26 articles

Who is failing the climate? Are underreporting journalists, politicians in denial or fatalists, who insist that only the most aggressive few can survive, at fault? Are horrified white boys or an industrial complex that capitalize on this misery more to blame? The list of potential culprits may be long, but the ultimate raft of solutions needs to be even longer. Hysterics do not help, long-time activists remind. A complex collapse cannot possibly be tackled without doing away with the stereotype that the environment is only important for the white, middle-class. The colonized and exploited must have a voice and introduce positions on the problem. An enforced cooling down of the coronavirus crisis may as well offer a window of opportunity for a transition from an economy of exploitation and disposal towards fulfilling the needs of the many.
Are ecological crises inevitable? Eurozine looks at the cultural and political factors behind delayed responses to the climate emergency, and potential ways out of it.
Tackling climate change requires more care. Environmentalist slogans demand respect for Mother Earth. But does it make sense to gender a planet? How should nature be perceived? And what does ‘natural’ even mean within an ecofeminist frame?
A bill on Animal Welfare is currently making its way through the UK parliament. If passed, non-human vertebrates would be recognized as sentient. But would this mean that animals have the same or similar rights to humans?
COP26’s mandate focuses on averting the loss and damage caused by climate change. And technological solutions hold much promise. But high-tech and the environment aren’t always best matched: largely unregulated mega satellite projects are on the increase with space debris a real near-space threat.
COP26 lists collaboration as one of its main objectives. All views are seemingly welcome. And yet environmental justice, the law-making that should speak for Indigenous people, isn’t explicitly on the table. If laws and legal action remain static, based on corporate culpability after the fact to the exclusion of motive and context, how will future environmental plunder ever be avoided?
Europe has never been a place for racial or environmental purity. Situated at a crossroads of the world, it has always been characterized by change and hybridisation. Palaeontologist Tim Flannery calls for reinventing the commons and bringing elephants back to Europe.
Istanbul’s water reserves are drying up: increasingly severe droughts, intense urban development and the growing population all have their impact. With no miracle cure in sight, environmental science looks for proven ways to reduce water loss in times of scarcity.
Once the heart of a civilization, the inland sea connecting Europe and Asia has lost most of its astonishing wildlife and is suffocating under marine mucilage. Industrial pollution and reckless sewage policies feed the phytoplankton that took over the sea. Kaya Genç recalls the rich history of his beloved Marmara and identifies the culprits behind its rapid demise.
Wildlife conservationists often have to risk their own safety to protect endangered species from armed gangs. The market value of Asian elephant tusks, for example, entices certain impoverished locals into poaching. And at the crux of this perilous and twisted Anthropocene reality lies an increasingly aggressive animal’s fight for survival.
The trauma of the 1990s economic shock therapy reverberates in the Polish resistance against the green transition. The PiS government is demanding the EU finance the climate transformation, leaving them with funds to preserve the iconic coal industry despite its economic failure.
Despite real and immediate environmental catastrophes, Australia’s climate change policies are the most backward in the world. To be pro-environment is to be seen as un-Australian; coal mining in particular is a source of national pride.
The European Green Deal proposes that art-science collaborations pull us out of environmental crises. But doesn’t invoking an early 20th century movement just reflect modernist shortcomings – the very inequalities a green transition is supposed to redress?
Extractivism and its impacts seem to be globalization’s end game. Industrial capitalism plunders natural resources, wreaking havoc on biomes and the lives of Indigenous peoples – then moves on. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing speaks about the ‘friction’ between dynamic groups that can ultimately bring regeneration.
It may seem utopian, but granting rights to inanimate beings could break the institutional deadlocks of environmental policy making. Not only that, ‘a parliament of things’ could eliminate the inequalities inherent in our anthropocentric approach to politics.
People are starting to notice nature’s invoices: forest fires burning koalas, plastic in the oceans, but the loss of biodiversity freefall has not yet fully broken through onto the political agenda. The pandemic now highlights the connection between human health and the mismanagement of nature and wildlife.
The explosion in Beirut’s port was so loud that it was heard 150 miles away in Cyprus; a neglected store of fertilizer was the unsuspected bomb. To avoid such mismanagement of hazardous chemicals, authorities need to ensure that the polluter pays, says Gergely Simon.