Titane (France/Belgium: Julia Ducournau, 2021)

 Titane (France/Belgium: Julia Ducournau, 2021: 108 mins)

Doherty, Caitlin. "Enter: Monsters." New Left Review (January 28, 2022) ["In an introduction to Frankenstein, written for a new edition of the work in 1831, Mary Shelley recounted a question she had been asked frequently in the thirteen years since the novel’s publication: how had she, ‘then a young girl, come to think and to dilate upon so very hideous an idea?’ A prying concern permeates the query, as if the monstrosity of the work’s content must indicate perverse conditions of production, some titillating mistreatment inflicted on the nineteen-year-old Shelley that could justify the creation of a new category of monster. For Julia Ducournau, director of the Palme D’Or-winning Titane (2021), the fallacy of the question would be obvious. No backstory is necessary: to be a young girl is monstrous inspiration enough."]

Ducournau, Julia. "Palme d’Or Winner Julia Ducournau Talks Titane." Reel Blend (October 6, 2021) 

Eggert, Brian. "Titane." Deep Focus Review (October 3, 2021) ["In the first images of Titane, the camera lingers on engine parts shot like sweaty appendages, dripping with perspiration and vibrating orgasmically with the motor’s hum. The metal shimmers with grease and droplets of oil, and its curves look almost fleshy in the way they bend and give way to the rolling shapes in the undercarriage. French director Julia Ducournau films these inhuman auto parts like erotica, exploring the connection between bodies and automobiles in ways not attempted since David Cronenberg’s controversial 1996 film, Crash, about the relationship between the little death and the death drive. The link between sexuality and cars has been there for a long while. After all, why do they call a mechanic’s workspace a body shop? Consciously or not, motorheads make these connections as well. Car magazines and calendars pair bikini-clad women with muscle cars and hot rods, coupling sex and automobiles in literal and figurative terms. Ducournau’s film considers how the male gaze creates this strange relationship of images and takes the next logical step. The result is something wildly original, brutally visceral, oddly funny and tender, and singular in its vision."]

Goi, Leonardo. "The Current Debate: The Transgressiveness of Julia Ducournau’s Titane." Notebook (October 7, 2021)

Kiang, Jessica. "Titane: The New Flesh Is Thriving, Living Rent-Free in Julia Ducournau’s F*cked Up Metallica Brain [Cannes Review]." The Playlist (July 13, 2021) ["We can all stop wishing it a long life: the new flesh is thriving, living rent-free in Julia Ducournau‘s fucked-up titanium brain, oozing from every frame of her bizarrely beautiful, emphatically queer sophomore film, and thence seeping in through your orifices, the better to colonize your most lurid, confusing nightmares, as well as that certain class of sex dream that you’d be best off never confessing to having. “Titane,” Ducournau’s follow-up to her sensational debut “Raw,” is roughly seven horror movies plus one bizarrely tender parent-child romance soldered into one machine and painted all over with flames: it’s so replete with startling ideas, suggestive ellipses, transgressive reversals and preposterous propositions that it ought to be a godforsaken mess. But while God has almost certainly forsaken this movie, He wouldn’t have been much needed around it anyway. Ducournau’s filmmaking is as pure as her themes are profane: to add insult to the very many injuries inflicted throughout, “Titane” is gorgeous to look at, to listen to, to obsess over, and fetishize."]

Loayza, Beatrice. "Hot Wheels: On Julia Ducournau’s Titane (2021)." Art Forum (September 30, 2021)

Anthropology/Archaeology (Concepts and Theories)

Davis, Wade. "Anthropologist Wade Davis Discusses His Life and Work." New Books in Anthropology (May 5, 2021) ["Of the three major influences on Wade Davis’ life and work one of the most important is the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gary Snyder, and in this interview the professor shares how foundational that connection remains. This is just one highlight of many he shares about his thinking and writing as Wade indulges my interest in his ‘craft of culture’ on his path to becoming a renowned storyteller. This professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia, former Explorer-in-Residence for the National Geographic Society, and award-winning author, Davis shares the interesting back stories of his best-selling first book, The Serpent and The Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey Into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic, about his research into Haitian ‘zombie poison’, how his hypothesis was publically challenged, and how the Hollywood movie version was just the kind of cultural distortion he was trying to overcome with his book. In the course of talking about this first book which helped launch his writing career he shares thoughts about academic writing more generally and in particular how his PhD thesis, Passage of Darkness, is really a sterile version of the richer and more textured narrative of the first book even though the latter is preferred by academics. For that matter, Wade has something to say about academic objectivity before we move on to talk about his influential One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest, his CBC lectures-inspired The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World, and his award-winning Into The Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest. He also speaks at length about the influence of his Harvard mentors – the British anthropologist David May Ray Lewis, and the botanist and plant explorer Richard Evan Schultes, and how he and the late botanical explorer Tim Plowman made up the ‘coca project’ and the significance of ‘the divine leaf of immortality’."]

---. "Dreams From Endangered Cultures." TED Talks (January 2007) ["With stunning photos and stories, National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis celebrates the extraordinary diversity of the world's indigenous cultures, which are disappearing from the planet at an alarming rate."]

---. "Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, ..." The Tim Ferris Show #652 (January 27, 2023) ["Wade Davis (@wadedavisofficial, daviswade.com) is Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. Between 2000 and 2013, he served as Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. Named by the NGS as one of the Explorers for the Millennium, he has been described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet, and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.” An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, Wade holds degrees in anthropology and biology and a PhD in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent over three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among 15 indigenous groups while making some 6000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing The Serpent and the Rainbow, an international bestseller, later released by Universal as a motion picture. In recent years, his work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Australia, Colombia, Vanuatu, Mongolia, and the high Arctic of Nunavut and Greenland."]

---. "Indigenous cultures hold the keys to sustaining our planet. At COP15, will we finally be listening?" The Globe and Mail (December 10, 2022) ["For these societies, the land is alive, a dynamic force to be embraced and transformed by the human imagination. Reciprocity, as opposed to extraction, is the norm."]

---. "Notes from an author: Wade Davis on Colombia's Magdalena River." National Geographic (February 18, 2021) ["A journey along the Río Magdalena reveals a sacred tributary, the Río Claro — a repository of stories that paints a unique picture of the country."]

---. The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World. Anansi, 2009. ["Every culture is a unique answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? In The Wayfinders, renowned anthropologist, winner of the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize, and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis leads us on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world's indigenous cultures. In Polynesia we set sail with navigators whose ancestors settled the Pacific ten centuries before Christ. In the Amazon we meet the descendants of a true lost civilization, the Peoples of the Anaconda. In the Andes we discover that the earth really is alive, while in Australia we experience Dreamtime, the all-embracing philosophy of the first humans to walk out of Africa. We then travel to Nepal, where we encounter a wisdom hero, a Bodhisattva, who emerges from forty-five years of Buddhist retreat and solitude. And finally we settle in Borneo, where the last rainforest nomads struggle to survive. Understanding the lessons of this journey will be our mission for the next century. For at risk is the human legacy -- a vast archive of knowledge and expertise, a catalogue of the imagination. Rediscovering a new appreciation for the diversity of the human spirit, as expressed by culture, is among the central challenges of our time."]

---. "The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World." (Posted on Youtube: June 20, 2013) ["Presenting at a plenary session of the 2013 Climate, Mind, & Behavior Symposium, anthropologist Wade Davis illuminates the need to embrace and celebrate the cultural and intellectual diversity that constitutes the totality of human experience, especially when considering fundamental questions of how we are to relate to our environment." Based on his book: The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World]

---. "The Worldwide Web of Belief and Ritual." TED Talks (January 2008) ["Anthropologist Wade Davis muses on the worldwide web of belief and ritual that makes us human. He shares breathtaking photos and stories of the Elder Brothers, a group of Sierra Nevada indians whose spiritual practice holds the world in balance."]

Deloria, Philip, et al. "A New History of Humanity." Open Source (August 11, 2022) ["Giant questions this hour, and a slew of fresh answers: Where do we humans come from? Who are we, after all? Where are we going? Was our pre-history a Garden of Eden, or a nasty war of survival, or some of both? Are we human beings good or evil, by the way? Pretty much the same, the world around, or many different varieties? An anthropologist and an archaeologist walked into a bar, so to speak—into an endless chain of emails, in fact, and produced a bestseller, chock full of Stone Age history and modern science. Their book is titled The Dawn of Everything. A main argument is that we’ve been one free-wheeling, improvisational species for fifty thousand years. A main question might be: when and how did we get to feel so stuck in this 21st century? Make way this hour for the news of our human pre-history. Could it be: that our Stone Age ancestors were just as smart as we are, as playful and strong—if anything more inventive and adaptive than we, as they settled a planet and seeded a great variety of civilizations 10,000 years ago? The questions come from a surprise bestseller, The Dawn of Everything: it’s a 600-page brick of a book by an anthropologist and an archeologist, sharing fresh evidence and best guesses in A New History of Humanity. The sadness in reading it is that the American co-author David Graeber died as he was finishing the great work of his life. The relief is that his writing partner in London, David Wengrow, is still grappling with the puzzles they posed."]

Gosden, Chris. "Shapeshifters, Shamans, and the New Animism." To the Best of Our Knowledge (November 20, 2021) ["Shapeshifting images run deep in human history, going back to ancient cave paintings. Oxford University archeologist Chris Gosden thinks they're linked to the shaman's ability to cross into the spirit world where humans and animals merge. He says animist beliefs are gaining new traction among some scientists, and they raise profound questions about the nature of consciousness."]

