Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Battles over new shale gas and oil pipelines involving Energy Transfer, formerly known as Energy Transfer Partners, have heated up in recent weeks — an escalation that carries a tilt, as one side stands accused of acts of violence.
The statewide ballot initiative with the greatest environmental significance will be decided by voters in Washington state, which could signal a shift in climate change strategy.
The precariat, a mass class defined by unstable labor arrangements, lack of identity, and erosion of rights, is emerging as today’s “dangerous class.” As its demands cannot be met within the current system, the precariat carries transformative potential.
Continuing our discussion of the potential pitfalls of radical municipalism, we want to address this toxic strain of localism – what we’ve termed dark municipalism – and why it is so dangerous. If a diverse, egalitarian, and ecological local politics is to be successful, it must develop strategies for addressing and combating these tendencies.
As we have observed, the suburb represented and accomplished the dialectic of modern urbanism, creating and destroying human possibility. Can we imagine it differently?
I think scientists can’t do it ourselves. We have to talk to those different communities, we have to learn things and we have to listen. Something that I do feel like gets lost a lot of the time is the sense of wonder. Because climate science is still science.
Nordhaus’ approach to climate change mitigation highlights a general problem with how economists tend to tackle complex systems: their training makes them tend to see changes as smooth and gradual. But real-world systems, normally, do what they damn please, including crashing down in what we call the Seneca Effect.
Even if we accept that useful things were shared during colonialism – universities, for instance – that is not the same as saying they were a benefit of colonization. Colonialism is not a necessary vector for the transfer of knowledge or technology.
Today, the notion of public service seems as quaint as a local post office. We expect those who govern us to grab what they can, permitting predatory banks and corporations to fleece the public realm, then collect their reward in the form of lucrative directorships.
In a nutshell, Modernist thinking on food exalts agricultural productionism, which frequently uses toxic technologies to overwhelm natural systems and limits, artisanal work methods and traditional home-based skills and habits.
It’s called creating direct action campaigns. Choose a demand that is winnable and a target that can yield the demand, gather a group of people eager to win and willing to focus their attention, and begin.
So while there’s much to be said for population control, I think the notion that population control is the most important precursor to economic development and environmental protection is problematic.
