global South, if necessary, via migration?
This is impossible for two reasons: However, the real question should be: A critical left perspective on refugees and migration that is in solidarity with the global South requires a comprehensive paradigm-shift. The hegemonic discourse of what is considered a good and successful life is based on a number of problematic assumptions: Modes of living which require less material consumption do not necessarily mean a loss, but can give rise to genuine enrichment.
Such struggles do exist in Europe and the geopolitical North and have gained strength over recent years. The big problems of our times are individualistic isolation, loneliness and existential fears, as well as the recourse to racist, nationalist patterns of conviviality as we lack of emancipatory concepts. Movements such as degrowth and ecofeminism tackle consumption patterns of the imperial mode of living in their everyday dimension, thus opening up possibilities of active transformation for people in the geopolitical global North. Of course, our social reproduction and the fulfillment of our needs do have a material dimension.
But this material dimension a does not necessarily have to be governed exclusively by money — see for example the debate and practice around commons and commonism — and b is not the only dimension there is to poverty and wealth. Notions of abundance, value, and wealth related to quality of relationships, self-determination, self-reliance, the ability to redistribute, the experience of finding meaning in life, and the effective power to act are systematically made invisible by the poverty indicators which dominate the development discourse: In the last decade, the alternative paradigm of Buen Vivir living well — emerged from some Latin American countries as a counter-narrative to capitalist wellbeing.
It considers humans as part of Nature, thus promotes harmonic relations with all other beings, and puts emphasis on communitarian construction from below in a territorial sense, leaving plenty of room for diversity. Other important principles are equilibrium, reciprocity and complementarity instead of accumulation, progress, growth and competition. Buen vivir, if it is developed from the bottom up and, above all, in democratic ways — will inevitably have different shapes in different contexts. This is why emancipatory debates in Latin America increasingly speak of los buenos vivires in plural.
Movements such as degrowth or the commons can connect with struggles around Buen Vivir, post-extractivism and post-development in the global South, opening up a perspective through which people in the geopolitical North and South can work together to overcome the hegemony of the imperial mode of living. These approaches also take on responsibility for challenging imperial day-to-day practices and can directly and simultaneously address the root causes of forced migration, often caused by compensatory mass-consumption elsewhere, and the roots of the global ecological crisis.
Finally, what about the alleged threat that migration poses to the welfare state? If we are consequently striving for social equity, we can only consider welfare or social security in a truly global manner. Although this might sound threatening at first, in my opinion nobody has a birth right to certain social benefits. Some of the feminist debates around care and commons are path-breaking here. If it is impossible to globally extend the social welfare state, as it has existed only in a small part of the world, and only for a few decades — on the basis of cheap energy and centuries of previous value transfer from the global South — then we need to replace the utopia of the social welfare state with alternative concepts.
The commoning of care might be a possible pathway, while at the same time reducing the hours dedicated to paid labor — without abstaining from the state altogether, which would still need to provide the ideal conditions for this kind of commoning. If it is impossible to globally extend the social welfare state then we need to replace the utopia of the social welfare state with alternative concepts. Consequently, anti-racist movements and critical migration research cannot be content with fighting the European border regime by advocating open borders..
As an offensive strategy against racist prosperity-chauvinism, their critiques should just as much focus on the imperial mode of living and the associated uneven North-South relationships, as well as hegemonic perceptions of a good life. A version of this article first appeared on Degrowth. In the s she was active in the anti-racist movement in Berlin. She has lived in Latin America since , and for the last 12 years in Ecuador. February is the shortest month, but holy crap we do have a lot of cool links for you. This month, we cover some new research about the limits of the good life, the impact of companies like AirBnB and Amazon on our cities, the changing Latin American politics, and the importance of Indigenous ways of seeing the world.
The work of Steven Pinker and Jordan Peterson has also triggered a new series of discussions on the importance of science and its links to colonialism and racism. Encyclopedia of the mad gardener Link. Turns out that carbon capture is a pipe dream. Not many know that the fine print of the Paris Treaty relied on a dirty little secret: But it turns out that this is a pipe dream.
The unavoidable fact is, we just have to make less stuff, burn less oil, and grow more trees. This beautiful photo essay about this single highway tells the story of the complex political ecology of rainforest deforestation. This investigative piece gives us the update. Is it possible for everyone to live well? Though these numbers just tell part of the story, the study has had international impact, starting a much-needed discussion on what it means to live well today.
Today she is in prison again, but her belief in peace and equality is unrelenting. Her will is unyielding. In the face of our climate crisis, a group of five activists known as the Valve Turners decided not to wait for the law to catch up and took matters into their own hands. This is a story on their direct action. A striking piece in New York Magazine linking loneliness and the opioid epidemic: Now epic numbers of Americans are killing themselves with opioids to escape it.
Another photo essay , this time an intricate story about industrial farming in California , the migrant workers who toil the fields and processing plants, and how it intersects with climate change. Citizens are pioneering new public participation methods through online civic involvement. What happened in Catalonia? Socialist organizing was never just about striking in the workplace. This article explores the vibrant dance halls, social clubs, Sunday schools, and film screenings of socialist movements, and why they declined starting in the s.
Today, as young people are once again becoming interested in socialism, they can stand to learn a lot from the block-by-block initiatives of the past. Indigenous activism is seeing a resurgence, and, finally, growing interest amongst non-Indigenous and settler communities.
What can the white left learn from Indigenous movements, and how can it build better alliances? If you ask a banker or a politician, their ignorance of how money works, and how debt powers the whole system, will become immediately apparent. The organization Positive Money has been putting a lot of work into battling misconceptions and putting forward alternatives. They recently came out with a report on how we can escape the growth dependency that our money system forces us into. The local initiatives happening around the world can be a bit overwhelming. How can we think of them all together, understand them as part of one big movement?
In this report , titled Libertarian Municipalism, Networked Cities as Resilient Platforms for Post-Capitalist Transition , Kevin Carson highlights the diverse movements in cities globally and the theories that can help us understand them. Have you heard of Cooperation Jackson? The new housing rights movements in the US have the real estate industry running scared. AuthorHouse June 3, Publication Date: June 3, Sold by: Share your thoughts with other customers.
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