Graeber, David. The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World. Fararr, Straus, and Giroux, 2024. ["Drawn from more than two decades of pathbreaking writing, the iconic and bestselling David Graeber's most important essays and interviews. "The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently," wrote David Graeber. A renowned anthropologist, activist, and author of such classic books as Debt and the breakout New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything (with David Wengrow), Graeber was as well-known for his sharp, lively essays as he was for his iconic role in the Occupy movement and his paradigm-shifting tomes. There are converging political, economic, and ecological crises, and yet our politics is dominated by either business as usual or nostalgia for a mythical past. Thinking against the grain, Graeber was one of the few who dared to imagine a new understanding of the past and a liberatory vision of the future—to imagine a social order based on humans’ fundamental freedom. In essays published over three decades and ranging across the biggest issues of our time— inequality, technology, the identity of “the West,” democracy, art, power, anger, mutual aid, and protest—he challenges the old assumptions about political life. A trenchant critic of the order of things, and driven by a bold imagination and a passionate commitment to human freedom, he offers hope that our world can be different. During a moment of daunting upheaval and pervasive despair, the incisive, entertaining, and urgent essays collected in The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World . . . , edited and with an introduction by Nika Dubrovsky and with a foreword by Rebecca Solnit, make for essential and inspiring reading. They are a profound reminder of Graeber’s enduring significance as an iconic, playful, necessary thinker."]

Greenberg, Udi. "The Abuses of Prehistory: Beware of theories about human nature based on the study of our earliest ancestors." The New Republic (May 10, 2024) ["With such diametrically opposed claims, it may seem that these books share little beyond pretentious titles. But as historian Stefanos Geroulanos reveals in his original and exciting new book, The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession With Human Origins, both are part of the same intellectual tradition: the ambitious desire of European and North American thinkers to transform humanity by reconstructing its deep past. Geroulanos charts the history of this effort, which began in the late eighteenth century, with a dazzling survey of countless anthropologists, scientists, and artists. By studying bones, art in caves, or nomad tribes, these thinkers believed they could answer humanity’s fundamental questions: Are we cruel or compassionate? Monogamous or polygamous? Are there “natural” ways to organize our families, religious rites, or social institutions? The answers they offered varied enormously and often led to bitter disputes. What they all shared, and what they left for us, was the belief that prehistory is the key to understanding ourselves."]

King, Charles. "How A Few 'Renegade' Thinkers Helped Usher In A New Era Of Anthropology." Fresh Air (August 20, 2019) ["In his new book, Gods of the Upper Air, Charles King tells the story of Franz Boas, Margaret Mead and the other 20th century anthropologists who challenged outdated notions of race, class and gender."]

Kohn, Eduardo. How Forests Think: An Anthropology Beyond Humans. University of California Press, 2013. ["Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be human—and thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of Ecuador’s Upper Amazon, Eduardo Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the world’s most complex ecosystems. Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human. However, when we turn our ethnographic attention to how we relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing us from the rest of the world) break down. How Forests Think seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how our lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs we humans spin, this book skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. In this groundbreaking work, Kohn takes anthropology in a new and exciting direction–one that offers a more capacious way to think about the world we share with other kinds of beings."]

Seaford, Richard. "On the Origins of the Soul." The Secret History of Western Esotericism (September 13, 2017) ["In some of the earliest documents we possess from Indo-European cultures – the Rg Veda and the Homeric poems – the human beings depicted do not have ‘souls’. That is to say, they have organs of what we might call different types of consciousness, but there is no indication that there is a unifying principle which knits all the different organs together. Then, at the beginning of the sixth century BCE, something rather startling happens: in both Indian texts (the Brahmanas, Upanishads, and others) and in Greece (in the movement known as Pre-Socratic philosophy) the notion arises that there is indeed a unifying, bounded, and possibly immortal soul. Richard Seaford has a provocative theory, based in a sociological / anthropological approach, as to why this new and revolutionary idea comes into being at just this time in just these places. Whether you agree with him or not, you will not want to miss Professor Seaford’s masterful survey of the Greek and Sanskritic evidence for the first appearance of that most essential entity, the soul.
Other fascinating themes touched on:What is the ‘Axial Age’, and what makes it so ‘axial’? The problems of dating the Homeric poems and the Rg Veda. The origins of the concept of the incorporeal in Greece and India. What money and private property have to do with the rise of the soul."]

Shaviro, Steven. "Anarchism and Principle of Play: Steven Shaviro reviews David Graeber’s posthumous essay collection The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World." Los Angeles Review of Books (November 15, 2024) ["The volume’s title comes from an earlier book by Graeber: in The Utopia of Rules, he wrote that “the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” Such rhetoric is typical for Graeber: a phrase that sounds grandiose (“the ultimate, hidden truth”) is brought down to earth, since the “secret” really consists of things that we already do on an everyday basis. Graeber is unusually optimistic for an anti-capitalist activist: he seeks to remind us that we ourselves have ultimately constructed the forms and institutions that oppress us, which means that these structures of social and economic life have no necessity to them but can be reorganized in multiple ways. Some of these ways may in fact be substantially better than anything we have now."]

Shipman, Pat. Our Oldest Companions: The Story of the First Dogs. Belknap Press, 2023. ["Dogs and humans have been inseparable for more than 40,000 years. The relationship has proved to be a pivotal development in our evolutionary history. The same is also true for our canine friends; our connection with them has had much to do with their essential nature and survival. How and why did humans and dogs find their futures together, and how have these close companions (literally) shaped each other? Award-winning anthropologist Pat Shipman finds answers in prehistory and the present day. In Our Oldest Companions, Shipman untangles the genetic and archaeological evidence of the first dogs. She follows the trail of the wolf-dog, neither prehistoric wolf nor modern dog, whose bones offer tantalizing clues about the earliest stages of domestication. She considers the enigma of the dingo, not quite domesticated yet not entirely wild, who has lived intimately with humans for thousands of years while actively resisting control or training. Shipman tells how scientists are shedding new light on the origins of the unique relationship between our two species, revealing how deep bonds formed between humans and canines as our guardians, playmates, shepherds, and hunters. Along the journey together, dogs have changed physically, behaviorally, and emotionally, as humans too have been transformed. Dogs’ labor dramatically expanded the range of human capability, altering our diets and habitats and contributing to our very survival. Shipman proves that we cannot understand our own history as a species without recognizing the central role that dogs have played in it."]

Upholt, Boyce. "Monuments Upon the Tumultuous Earth." Emergence Magazine (March 28, 2023) ["For thousands of years, the southern Mississippi River has been shaping the land it traverses—and the structures humans have built along it. Over vast stretches of time, Indigenous societies were building hundred-foot pyramids, fifty-acre plazas, and intricate clusters of hillocks along this wild waterway. In this narrated essay, Boyce Upholt charts the shifting course of the river and the civilizations that have emerged alongside it. Beholding the 2,200-mile levee system that now curbs the river’s torrent, he wonders: what do our monuments say about who we are—and the crises we face?"]

Environment/Ecology/Geography/Animals/Place (Concepts and Theories)

Adler-Bell, Sam. "The Story Behind the Green New Deal's Meteoric Rise." The New Republic (February 6, 2019)

Akuno, Kali. "Worker Cooperatives, Economic Democracy, and Black Self-Determination." Left Out (January 18, 2018) ["In this episode, we sat down with Kali Akuno — the co-founder and co-directer of Cooperation Jackson. We discuss the emerging network of worker-owned cooperatives and the people behind it building an alternative, solidarity-based economy inside the majority-black and impoverished city of Jackson, Mississippi. ... In Jackson Rising, Akuno helps chronicle the history, present and future of one of the most dynamic yet under-documented experiments in radical social transformation taking place in the United States. The book follows the surprising story of the city’s newly elected Mayor, Choke Antara Lumumba, whose vision is to “encourage the development of cooperative businesses” and make Jackson the “most radical city on the planet.” In the first part of the interview, we ask Akuno about the ongoing organizing and institution building of the black, working-class political forces concentrated in Jackson dedicated to advancing the “Jackson-Kush Plan.” We then dive deeper into the different types of worker-owned cooperatives that makeup Cooperation Jackson; the importance of developing cooperatives with clear political aims; and the need for a nationwide network of cooperatives and solidarity economic institutions as a viable alternative to the exploitative nature of our current economic, social, and environmental relations. Cooperation Jackson is one of the most important stories for those of us struggling for social justice, for human emancipation and self-determination, and for a solidarity economics as a base for working class political struggle and the fight against the systematic economic strangulation."]

Allam, Beverly and Jeff Masters. "The Unimaginable Has Happened': Massive Tornado Kills Dozens, Flattens Suburb of Oklahoma City." Democracy Now (May 21, 2013)

All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (United Kingdom: Adam Curtis, 2011) ["All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace is a series of films about how this culture itself has been colonised by the machines it has has built. The series explores and connects together some of the myriad ways in which the emergence of cybernetics—a mechanistic perspective of the natural world that particularly emerged in the 1970s along with emerging computer technologies—intersects with various historical events and visa-versa. The series variously details the interplay between the mechanistic perspective and the catastrophic consequences it has in the real world."]

"Anaheim: A Tale of Two Cities." Faultlines (December 12, 2012)

Andrews, Kristin, Monica Miller, and Gabriel Rosenberg. "Living in a Zoopolis." Hi-Phi Nation (April 18, 2023) ["A zoopolis is a future society that philosophers envision where wild, domesticated, and denizen animals have full political and legal rights. What would that look like? In this episode, we look at how animals were put on trial in medieval European courts, and how animal rights advocates are bringing animals back into the courtrooms to sue people and the US government.
We then look at what the science of animal minds tells us about how much agency animals have, and envision what political and legal rights various animals would have in a zoopolis. From there, we discuss and debate whether we should be allowed to farm animals, control their reproduction, and have them work for us. Co-produced with Alec Opperman, guests include historian Gabriel Rosenberg, attorney Monica Miller, and animal minds researcher Professor Kristin Andrews."]

Annett, Anthony and Joshua Lipsky. "Ancient Rome Offers Lessons on the Importance of Sustainable Development." Inter Press Service (April 16, 2019)

A River of Waste: The Hazardous Truth about Factory Farms (USA: Don McCorckell, 2009: 91 mins)

Arnoff, Kate. "Trump Curbs the Circulation of Science." On the Media (May 31, 2019) ["Last weekend, The New York Times reported on a host of aggressive new obstacles placed by Trump administration to stymie the dissemination of federal climate research. One new rule prevents certain agencies from publishing findings after 2040. A second will omit the National Climate Assessment's "worst case scenario" projection. And finally, a panel of climate deniers will oversee and regulate the release of all federally funded climate research. In this interview, Bob speaks with Kate Aronoff, who recently wrote about these regulations for The Guardian. She explains how these alarming new restrictions fit into the Trump administration's larger pattern of limiting public access to the truth about the climate."]

