Rethinking our place in nature means rethinking the law
As Indigenous knowledge gains recognition and environmental crises deepen, a growing movement argues that granting legal rights to nature can protect it from exploitation.
environmental policy
Over 550 Environmental Groups Rally Around Call for Biden to Act on Plastics Pollution in 2021
Yesterday, an unusually broad coalition of environmental groups, numbering more than 550, called on the incoming Biden-Harris administration to address plastic pollution alongside fossil fuels.
The Revolution Will Not Be “Green”
Long imagined as a bulwark against ecological destruction, players in the mainstream conservation movement—think big NGOs like The Nature Conservancy and their corporate partners—have actually been complicit in that destruction by propping up a fundamentally unsustainable capitalist system and the nature-culture dichotomy it’s built upon.
Covid-19 Climate Lessons
Climate change will increase the geographic range of infectious diseases and air pollution increases susceptibility to respiratory illness. The pandemic emergency teaches us valuable lessons about how to respond to the climate emergency
To Reduce Fire Risk and Meet Climate Targets, Over 300 Scientists Call for Stronger Land clearing laws
Australia’s high rates of forest loss and weakening land clearing laws are increasing bushfire risk, and undermining our ability to meet national targets aimed at curbing climate change.
Ireland Spurns Fossil Fuel Investments
In recent days members of the Dáil, the main law-making body in the Irish parliament, have passed a bill which will mean no more money goes into exploiting and using the coal, oil and gas which are among the principal drivers of global climate change.
Deploying the Science of Extreme Weather Attribution in the Courts
For decades, proving the link between human greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on extreme weather events was thought to be near impossible. Now, scientific advancements in extreme weather event attribution are turning this assumption on its head. At the same time, courts around the world are increasingly being asked to consider questions of liability arising from a relationship between the loss and damage caused by an extreme weather event and climate change.
Planetary Boundaries—Governing Emerging Risks and Opportunities
The climate, ecosystems and species, ozone layer, acidity of the oceans, the flow of energy and elements through nature, landscape change, freshwater systems, aerosols, and toxins—these constitute the planetary boundaries within which humanity must find a safe way to live and prosper.
Narco-Deforestation: Linking Drug Policy and Forest Conservation
The forests stretching from Mexico through Central America have some of the richest species diversity on the planet. But despite expansive conservation efforts, this region continues to face staggering rates of forest destruction…there has been much less attention devoted to the environmental impacts from the region’s drug trafficking.
Environmental Debt
By focusing on developing the economy for decades, politicians and business leaders have done little to account for the environmental costs of growing industry. Now, economies worldwide are struggling to cover the increasing expenses of pollution and health care – But who is going to pay?
American Intellectuals’ Widespread Failure to Stand Up to Billionaires and Authoritarian Power
Given the considerable resources in the United States spent to subsidize intellectual work, why are so many intellectuals—journalists, academics, writers—not critiquing the many hierarchical institutions and not highlighting the disastrous consequences of these systems?
