Subjects Archives: Ecology

For many continental philosophers, the first two decades of the new millennium were a time of vibrant matter, hyperobjects, and a weird fixation with intestinal microbes. The late Bruno Latour saw this ‘new materialist’ doctrine–which decentred the human subject in favour of the world of ‘things’, believed to have agency of their own–as a useful resource in his career-long polemic against Marxism.

The tiny but incredibly privileged 0.1% really are a breed apart, even from their not-quite-so-rich neighbours.

In 2021, after a year-long protest, India’s farmers brought about the repeal of three farm laws that were intended to ‘liberalize’ the agriculture sector. Now, in 2024, farmers are again protesting. The underlying issues and the facilitation of the neoliberal corporatization of farming that sparked the previous protest remain and have not been resolved.

Grounded in people and places at the heart of the climate crisis, ‘Oil, Water and Climate Resistance’ traces the fight in Minnesota against the expansion of pipelines carrying toxic tar sands oil through North America.

Based on tax records from Lynda and Stewart Resnicks foundation, they’ve given anywhere from $500,000 to $200,000 to the Israeli military every year, with most of it funneled through an outfit called the American Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), over the past three decades the oldest, thickest ice (13-20 feet thick) has declined by a stunning 95 percent and 70 percent of Arctic sea ice is now thin “seasonal ice” that quickly melts in the Arctic summer.

Skyrocketing grocery prices in America highlight how precarious our supply chains are, giving corporations ample opportunity to take advantage of consumers in the midst of minor supply shocks and major global crises. Unless we aggressively confront climate change, corporate consolidation, and profiteering, food prices will remain high and continue to climb.

In his thesis entitled Agency and Organisation, Rasmus Haukedal highlights the remarkable mutual relevance of recent theoretical trends in biology and the dialectical approach to (living) nature as developed by Hegel, Engels, and others (Haukedal 2022).

“Should one claim that, unless they have studied the Science of Logic, these scientists don’t know what they are doing? Doubtless, they know what they are doing but, philosophically speaking, they often do not know what they know and beyond a certain point this limitation cannot but have a regrettable influence on their work.” (Sève 2008: 91)

The World Meteorological Organization has declared 2023 “the warmest year on record, by a huge margin.”

From Berlin and Paris, to Brussels and Bucharest, European farmers have driven their tractors to the streets in protest over recent weeks.

The hypocrisy of the world’s biggest banks on climate change keeps mounting.

Clean energy contributed a record 11.4tn yuan ($1.6tn) to China’s economy in 2023, accounting for all of the growth in investment and a larger share of economic growth than any other sector.

Towards a “just, orderly, and equitable” fossil fuel phase out.

The renewed hunger strike of fifteen political prisoners of the Mapuche resistance movement in Chile has reached a highly critical stage. Their loved ones are calling for a week of action in the lead up to their appeal hearing on February 9.

Record levels of forced migration are tied to an environmental collapse that Republicans worsened on behalf of the fossil fuel industry.

Farmers in France are not a homogenous block, and the left needs to be able to unite with its more progressive elements to generalize revolt, argues John Mullen.

The poisonous waste, and deadly carbon emissions produced by oilsands production is even worse than had been thought, and production must stop, argues John Clarke.

Reductions in groundwater can make it harder for people to access freshwater to drink or to irrigate crops and can result in land subsidence.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is the ruling-class Comic-Con, a fantasy fortress where the 1 percent’s 1 percent can save the world that they are sending to hell.