Atkin, Emily and Sarah Jones. "Rural America's Drinking-Water Crisis." The New Republic (February 12, 2018)

Ayukawa, Yurika. "Japan Facing Biggest Catastrophe Since Dawn of Nuclear Age." Democracy Now (March 14, 2011)

Bailey, Buckey, Rob Bilot and Joe Kiger. "DuPont vs. the World: Chemical Giant Covered Up Health Risks of Teflon Contamination Across Globe." Democracy Now (January 23, 2018) ["“The Devil We Know,” that looks at how former DuPont employees, residents and lawyers took on the chemical giant to expose the danger of the chemical C8, found in Teflon and countless household products—from stain- and water-resistant apparel to microwave popcorn bags to dental floss. The chemical has now been linked to six diseases, including testicular and kidney cancers. We speak with Bucky Bailey, whose mother worked in the Teflon division of a DuPont plant in West Virginia while she was pregnant with him, and who was born with only one nostril and a deformed eye and has undergone more than 30 surgeries to fix the birth defects; Joe Kiger, lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against DuPont, and a school teacher in Parkersburg, West Virginia, who suffered from liver disease; and Rob Bilott, the attorney that brought DuPont to court."]

Bardenwerper, Will, Stan Brewer and Tucker Malarkey. "Wild Ecologies: So Go the Salmon, So Go the World." Fiction/Non/Fiction (November 19, 2019) ["In this episode, writers Tucker Malarkey and Will Bardenwerper, as well as rancher, rider, and member of the Oglala Sioux tribe Stan Brewer talk about their connections to the natural world. Malarkey talks about efforts to save wild salmon, their vital role in the ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest, and how relations between the US and Russia on this issue might provide insight on global climate change cooperation. Bardenwerper and Brewer, the first writer-source duo to appear on the show together, discuss Indian relay horse racing, and horses’ importance to the Lakota community."]

Barlow, Maude, Richard Grossman and Thomas Linzey. "When Lawmaking Becomes Rebellion (Water Privatization, Democracy School and the Corporate State)." Unwelcome Guests #307 (May 21, 2006) ["A new populist alliance of long time environmental activists and rural folk in central Pennsylvania has grown out of a struggle to ban toxic agribusiness operations that have targeted the area as the next profit opportunity. This movement is taking a new approach that is spreading across America via a project of public education and organization called democracy schools, that are teaching direct action lawmaking to challenge corporate supremacy and to create rights under law for people and the land."]

Barnard, Annie. "Climate Change is Killing the Cedars of Lebanon." The New York Times (July 18, 2018)

Bayne, Tim. "Exploring the Boundaries of Consciousness." NOEMA (July 25, 2024) ["A journey into the mystical hillsides of Nepal in search of answers to questions about which beings we can call conscious."]

Beck, Ulrich and Bruno Latour. "How To Think About Science (Part 5)." Ideas (February 11, 2015) ["Few people ever apply a name that sticks to an entire social order, but sociologist Ulrich Beck is one of them. In 1986 in Germany he published Risk Society, and the name has become a touchstone in contemporary sociology. Among the attributes of Risk Society is the one he just mentioned: science has become so powerful that it can neither predict nor control its effects. It generates risks too vast to calculate. In the era of nuclear fission, genetic engineering and a changing climate, society itself has become a scientific laboratory. In this episode, Ulrich Beck talks about the place of science in a risk society. Later in the hour you'll hear from another equally influential European thinker, Bruno Latour, the author of We Have Never Been Modern. He will argue that our very future depends on overcoming a false dichotomy between nature and culture."]

Benyus, Janine. Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Harper Collins, 2009. ["Repackaged with a new afterword, this "valuable and entertaining" (New York Times Book Review) book explores how scientists are adapting nature's best ideas to solve tough 21st century problems. Biomimicry is rapidly transforming life on earth. Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world. Janine Benyus takes readers into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; harness energy by examining how a leaf converts sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second; and many more examples. Composed of stories of vision and invention, personalities and pipe dreams, Biomimicry is must reading for anyone interested in the shape of our future."]

Berger, John J. Climate Myths: The Campaign Against Climate Science. Berkeley, CA: Northbrae Books, 2013. [Available in the BCTC Library]

Bernstein, Barbara. "Sacrifice Zones (Part 1)." Making Contact (October 18, 2017) ["Since 2003 a rash of proposals have surfaced in communities throughout the Northwest to export vast amounts of fossil fuels to Asian markets via Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. If these plans go through the Northwest would become home to the largest oil terminal in North America, the largest coal export facility in North America, and the largest methanol refinery in the world. This week we present Part One of Sacrifice Zones by Barbara Bernstein. It’s the first in a two-part series on the pressure to transform a region of iconic landscapes and environmental stewardship into a global center for shipping fossil fuels. Bernstein investigates how proposals for petrochemical development in the Pacific Northwest threatens the region’s core cultural, social, and environmental values."]

---. "Sacrifice Zones (Part 2)." Making Contact (October 25, 2017) ["Since 2003 a rash of proposals have surfaced in communities throughout the Northwest to export vast amounts of fossil fuels to Asian markets via Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. If these plans go through the Northwest would become home to the largest oil terminal in North America, the largest coal export facility in North America, and the largest methanol refinery in the world. As the fossil fuel industry turns up its pressure to turn the Pacific Northwest into a fossil fuel export hub, a Thin Green Line stands in its way."]

Berry, Wendell. "The Work of Local Culture." What Are People For? San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990: 153-169 [Excerpts posted on Dialogic with links to the entire text: July 8, 2012]

Bey, George. "Redefining success: Archaeology as a way to embrace the world." Ted Talks (February 3, 2015) ["George Bey is an anthropology professor and associate dean of international education at Millsaps College. Bey led efforts to establish 4,500 acres of wilderness in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula as an archeological and biocultural reserve to study the archeological remains of the ancient Maya civilization of Kaxil Kiuic. In 2012, discoveries made by Bey and his team were featured in a 2012 National Geographic documentary, “Quest for the Lost Maya.”"]

Blei, Daniella. "Going Coastal: On Some Recent Books About the Ecology and History of Beaches." The Los Angeles Review of Books (November 16, 2022) ["Coastline counties account for only 10 percent of land mass in the contiguous United States, and yet 40 percent of the US population lives on the coast, where the country’s economic activity is concentrated. Nearly every imported good flows through some 360 commercial seaports, generating massive federal, state, and local tax revenues in the process. A sprawling blue economy includes trade and cargo, but also national defense, mining, utilities, transportation, fisheries, research, and “the ocean-based tourism and recreation sector,” which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) credits with employing more people than “the entire real estate industry, as well as more people than building construction and telecommunications combined.” The coasts aren’t for elites, but rather for large swaths of society — old and young, rich and poor, white, Black, and Brown — that live, work, and play on the edges of the land."]

Boardman, William. " 14 Things You Need to Know About the Horrifying Arkansas Oil Spill: The situation remains fluid, as it were, with potential impacts possible from local to global." AlterNet (April 8, 2013)

Bonneval, Karine, Paco Calvo and Tom Greaves. "Plants." The Forum for Philosophy (April 2019) ["Philosophers have long assumed that plants are inferior to humans and animals: static, inert, and unreflective. But recent scientific advances suggest that we may have underestimated plants. They can process information, solve problems, and communicate. We explore what plants can teach us about intelligence and agency, and ask whether plants think."]

Boone, Alastair. "What Airbnb Did to New York City." City Lab (March 5, 2018)

Boué, Katie. "Give and Take." Women on the Road #54 (May 24, 2019) ["When you’re on the go, it can feel freeing to not have roots. You’re here, then you’re there. But the reality is that all of us who travel, for any length of time, create an impact on the communities we travel to and through, which can be tough to remember that because it feels like sleeping in a public parking lot for 7 hours doesn’t leave a lot of room to give back to the people who live down the street. Or does it? Katie Boué, part-time road traveler and full-time public lands advocate, has a lot to say about the give and take we engage in as travelers: both in the outdoors as well as in local communities. Because the reality is that no matter how often we relocate, we leave an impact wherever we go, and that acknowledgment in itself holds power."]

Bordessa, Kris. "Michigan Woman Could Get 93 Days in Jail for Planting a Garden." Geek Mom (July 9, 2011)

Brotton, Jerry. "Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction." New Books in Science, Technology, and Society (November 5, 2024) ["North, south, east and west: almost all societies use the four cardinal directions to orientate themselves, to understand who they are by projecting where they are. For millennia, these four directions have been foundational to our travel, navigation and exploration and are central to the imaginative, moral and political geography of virtually every culture in the world. Yet they are far more subjective and various – sometimes contradictory – than we might realise. Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction (Penguin, 2024) by Dr. Jerry Brotton takes the reader on a journey of directional discovery. Dr. Brotton reveals why Hebrew culture privileges east; why Renaissance Europeans began drawing north at the top of their maps; why the early Islam revered the south; why the Aztecs used five colour-coded cardinal directions; and why no societies, primitive or modern, have ever orientated themselves westwards. He ends by reflecting on our digital age in which we, the little blue dot on the screen, have become the most important compass point. Throughout, Dr. Brotton shows that the directions reflect a human desire to create order and that they only have meaning, literally and metaphorically, depending on where you stand."]

Brotz, Lucas. "Jellyfishing for Answers." Future Ecologies 1.8 (October 10, 2018) ["How are human activities changing our oceans, and why do these changes all seem to support a new age of jellyfish? What are these ancient, diverse beings: harbingers of doom, or simply the most well-adapted form of life in the sea? In this episode we go jellyfishing for answers with preeminent jellyfish researchers Dr. Lisa-ann Gershwin and Dr. Lucas Brotz."]

