Social and Environmental Justice
But if climate action is a question of social justice, then those marginalised groups must be part of the movement. They must set the agenda of that movement.
Society
Savor your Small Parcels, and Create More of Them
After now working in the planning and urban design realm for more than a couple of decades, I’ve come to believe that those “substandard” parcels referenced in countless planning and market studies are actually the key to successful cities and neighborhoods. I believe we should savor them, embrace them, and seek to create more wherever we can.
School Climate Strikes: Why Adults no Longer Have the Right to Object to their Children Taking Radical Action
A worldwide wave of school climate strikes, begun by the remarkable Greta Thunberg, has reached the UK. Some critics claim these activist-pupils are simply playing truant, but I disagree. Speaking as both a climate campaigner and an academic philosopher, I believe school walkouts are morally and politically justifiable.
Climate Change Is Scary—Not the Green New Deal
It’s very clear that conservatives have one plan for dealing with the popularity of the Green New Deal: scaring the hell out of people. And it’s very clear that they have one big problem: The hell they’re building through inaction is a lot scarier than “upgrading all existing buildings.”
The Meaning of the Green New Deal
Before discussing the content of the Green New Deal, and in particular the environmental measures it proposes, it is important to understand the aims of the document, which is primarily a political manifesto.
Love Beyond Borders
With borders hardening around the world, more people than ever are taking on the slippery, often tortuous challenge of proving their relationships to the authorities, which often boils down to having their love recognised as legitimate by the state. I’m one of them, or fear I soon will be.
Succeeding Generations of Green— The Dean and AOC
John Dingell has had a hand—a hugely constructive hand—in nearly every major advance in social policy over the past five-plus decades, including civil and voting rights, health, and the environment.
Clodagh Harris on How Citizens’ Assemblies Rekindle the Imagination
Citizens Assemblies are a powerful tool for hearing the thoughts of a population without the filter of political interference, lack of understanding, and the polarity that has been driven by social media and surveillance capitalism. But what are they, and how might Citizens Assemblies be a vital tool for creating the spaces that allow imagination back into our public life?
A Looming Deadline for the Right to Ramble
For centuries, ordinary Brits have enjoyed a legal “right to ramble” throughout the countryside even when they might cross someone’s private property. In England and Wales alone, there are an estimated 140,000 miles of footpaths and bridlepaths that are considered public rights of way. Now, as reported by the website Boing Boing, the full scope of this right — and access to a vast network of paths — is in question.
A Green New Deal Is the First Step Toward an Eco-Revolution
Capitalism is not just a system, it is a system of social relations and socio-metabolic processes, and we have to change many of those relations and processes radically from within and very quickly in order to deal with the current ecological emergency.
What a Saami-Led Project in Arctic Finland can Teach us about Indigenous Science
A successful Saami-led, salmon rewilding project on the Näätämö river in Arctic Finland illustrates the success of partnership between Indigenous knowledge and western science on environmental questions, say the authors of a recent paper, but outdated perceptions and prejudices means these kinds of partnerships elsewhere still too often fail.
I’m Sorry for Your Loss
Today the monarchs are all but gone. That sad fact hit home this week as I read of the 97 percent collapse of the Western monarch population. No number of inspired “Ten Things You Can Do” articles, no amount of milkweed replanting, will revive a species once it falls into the past.