Brown, Monica. "First indigenous map of its kind; U.S. map displays 'Our own names and locations.'" Tulalip News (May 22, 2013)

Buller, Adrienne. The Value of a Whale: The Illusions of Green Capitalism. Manchester University Press, 2022. ["Public understanding of, and outcry over, the dire state of the climate and environment is greater than ever before. Parties across the political spectrum claim to be climate leaders, and overt denial is on the way out. Yet when it comes to slowing the course of the climate and nature crises, despite a growing number of pledges, policies and summits, little ever seems to change. Nature is being destroyed at an unprecedented rate. We remain on course for a catastrophic 3°C of warming. What's holding us back? In this searing and insightful critique, Adrienne Buller examines the fatal biases that have shaped the response of our governing institutions to climate and environmental breakdown, and asks: are the ‘solutions’ being proposed really solutions? Tracing the intricate connections between financial power, economic injustice and ecological crisis, she exposes the myopic economism and market-centric thinking presently undermining a future where all life can flourish. The book examines what is wrong with mainstream climate and environmental governance, from carbon pricing and offset markets to 'green growth', the commodification of nature and the growing influence of the finance industry on environmental policy. In doing so, it exposes the self-defeating logic of a response to these challenges based on creating new opportunities for profit, and a refusal to grapple with the inequalities and injustices that have created them. Both honest and optimistic, The Value of a Whale asks us – in the face of crisis – what we really value."]

Camenzind, Franz, et al. "Guardians vs. Gardeners: Relocating wolves to help balance ecology." Ideas (March 12, 2019) ["How much should humans try to "fix" nature? That question gets at the heart of our relationship with the entire natural world. Contributor Brad Badelt travels to isolated Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior, where a controversial decision has been made to relocate wolves from the mainland to help sustain the island's dwindling pack. The world's leading wolf researchers and environmental thinkers debate that decision — and what our idea of wilderness means."]

Cantarow, Ellen. "The New Eco-Devastation in Rural America." Tom Dispatch (May 20, 2012)

Capper, Daniel. "Roaming Free Like a Deer: Buddhism and the Natural World." Emergence (February 5, 2024) ["Daniel Capper's book Roaming Free Like a Deer: Buddhism and the Natural World (Cornell UP, 2022) delves into ecological experiences in seven Buddhist worlds, spanning ancient India to the modern West, offering a comprehensive analysis of Buddhist environmental ethics. Capper critically examines theories, practices, and real-world outcomes related to Buddhist perspectives on vegetarianism, meat consumption, nature mysticism, and spirituality in nonhuman animals. While Buddhist environmental ethics are often seen as tools against climate change, the book highlights two issues: uncritical acceptance of ideals without assessing practical impacts and a lack of communication among Buddhists, hindering coordinated responses to issues like climate change. The book, with an accessible style and a focus on personhood ethics, appeals to those concerned about human-nonhuman interactions."]

Caro, Robert. "From LBJ to Robert Moses: Robert Caro on Writing About Political Power & Its Impact on the Powerless." Democracy Now (April 29, 2019) ["Robert Caro is always working. The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner published his first book, “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York,” 45 years ago and has spent the decades since meticulously chronicling the life and times of Lyndon B. Johnson. The result is four sweeping volumes that total more than 3,000 pages and offer an unprecedented window into the inner world of one of the country’s most influential presidents. And he’s not done yet—Caro is currently writing the fifth and final installment of the collection. Robert Caro has been described as “the greatest political biographer of our times,” but to reduce his work as simply biographies of great men misses the point. Caro uses both Moses and Johnson to show how political power works. Robert Caro has just released a new book—by far the smallest volume in his collection—titled “Working.” It offers an inside look into the author’s meticulous research and writing process. We speak with Robert Caro in our New York studio." Part Two: "Robert Caro Shares Reporting Tips from His Legendary Career Exposing Dealings of LBJ & Robert Moses." ]

Carrington, Damian. "Huge reduction in meat-eating ‘essential’ to avoid climate breakdown." The Guardian (October 10, 2018)

Challenger, "Animals in the Room: Why We Can and Should Listen to Other Species." Emergence Magazine Podcast (2022) ["How might our human systems work differently if they were adapted to receive input from the nonhuman creatures they involve and impact? In this week’s narrated essay, writer and ethicist Melanie Challenger considers what it would take to expand the democratic imagination to include and represent animal voices in the decisions that affect them. Advocating for a quieting of our own narratives so that we might recognize political signals from the behaviors of the vast community around us, she envisions the revolutionary mechanisms which could make present the expressions of animals within our systems of power."]

Chomsky, Noam. "Nuclear Weapons, Climate Change & the Undermining of Democracy Threaten Future of Planet." Democracy Now (April 12, 2019) ["As President Trump pulls out of key nuclear agreements with Russia and moves to expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Noam Chomsky looks at how the threat of nuclear war remains one of the most pressing issues facing mankind. In a speech at the Old South Church in Boston, Chomsky also discusses the threat of climate change and the undermining of democracy across the globe."]

Christensen, Villy, Reg Waatson and Siwa Msangi. "Will There Be Any Fish in 2050." (February 26, 2011)

Cioffi, Sandy and Riki Ott. "Sandy Cioffi on Nigerian Oil, Riki Ott Looking Back at Exxon Valdez Spill." Counterspin (June 14, 2019) ["The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico happened from the spring through the fall of 2010. The blowout of the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 people, and countless animals, on its way to becoming the worst marine oil spill in history. It seemed to take that protracted disaster on the US coast to generate a New York Times front-page story on June 16, 2010, about oil industry ravages in Nigeria’s delta region, which, the article noted, “has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years, by some estimates.” CounterSpin had a powerful conversation that week with filmmaker and video artist Sandy Cioffi, whose film, Sweet Crude, looks at the oil industry in Nigeria, and the way it is covered in the US. ... Oil spills are often discussed in media in terms of the Exxon Valdez. But if the use of the Valdez as a touchstone might give the impression that “lessons were learned” from that 1989 disaster…. Well, that mainly applies to the lesson that not disaster, but activism—dogged, ongoing, out-of-the-spotlight, misunderstood and maligned activism—is what changes things. That’s part of what we learned when we spoke with activist and marine biologist Riki Ott in 2009—then the 20-year anniversary of that “oil spill to end all oil spills”—now many spills ago."]

Clarke, Kristen. "Dark Money & Barrett Nomination: The Link Between Big Polluters & the War on ACA, Roe & LGBT Rights." Democracy Now (October 16, 2020) ["During confirmation hearings this week for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island opted not to ask the judge any questions. Instead, he gave a 30-minute presentation on how right-wing groups, including the Federalist Society and Judicial Crisis Network, use dark money to shape the nation’s judiciary. We air excerpts from his presentation and get reaction from Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law."]

Conant, Jeff, et al. "A Report Back from the World Water Forum." Making Contact (May 6, 2009)

Connor, J.D., Florence Dore and Dan Sinykin. "Rebel Yale: Reading and Feeling Hillbilly Elegy." Los Angeles Review of Books (January 10, 2018)

Connor, Kevin and Justin Elliott. "Energy Nominee Ernest Moniz Criticized for Backing Fracking & Nuclear Power; Ties to BP, GE, Saudis." Democracy Now (March 26, 2013)

Coombs, Wayne. "Analysis: The Pharmaceutical Colonization of Appalachia." The Daily Yonder (February 7, 2018)

Cooper, Travis Warren. "Kogonada's Urban Realism." Film Criticism 44.1 (January 2020) ["Kogonada’s first full-length feature film, Columbus (2017) is about a little-known Midwestern city and bastion of modern architecture. In method and content, Columbus is both ethnographic and playful, documentary and fiction. This article argues that Kogonada embodies a neorealist filmmaking method and in doing so defies traditional boundaries on multiple levels, prioritizing marginality through a preoccupation with visual lingering. Through its neorealist, ethnographic gaze, the film critically attends to entrenched hierarchies and divisions regarding gender, race, built artifacts, and socioeconomics. As a neorealist project, Columbus is an emotive meditation on urban space and rich visual theory of architecture, design, and metropolitics."]

Coronado, Andy M., et al. "A New Era in Local Culture." Cura Caos (July 17, 2018) ["San Diego has never been known for it’s arts or culture. No more. A new generation of young & dedicated artists are making waves & giving our city a dynamic voice. Four of these human jump-starters are Alejandra Frank of Teros Gallery, Andy M. Coronado of The Travelers Club, Carmela J Prudencio of the SDIY Coalition, & Mauro Donate of Weird Hues art & music collective.
Through monthly events, DIY gallery parties, activism, and social media, these four are galvanizing the San Diego creative community into deeper engagement, creating a refreshing sense of community and identity in the process."]

Corson, Trevor. "Stalking the American Lobster." The Atlantic (April 2002) ["Government scientists say that lobsters are being dangerously overfished. Lobstermen insist that stocks are plentiful. It's a familiar kind of standoff—except that now a new breed of ecologist has taken to the waters, using scuba gear, underwater robots, and even nuclear submarines, in order to figure out what's going on. It turns out that the lore and lessons of the lobsterman are worth paying attention to."]

Costa, Amanda Lin. "A Story of the Earth Liberation Front: An Interview With Documentarian Marshall Curry." Truthout (July 21, 2011)

Coté, Charlotte. "A Drum in One Hand, a Sockeye in the Other: Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the Northwest Coast." New Books in the American West (January 30, 2024) ["Food is at the center of everything, writes University of Washington professor of American Indian Studies Charlotte Coté. In A Drum in One Hand, A Sockeye in the Other: Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the Northwest Coast (U Washington Press, 2022), Coté shares stories from her own experience growing up and living in the Pacific Northwest. From salmon, to wild berries, to community gardens, the food abundance of this region is central to Indigenous decolonization and sovereignty. Coté connects protecting the free movement and ecological health of salmon runs to issues as global as climate change, arguing that in order to understand the big picture, you need to start with what people put on their dinner tables. A Drum in One Hand, a Sockeye in the Other is a book about resilience, healing, and sustenance in the face of challenges, and about the real, material, work people are doing to decolonize their diets and in doing so, healing the land and their communities."]

Crawford, James. "The Strange Saga of Kowloon Walled City: Anarchic, organic, surreal, this enclave was once among the most densely populated places on Earth." Atlas Obscura (January 6, 2020)["This is the story of the rise and fall of a slum. It was born out of a quirk of history, it exploited its unsavory reputation, and, as is the fate of all slums, it became an embarrassment before being leveled by the authorities. Is there any greater significance to its story than that? Many would argue not. But while locals and tourists now enjoy the park, some still crave the claustrophobic darkness. Theorists from the wilder shores of architecture keep returning to the idea of Kowloon. On this tiny rectangle of ground, a single community created something that had only existed before in the avant garde imagination: the 'organic megastructure.'"]

Crimmins, Timothy. "Stretching the Veil." The Point #18 (Winter 2019) ["On environmentalist/conservationist embrace of anti-immigration policies and their later rejection of these policies (if not acceptance of open borders theories)."]

Crips and Bloods: Made in America (USA: Stacy Peralta, 2008: 93 mins) ["With a first-person look at the notorious Crips and Bloods, this film examines the conditions that have lead to decades of devastating gang violence among young African Americans growing up in South Los Angeles."]

Cromwell, David. "Bias Towards Power *Is* Corporate Media ‘Objectivity’: Journalism, Floods And Climate Silence." Media Lens (February 13, 2014)

---. "‘How Dare You!’ The Climate Crisis And The Public Demand For Real Action." Media Lens (September 30, 2019)

Crum, Travis. Marchers scale Blair Mountain: Protesters rally at Labor's 'Gettysburg,' vow mountaintop-removal fight." West Virginia Gazette-Mail (June 11, 2011)

Cunningham-Cook, Matthew. "Corporate Greed and Deregulation Fuel Threat of More Bomb Trains as East Palestine Demands Answers." Democracy Now (February 17, 2023) ["We look at the failures that led to the massive train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that blanketed the town with a toxic brew of spilled chemicals and gases, fouling the air, polluting waterways and killing thousands of fish and frogs. Residents are suffering ailments including respiratory distress, sore throats, burning eyes and rashes, all with unknown long-term consequences. Many say they do not trust officials who tell them it is safe to return to their homes. This catastrophe could have been prevented, had it not been for lax regulation and the outsized lobbying power of corporations like Norfolk Southern, says Matthew Cunningham-Cook, a researcher and writer at The Lever who is part of a team that is reporting on the disaster."]

Currie, Morgan. "Buried, Altered, Silenced: 4 Ways Government Climate Information Has Changed Since Trump Took Office." Desmog (March 27, 2018)

Curry, Marshall, Andrew Stepanian, and Will Potter. "“If a Tree Falls”: New Documentary on Daniel McGowan, Earth Liberation Front and Green Scare." Democracy Now (June 21, 2011)

Danticat, Edwidge, et al. "Climate Change & The End of Eden." Open Source (September 28, 2017)

Davis, Jack E. "The Bald Eagle Part One: The Improbable Journey of America's Bird." For the Ages (November 16, 2022) ["Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental historian Jack E. Davis delves into the story of America’s most famous bird: the bald eagle. In conversation with David M. Rubenstein, Davis explores the story of the bald eagle as a unique and efficient predator predating colonization, a national symbol omnipresent in American art, architecture, and archives, and a species twice pushed to the brink of extinction. This first of two episodes focuses on the natural habitat of the American eagle, its hunting and mating habits, and migratory patterns."]

Deans, Bob and Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk. "Native American Tribes Join to File Historic Lawsuit Against Trump Attack on Bears Ears National Monument." Democracy Now (December 5, 2017) ["Five Native American tribes have joined to file what they are calling an historic lawsuit against President Donald Trump, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and several other members of the administration. The move came just hours after Trump visited Utah Monday, where he announced his plan to open up protected federal lands to mining, logging, drilling and other forms of extraction. The plan calls for shrinking the 1.3 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument by more than 80 percent and splitting it into two separate areas. Trump would slash the state’s 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by 50 percent. Bears Ears National Monument was created in 2016 by then-President Barack Obama. President Bill Clinton created the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996. The national monuments were designated under the century-old Antiquities Act, a law meant to protect sacred sites, artifacts and historical objects. We speak with Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and former co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, and with Bob Deans, director of strategic engagement at the Natural Resources Defense Council."]

Demby, Gene, Kara Frame and Maria Paz Guttierez. "Housing Segregation is Everything." Code Switch (April 11, 2018) ["Housing segregation is in everything. But to understand the root of this issue, you have to look at the government-backed policies that created the housing disparities we see today. Gene Demby explains how these policies came to be, and what effect they've had on schools, health, family wealth and policing."]

Denton, Stacy. "After the Farm Crisis: The Critique of Neoliberal Society in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" Film Criticism 42.1 (March 2018) ["Neoliberalism restructured both national and local economies, including rural areas in the Midwest that were simultaneously hard-hit by the 1980s Farm Crisis. The struggle for the people who inhabit these small communities, along with the opportunity to reimagine an alternative, sets the stage for Lasse Hallström's What's Eating Gilbert Grape?"]

Dobb, Edwin. "Nothing But Gifts: Finding a Home in a World Gone Awry." Harper's (October 2018) ["One of the discouraging developments of recent times is that qualities often associated with homelessness—paranoia, a sense of grievance, defensive solitude—are increasingly influential factors in the day-to-day affairs of the wealthiest nation on earth. Instead of acknowledging and reinforcing what we hold in common, a proposition that should be easier to accept in a context of plenty, too many of us succumb to fear and prejudice. From there it is a small step to the belief that solidarity is for suckers; that it is a suicidal illusion fostered by those who don’t understand, or won’t admit, that not everyone is equal, not everyone deserves the same consideration, not everyone belongs here (this neighborhood, this country, this world). Under such poisonous conditions, tyranny can flourish, often obscured by bankrupt slogans like “makers and takers,” which is of a piece with another worrisome trend in the United States—the conflation of democracy and commerce, liberty and acquisition, a situation in which, perversely, freedom has come to mean the conditions that allow the affluent to accumulate ever more wealth, while for the rest of us, first the suburban mall and now its always expanding digital equivalent have replaced the town hall as the primary domain for the exercise of citizenship. Against this backdrop, it’s no surprise that our success narrative now culminates in endorsement deals and advertisement appearances, including by artists and writers; that serving as a marketing prop has become synonymous with having made it. ... My prayer for my grandchildren, then, is that they defy their circumstances rather than despair of them; that they possess the audacity, moral imagination, and tough-minded humor to make this heartbreaking, too-often-alien world their own, thereby transforming it into a place where they always feel at home if not always at peace, always enjoying access to existential solidarity and the solace and inspiration it provides, always acting in the knowledge that the good that graces their lives remains so only if they keep it in play, and this despite the anguish and disappointment that surely await them, along with every other child of the twenty-first century."]

Dorr, Gary, et al. "Cowboy Indian Alliance Protests Keystone XL Pipeline in D.C. After Latest Obama Admin Delay." Democracy Now (April 28, 2014) ["Thousands of people rallied in Washington, D.C., on Saturday calling on President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. The protest was organized by the Cowboy Indian Alliance, a group of ranchers, farmers and tribal communities from along the pipeline route who have set up the “Reject and Protect” encampment near the White House. The rally came a week after the Obama administration announced it had again delayed a decision on approval or rejection of the pipeline that would carry tar sands oil from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. To discuss the continued resistance to the pipeline, we are joined by three guests: Gary Dorr of the Nez Perce Nation, an organizer of the Reject and Protect encampment; Art Tanderup, a Nebraska farmer and Cowboy Indian Alliance member who took part in the protest; and Daryl Hannah, an actress and activist who has been arrested three times for protests against the Keystone XL."]

Duffy, Katherine E., et al. "The World’s Most Beautiful Bird Lives in Yellowstone National Park: Behold the Peregrine Falcon." Literary Hub (October 12, 2023) ["Evolution honed peregrine falcons to be unparalleled speed machines. They have long, pointed wings, enabling them to swoop and dive in flight at mind-boggling speeds as they pursue avian prey, from small birds to shorebirds to ducks, that they capture in midair. Their bodies are tightly cloaked in sleek feathers that contribute to their streamlined aerodynamic efficiency—no fluffy owl feathers on a peregrine. Their nasal openings have a post that baffles air so that peregrines can continue to breathe as they dive. Being struck by a diving peregrine often kills prey instantly, but if it does not, the peregrine inserts the upper part of its bill, with projections called tomial teeth, between the prey’s neck vertebrae. With a quick twist, the peregrine instantly severs the spinal cord of its prey. As it flies with prey held by tightly clenched feet, each toe ending in a sharp piercing talon, the peregrine might even eat on the wing."]

Dunn, Rob. "Home Alone, with 200,000 Friends." American Scholar (February 5, 2021) ["As we in the United States approach a full year of spending even more time than usual at home, and away from friends and family, we’re all a little bit lonely. But even though it might feel as if your immediate family and your pets are the only signs of life in your house—you’re not as alone as you might think. The modern American house is a wilderness: thousands of species of insects, bacteria, fungi, and plants lurk in our floorboards, on our counters, and inside our kitchen cabinets—not to mention the microbes that flavor our food itself. The trouble with wilderness, however, is that we always want to tame it. Cleaning, bleaching, sterilizing, and killing the organisms in our houses has had unintended—and dangerous—consequences for our health and the environment. Biologist Rob Dunn, a professor in the department of applied ecology at North Carolina State University, joins us to impart some advice about how to graciously welcome these unbidden guests into our homes."]

Dyer, Gwynne. "Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats." Worldview (June 10, 2010)

Earle, Sylvia. "Her Deepness." On Being (June 7, 2012)

Ecott, Tim. "Sigmundur and the Golden Ring." New Books in Historical Fiction (November 3, 2024) ["Tim Ecott, who is well-known as a journalist and writer, has, in his last several books, turned his attention to the history and culture of the Faroe Islands. High in the North Atlantic, half-way between Scotland and Iceland, the islands' inhabitants remain closely connected to the Viking settlers who established communities on Faroe over one thousand years ago. Tim's most recent book, Sigmundur and the Golden Ring (Sprotin, 2024), offers a compelling re-telling of the Faroese saga. It's a complex Viking revenge tragedy: two teenage cousins are wronged by an older distant relative; they set out to right those wrongs; but their success begs the question of who the story's hero might be. "]

"Eight Ways Monsanto Fails at Sustainable Agriculture." Union of Concerned Scientists (February 10, 2012)

Ekwurzel, Brenda."Climate Scientist: California Wildfires Are Faster, Stronger, Deadlier & Will Continue to Intensify." Democracy Now (August 2, 2018) ["In California, tens of thousands of residents have been forced to evacuate as deadly wildfires continue to rage across the state. The worst wildfire, the Carr Fire, has engulfed more than 100,000 acres and destroyed more than a thousand homes in and around Redding, California, making it the sixth most destructive fire in the state’s history. Authorities said Wednesday that 16 of the largest wildfires burning in California have scorched 320,000 acres—an area larger than Los Angeles. Eight people have died. Governor Jerry Brown called the growing intensity and frequency of California wildfires the state’s “new normal” this week. More fires continue to consume parts of Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Arizona, along with recent blazes across the globe in Greece, Canada and the Arctic Circle. We speak with Brenda Ekwurzel, senior climate scientist and director of climate science for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists."]

Elliot, Rebecca, et al. "Can We Afford Our Consumer Society?" LSE IQ #21 (December 2018)
["Economic growth has helped millions out of poverty. The jobs it creates mean rising incomes and consumers who buy more. This drives further growth and higher living standards, including better health and education. Yet WWF, the World Wildlife Fund, has recently warned that exploding human consumption is the driving force behind unprecedented planetary change, through increased demand for energy, land and water. Plastics and microplastics are filling our oceans and rivers and entering the food chain. The production of goods and services for household use is the most important cause of greenhouse gas emissions. The textile industry is responsible for depleting and polluting water resources and committing human rights abuses against its workers. It is also a major source of greenhouse gases, and three fifths of all clothing produced ends up in incinerators or landfills within a year of being made."]

The End of Poverty (USA: Philippe Diaz, 2008: 106 mins)

Engh, Catherine. "Assembling Climate Change Pedagogies for the Humanities." Center for the Humanities (May 28, 2019) 

Estes, Jim. "Kelp Worlds: Trophic Cascadia (Part 1)." Future Ecologies 2.7 (February 13, 2020) ["How did nuclear testing accidentally reshape our understanding of food webs and marine ecology? Why did sea otters bounce back from near-extinction on some parts of the Pacific coast, but are still absent in others? We speak with Dr. Jim Estes (a godfather of the field) about a series of serendipitous events that led to the re-writing of textbook ecology."]

Estes, Nick. "Standing Rock and the History of Indigenous Resistance in America." BackStory (September 6, 2019) ["In 2016, protests broke out at Standing Rock – a reservation in North and South Dakota – to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Indigenous peoples and other activists opposed the pipeline because they believed it violated sacred sites and threatened to contaminate the Missouri River, a major source of drinking water in the region. Taking social media by storm, the #noDAPL movement quickly became an international headline. On this episode, Nathan sits down with historian and activist Nick Estes to talk about his experience at Standing Rock, the history of Indigenous resistance, and the current state of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Estes’ new book is called Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance."]

Farrell, Maria and Robin Berjon. "We Need to Rewild the Internet."  NOEMA (April 16, 2024)  ["The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists."]

Fisher, Mark. "Non-film: Steve McQueen’s Shame." Film Quarterly (January 2012)

Fithian, Lisa. " Shut It Down: Veteran Organizer Lisa Fithian Offers a Guide to Resistance in Era of Climate Crisis." Democracy Now (September 6, 2019) ["Lisa Fithian is a longtime organizer and nonviolent direct action trainer since the 1970s. She has shut down the CIA. She has occupied Wall Street, disrupted the World Trade Organization and stood her ground in Tahrir Square. She has walked in solidarity with the tribal leaders at Standing Rock and defended communities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. She joined us at the Democracy Now! studio to talk about her new book, which was published this week, titled “Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance.” Fithian is currently on a book tour and doing a new workshop called “Escalating Resistance: Mass Rebellion Training.”" Part Two: “Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance”: Lisa Fithian Reflects on Decades of Protest."]

Flores, Fernando, et al. "A special one-hour program on the South Central Farm in Los Angeles – lessons in human rights, immigrant rights, ecological sustainability, and activism." Uprising Radio (June 16, 2006)

Ford, Matt. "A Dictator's Guide to Urban Design." The Atlantic (February 21, 2014)

Foreman, Dave. "On the History and Definition of Rewilding." Rewilding #1 (September 8, 2018)

Foster, John Bellamy, interviewed by C.J. Polychroniou. "Climate change is the product of how capitalism 'values' nature." Monthly Review (November 18, 2018) ["Climate change is the greatest existential crisis facing humanity today. Capitalist industrialization has led us to the edge of the precipice, and avoiding the end of civilization as we know it may require the development of a view in direct opposition to the way in which capitalism “values” nature, according to John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the socialist magazine Monthly Review."]

Franks, Becca, et al. "The Case Against Octopus Farming." Issues in Science and Technology 35.2 (Winter 2019)  ["... factory farming is a key part of a highly industrialized food system that is both cruel to individual animals and environmentally unsustainable. Despite efforts of animal welfare and environmental groups to redress these problems, they are deeply embedded in the global food systems’ production technologies, corporate profits, and patterns of consumer demand. Decoupling the ethical and environmental consequences of food production from this system is a daunting challenge, and it should lead us to ask whether we want to repeat mistakes already made with terrestrial animals with aquatic animals, especially octopus."]

Gerard, Lydia, Sharon Lavigne and Pam Spees. "Combating Corporate Contamination in Cancer Alley." The Activist Files #14 (May 9, 2019) ["Senior Staff Attorney Pam Spees talks with Lydia Gerard and Sharon Lavigne, two of the brave Women of Cancer Alley leading the resistance to the toxic petrochemical industry in Louisiana. Cancer Alley is an 85-mile stretch of land with a high concentration of petrochemical companies. It also is populated by primarily Black communities with high rates of health problems, including respiratory problems, the highest risk of cancer in the country, and even unexplained health problems. Both women share their personal stories--the difficulties Sharon's grandchildren have had breathing, Lydia's loss of her husband to kidney cancer--and the way those experiences fueled their fight in the face of indifferent corporations and lackluster government action. Later this month, many of those involved in this struggle will participate in a March for Justice, demanding government action--including the reduction of emissions, a moratorium on new plants, and the closer of certain existing plants. Give the episode a listen, and spread the word about this important fight for racial and environmental justice."]

Gero, Shane, et al. "Listening to Whales." To the Best of Our Knowledge (August 24, 2024) ["What can we learn from whales – and whales from us? Technology like AI is fueling new scientific breakthroughs in whale communication that can help us better understand the natural world. And, there’s an international effort to give whales a voice by granting them personhood."]

Gies, Erica. "Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge (University of Chicago Press, 2022)." New Books in Environmental Studies (July 29, 2022) ["Trouble with water – increasingly frequent, extreme floods and droughts – is one of the first obvious signs of climate change. Meanwhile, urban sprawl, industrial agriculture and engineered water infrastructure are making things worse. As our control attempts fail, we are forced to recognize an eternal truth: sooner or later, water always wins. In Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge (U Chicago Press, 2022), award-winning science journalist Erica Gies follows water 'detectives' as they search for clues to water's past and present. Their tools: cutting-edge science and research into historical ecology, animal life, and earlier human practices. Their discoveries: a deeper understanding of what water wants and how accommodating nature can protect us and other species.
Modern civilizations tend to speed water away. We have forgotten that it must flex with the rhythms of the earth, and that only collaboration with nature will allow us to forge a more resilient future."]

Gil, Rahuldeep. "From the Frontlines of a Civilizational Crisis." BLARB (November 14, 2018) ["Maybe the statistics will still show that Thousand Oaks is one of the safest communities in the United States. But now there can be no complacency in such safety. We, as a country, have to stop electing leaders who are making the world ever more dangerous for all young people. We have to support policies that ensure that humanity sees a twenty-second century. We have to support leaders who understand the urgency of sharing solidarity across lines of difference, and not those who give ammunition to racists, bigots, and murderers. This is a global, civilizational crisis. As an educator, and as a parent, I implore you. Hoping and praying is not enough, we have to act for change."]

Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. "Ruth Wilson Gilmore with Rachel Kushner." Lannan Podcasts (April 17, 2019) ["Ruth Wilson Gilmore is director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics and a professor of geography at the City University of New York. She is most famous for arguing that the movement for abolition, with its proud history of challenging slavery, should be applied today to the abolition of prisons. In an era when 2.3 million people are behind bars in the United States, she challenges us to think about whether it is ever necessary or productive to lock people in cages. She warns of the “nightmare made palatable by the terrifying numbers of prisoners and prisons produced by the last generation, while we were all, presumably, awake.” But her hope lies in the fact that “just as real was the growing grassroots activism against the expanded use of criminalization and cages as a catchall solution to social problems. In order to realize their dreams of justice in individual cases, the [freedom] riders decided, through struggle, debate, failure, and renewal, that they must seek general freedom for all from a system in which punishment has become as industrialized as making cars, clothes, or missiles, or growing cotton.” Gilmore wrote Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California(2007) and contributed to The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (2007). The American Sociological Society honored Gilmore with its Angela Davis Award for Public Scholarship in 2012. A tireless activist, she has co-founded many social justice organizations, including the California Prison Moratorium Project, Critical Resistance, and the Central California Environmental Justice Network."]

Glantz, Aaron and Vincent Hughes. "Modern-Day Redlining: Banks Face Probes for Refusing Home Loans for People of Color." Democracy Now (February 27, 2018) ["A shocking new investigation by Reveal and the Center for Investigative Reporting has uncovered evidence that African Americans and Latinos continue to be routinely denied conventional mortgage loans, even at rates far higher than their white counterparts, across the country. According to the piece, the homeownership gap between whites and African Americans is now wider than it was during the Jim Crow era. Reveal based its report on a review of 31 million mortgage records filed with the federal government in 2015 and 2016. The investigation found the redlining occurring across the country, including in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and San Antonio, Texas. Since its publication earlier this month, the report has sparked national outrage and, in some states, unusually swift political action. Pennsylvania’s attorney general and state treasurer have both launched investigations into redlining in Philadelphia. We speak to Pennsylvania state Senator Vincent Hughes and Aaron Glantz, senior reporter at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. His new investigation is headlined 'Kept out: How banks block people of color from homeownership.'"]

Global Issues: Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us All." [UK/USA: Anup Shah "Welcome to the global issues web site. This web site looks into global issues that affect everyone and aims to show how most issues are inter-related. There are over 550 articles on this site, mostly written by myself. The issues discussed range from trade, poverty and globalization, to human rights, geopolitics, the environment, and much more. Spread over these articles, there are over 7,000 links to external articles, web sites, reports and analysis to help provide credence to the arguments made on this web site."]

"Global Warming." History Commons (Ongoing Historical Timeline)

Goddess Remembered (Canada: Donna Read, 1989: 55 mins) ["This documentary is a salute to 35,000 years of the goddess-worshipping religions of the ancient past. The film features Merlin Stone, Carol Christ, Luisah Teish and Jean Bolen, all of whom link the loss of goddess-centric societies with today's environmental crisis. This is the first part of a 3-part series that includes The Burning Times and Full Circle."]

Goldenberg, Suzanne. "Climate change is clear and present danger, says landmark US report: National Climate Assessment, to be launched at White House on Tuesday, says effects of climate change are now being felt." The Guardian (May 4, 2014)

---. "Emails expose BP's attempts to control research into impact of Gulf oil spill." The Guardian (April 15, 2012)

Goodman, Amy, et al. "Rise for Climate: Tens of Thousands March in San Francisco Calling for Fossil-Free World." Democracy Now (September 10, 2018) ["Hundreds of thousands of protesters in more than 90 countries joined a worldwide day of protest demanding urgent action to address climate change Saturday. In San Francisco, up to 30,000 people took part in the Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice march. It is believed to be the largest climate march ever on the West Coast. The protest came just days before the start of the Global Climate Action Summit being organized by California Governor Jerry Brown. Democracy Now! was in the streets of San Francisco for the march."]

Greenberg, Joel. "A Feathered River Across the Sky." Radio West (April 24, 2014) ["This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon. Her species was native to North America, and in the 1800s the birds numbered in the billions. Their vast airborne flocks reportedly blotted out the sun and took days to pass overhead. But in just a few decades, they were gone. Naturalist Joel Greenberg has written a book about the passenger pigeon’s natural history and its speedy flight to extinction, and he joins us to examine what the bird’s demise reveals about our relationship to the natural world."]

Griffiths, David. "Queer Theory for Lichens." Undercurrents #19 (2015)  ["The symbiotic view of life suggests that we are not individuals, and that we have never been individuals. While the traditional view of organisms (including humans) is that they are self-contained, discrete, and autonomous individuals, scientific research is increasingly suggesting that this is misleading; the view of organisms as individuals is perhaps no longer viable. This is illustrated in the symbiotic bacterial ancestry of the mitochondria in “human” cells, as well as in the contemporary symbiotic relationships that are at work in the human gut microbiota. Eating, digesting and living are impossible without our symbiotic relationships. The brief natural cultural history of lichens that I have offered illustrates these points and demonstrates that if life and nature are to be found anywhere, it is not autonomous individuals but the constitutive comminglings, involvements, and interconnected relationships that make up the ecological mesh."]

Hall, Suzanne, et al. "Is the Gentrification of Our Global Cities Inevitable?" LSE IQ #19 (October 2018) ["In 1964 the sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term ‘gentrification’ to describe the process of London’s working class neighbourhoods being taken over by the middle classes. Modest two-up two down terrace houses were bought cheap, done up and made into expensive residences. Once grand Victorian houses that had fallen on hard times and become lodging houses or homes to multiple families, were restored once again and sub-divided into luxury flats. Soon the working class residents had been squeezed out of the neighbourhood and its character changed completely. Fifty years on and this process continues apace in London and many other cities."]

Haney, Bill and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. "The Fight over Coal Mining is a “Fight About Democracy”: New Documentary with Robert Kennedy, Jr. Chronicles Campaign to Halt Mountaintop Removal." Democracy Now (May 23, 2011)

Hanhardt, Christina. "On Gay Neighborhoods and Violence." Who Makes Cents? (January 7, 2015) ["Christina Hanhardt discusses her book Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence. Today we’ll focus on how the history of quality of life policing connects to the history of gay neighborhood politics. By looking at the gay neighborhoods in San Francisco and New York City, Christina Hanhardt will also shed light on what focusing on real estate, housing, violence, and the politics of place have to do with the history of capitalism."]

Hasemeyer, David and Lisa Song. "Big Oil and Bad Air: Report Exposes Link Between Fracking and Toxic Air Emissions in Texas." Democracy Now (February 27, 2014)

Hedges, Chris. "American Decline: A Case for Optimism." The Laura Flanders Show (January 16, 2019) ["Soul Fire Farm’s Leah Penniman talks with Chris Hedges, author of America: The Farewell Tour, about environmental threats, societal breakdown, and how we might come back together as humans. Then, a glimpse of CAGED, a play written and conceived by Hedges’ writing students in a high-security prison in New Jersey."]

---. "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt." Law and Disorder Radio (July 30, 2012)

Herron, Christopher. "Labour in Real Time: Ben Russell Interview (Good Luck)." The Seventh Art (November 10, 2017) ["Ben Russell is an experimental filmmaker whose latest film, Good Luck (2017), explores the spaces and labour of a copper mine in Bor, Serbia and a smaller gold mine in Suriname. The Super 16mm shot film had its North American premiere at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, where we talked to Ben about the making of the film."]

Heumann, Joseph K. and Robin L. Murray. "Mother! and the Cli-fi Conundrum." Jump Cut #58 (Spring 2018)

Hill, Sean Patrick. "The Good River: What Lurks Below the Ohio." LEO Weekly (October 17, 2018) ["The Ohio River is the most polluted river in the United States. Its name, among the Iroquois, means “Good River.” It is the source of my drinking water and my daughter’s bath water. It is also the habitat for countless lives that live beyond the threshold of our perception."]

Hinton, David. "An Ethics of Wild Mind." Emergence (April 30, 2024) ["How would our response to the ecological crisis be different if we understood that our own consciousness is as wild as the breathing Earth around us? In this conversation, poet, translator, and author David Hinton reaches back to a time when cultures were built around a reverence for the Earth and proposes that the sixth extinction we now face is rooted in philosophical assumptions about our separation from the living world. Urging us to reweave mind and landscape, he offers an ethics tempered by love and kinship as a way to navigate our era of disconnection."]

Hochschild, Arlie. "Shame and Pride in Appalachia." Converging Dialogues #583 (November 7, 2024) ["In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Arlie Hochschild about pride and shame in Appalachia. They discuss the political Right in Appalachia and framework of pride and shame, demographic makeup of the population in Appalachia, current challenges in Appalachia, and the emotions of pride, shame, and guilt. They talk about the appeal of the far Right, immigration and nationalism, liberals abandoning the working class, how we repair the politics divides, and many other topics. Arlie Hochschild is writer and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley, where she also earned her PhD. Her main interests have been on social relationships with politics, emotions, and culture. She is the author of numerous books, including Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, and the most recent, Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right."]

Hoke, Mateo. "Consider the Whale." San Diego Magazine (November 28, 2022) ["Whale watching off the coast of San Diego in pursuit of the lessons these ocean giants might teach us about ourselves and the world."]

Holland, Joshua. "Bumbling, Blame and Bankruptcy in Wake of West Virginia Chemical Spill." Moyers and Co. (January 24, 2014)

Hope, Mat. "Web of Power: Cambridge Analytica and the Climate Science Denial Network Lobbying for Brexit and Trump." Desmog (March 21, 2018)

Hopkins, Rob, et al. "The Psychology of Transition: Undoing Millennia of Social Control." Unwelcome Guests #597 (March 31, 2012)

Horn, Steve. "MSNBC's (GE's) Dylan Ratigan Show "Firewater?" Series: Natural Gas Industry-Media Complex Exposed." PR Watch

Hounsell, Steve. "Biodiversity Primer." Alternatives (November 24, 2010)

Houp, Wesley. "Abandoned Channels: Elkhorn to Lockport." North of Center (March 7, 2012)

---. "Life by Rheotaxis: A River Rat's Perspective North of Center (April 13, 2011)

Hurley, Amanda Kolson. "The Secret History of the Suburbs." City Lab (April 9, 2019) ["We all know the stereotypes: Suburbia is dull, conformist, and about “keeping up with the Joneses.” But what about the suburbs of utopians and renegades?"]

I Love Mountains Day 2011 (4 minute film: Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, 2011)

Into Eternity Making Contact (March 18, 2014) ["Our world is generating more and more nuclear waste, but have no permanent place to dispose of it. But the nation of Finland has a plan. They’re building an underground cave, to hold thousands of tones of nuclear waste, for at least 100 thousand years. On this edition, we hear excerpts of the film, “Into Eternity”, which explores the logistical and philosophical quandaries around the construction of something that if it works, might very well outlast the entire human race."]

Jamail, Dahr. "The Military Wants to Dictate Private Land Use -- and Washington State Might Let It." TruthOut (January 24, 2018)

Jasechko, Scott, et al. "Rapid groundwater decline and some cases of recovery in aquifers globally." Nature (January 2024) ["Groundwater resources are vital to ecosystems and livelihoods. Excessive groundwater withdrawals can cause groundwater levels to decline, resulting in seawater intrusion, land subsidence, streamflow depletion and wells running dry. However, the global pace and prevalence of local groundwater declines are poorly constrained, because in situ groundwater levels have not been synthesized at the global scale. Here we analyse in situ groundwater-level trends for 170,000 monitoring wells and 1,693 aquifer systems in countries that encompass approximately 75% of global groundwater withdrawals. We show that rapid groundwater-level declines (>0.5 m year−1) are widespread in the twenty-first century, especially in dry regions with extensive croplands. Critically, we also show that groundwater-level declines have accelerated over the past four decades in 30% of the world’s regional aquifers. This widespread acceleration in groundwater-level deepening highlights an urgent need for more effective measures to address groundwater depletion. Our analysis also reveals specific cases in which depletion trends have reversed following policy changes, managed aquifer recharge and surface-water diversions, demonstrating the potential for depleted aquifer systems to recover."]

Jervey, Ben. "One Year Later, Deepwater Horizon by the Numbers." Good (April 20, 2011)

Johnson, Alex. "How to Queer Ecology: One Goose at a Time -- A lesson plan." Orion (March/April 2011)

Joseph, Harry, Anne Rolfes and Pamela Spees. "Critics of Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana Decry State & Company Surveillance of Protesters." Democracy Now (March 13, 2018) ["In Louisiana, newly disclosed documents reveal a state intelligence agency regularly spied on activists opposing construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which would carry nearly a half-million barrels of oil per day across Louisiana’s wetlands. The documents show the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness regularly drafted intelligence memos on anti-pipeline activists, including a gathering of indigenous-led water protectors who’ve set up a protest encampment along the pipeline’s route. Other newly revealed documents show close coordination between Louisiana regulators and the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners. This comes just one week after a U.S. district judge in Baton Rouge ordered a temporary injunction against construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline in order to “prevent further irreparable harm” to the region’s delicate ecosystems, while court challenges proceed. For more, we speak with Pastor Harry Joseph of the Mount Triumph Baptist Church. We also speak with Pamela Spees of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Anne Rolfes, founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade."]

Kahn, Brian. "It's Kids vs. the World in a Landmark Climate Complaint." Gizmodo (September 23, 2019)

Kalven, Jamie. "Chicago Faces a Defining Moment in Police Reform and Civil Order." The Intercept (August 15, 2018) ["Chicago has a unique opportunity to confront fundamental issues of racial justice as it debates a consent decree on police reform."]

"Keeping Tabs on Monsanto." You Grow Girl (January 21, 2011)

Kelley, Ariel and Leah Stokes. "Fueled by Climate Change, California’s Raging Wildfires Are Threatening Vulnerable Communities First." Democracy Now (October 29, 2019) ["California is bracing for a day of strong winds as climate change-fueled wildfires continue to burn from Los Angeles to north of the Bay Area. After a chaotic weekend of mass evacuations and blackouts that left millions in the dark, firefighters in Sonoma, California, made headway Monday, containing 15% of the massive Kincade fire that has burned nearly 75,000 acres. But as high winds pick up again today, firefighters still face an uphill battle in combating the at least 10 blazes raging across the state, including the growing Getty fire, which erupted in one of Los Angeles’s most opulent communities Monday. Fires in California are typical this time of year, but the length and severity of the state’s fire season has grown due to climate change. We speak with Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and researcher on climate and energy politics. We also speak with Ariel Kelley, the CEO of Corazón Healdsburg, a bilingual family resource center based in Northern Sonoma County."]

Kitchell, Mark. "Earth Day Special: Fierce Green Fire Documentary Explores Environmental Movement’s Global Rise." Democracy Now (April 22, 2014)

Klein, Naomi. "As New York City Declares War On the Oil Industry, the Politically Impossible Suddenly Seems Possible." The Intercept (January 11, 2018)

---. "The Game-Changing Promise of a Green New Deal." The Intercept (November 27, 2018)  ["If you are part of the economy’s winning class and funded by even bigger winners, as so many politicians are, then your attempts to craft climate legislation will likely be guided by the idea that change should be as minimal and unchallenging to the status quo as possible. After all, the status quo is working just fine for you and your donors. Leaders who are rooted in communities that are being egregiously failed by the current system, on the other hand, are liberated to take a very different approach. Their climate policies can embrace deep and systemic change — including the need for massive investments in public transit, affordable housing, and health care — because that kind of change is precisely what their bases need to thrive. As climate justice organizations have been arguing for many years now, when the people with the most to gain lead the movement, they fight to win."]

---. "“My Fear is that Climate Change is the Biggest Crisis of All”: Naomi Klein Warns Global Warming Could Be Exploited by Capitalism and Militarism." Democracy Now (March 9, 2011)

Klein, Naomi, et al. "Hurricane Maria laid bare the colonialism and capitalism in Puerto Rico ​." Best of the Left #1190 (June 15, 2018) ["Today we take a look at the high toll Puerto Rico is paying, in both money and lives, for the triple disasters of colonialism, Hurricane Maria and disaster capitalism."]

Kofler, Natalie. "What role should humans play in editing nature?" When We Talk About Animals (November 19, 2018) ["A few years ago, our guest, molecular biologist Dr. Natalie Kofler, was completing her postdoctoral training at Yale University. She was actively using CRISPR gene-editing techniques to study the mammalian cardiovascular system to try to develop better tools to treat human vascular diseases. While attending talks on conservation biology at the Yale School of Forestry, she started to wonder: Could the invasive emerald ash borer be genetically edited with these same techniques to save American ash trees? Could coral reefs be genetically edited to be more resilient to warming waters? Should humans develop and use these technologies to change nature? If so, how? And who gets to decide? Today Dr. Kofler is a leading thinker on these questions and an important voice on the potential environmental applications of gene-editing technologies — technologies that have the extraordinary potential to end malaria or to suppress Lyme disease, but also to change or delete entire species and to transform life in previously unimaginable ways. To think clearly about their use, she says, forces us to rethink who we are, to define what is important to us, and to reconsider how far our human knowledge of nature’s interconnectedness extends."]

Korten, David. "Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth." Needs No Introduction (March 10, 2011)

Kurlansky, Mark. "On His Most Important Environmental Writing Yet." The Literary Life (April 10, 2020) ["On this episode, Mark Kurlansky talks with Mitchell about his latest book, Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of Their Common Fate and the impact of climate change on food supplies and sea life. Kurlansky is currently social distancing with his family in New York City."]

Lakoff, George. "How to Use the Language of “Systemic Causation” To Talk About Climate Change." Uprising Radio (November 1, 2012)

Landis, Joshua and Gayle McLaughlin. "Beating City Hall / What's Really Going On In Syria." Ralph Nader Radio Hour (April 21, 2018) ["Ralph welcomes independent candidate for California Lieutenant Governor, Gayle McLaughlin, who talks about how she and small group of progressive reformers turned around the city of Richmond, California. And one of the foremost experts on the Middle East, Professor Joshua Landis, clues us in to what exactly is going on in Syria, and what we should do about it."]

Landman, Anne. "What Happened to Media Coverage of Fukushima?" Common Dreams (June 24, 2011)

Lebreton, L., et al. "Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic." Nature (March 22, 2018)

Leonard, Annie. "The Story of Cap and Trade." (Posted on Youtube: March 15, 2012)

Leonard, Christopher. "'Kochland': : How David Koch Helped Build an Empire to Shape U.S. Politics & Thwart Climate Action." Democracy Now (August 27, 2019) ["Billionaire conservative donor David Koch died Friday at the age of 79 from prostate cancer. David Koch — who was worth some $42 billion — and his brother Charles poured massive amounts of money into funding climate change denial through conservative think tanks and politicians. The Koch brothers founded the political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity in 2004, which is credited with turning the “tea party” into a full-fledged political movement. They also backed “right-to-work” efforts, which aim to weaken labor rights and quash union membership. The brothers made their fortune running Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in the United States. We speak with the business journalist Christopher Leonard, who just last week published a major new book examining the business dealings of the Koch brothers. It’s titled “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.”"]

Leopold, Aldo. "Thinking Like a Mountain." (Originally published in Sand County Almanac in 1949: posted on Eco-Action)

Lerner, Sharon. "How the Media Launders Fossil Fuel Industry Propaganda Through Branded Content." The Intercept (April 3, 2019)

Lindsay, Greg, et al. "The Future of Cities in the Anthropocene." Open Source (October 5, 2017)

Loewinger, Micah, et al. "Swedish Cowboys & Syrian Refugees." On the Media (November 10, 2017) ["In the middle of nowhere southern Sweden, there’s a popular Wild West theme park called High Chaparral, where Scandinavian tourists relive the action of the old American cowboy films. For over a year, the park served another function: a refugee camp for some 500 of the 163,000 migrants – many from Syria – who applied for asylum in Sweden in 2015. That Syrians would find refuge here actually jibes with High Chaparral’s interpretation of the Old West, which emphasizes the new life that the frontier offered to beleaguered pioneers, and the community that was required to survive there. Americans tend to ignore this history, instead lionizing the gritty traits of the cowboy, the cultural basis for our obsession with rugged individualism. OTM producer Micah Loewinger traveled to High Chaparral last summer, where he met Abood Alghzzawi, a Syrian asylum-seeker, who embarked on an incredible journey to the Wild West of Sweden. This piece explores how politicians seized the cowboy image to further their agendas, and how questioning the narrative of the Old West might influence immigration policy."]

Lovelock, James. "How to Think About Science (Part 6)." Ideas (February 13, 2015) ["Forty-years ago British scientist James Lovelock put forward the first elements of what he would come to call the Gaia theory. Named for the ancient Greek goddess of the earth, it held that the earth as a whole functions as a self-regulating system. At first many biologists scoffed. Today, Lovelock's ideas are more widely accepted, even in circles where he was initially scorned. But even as he has been winning scientific honours, James Lovelock has been growing more pessimistic about the prospects for contemporary civilization. In this episode David Cayley presents a profile of James Lovelock. It tells the story of a career in science that began a long time ago."]

Lowe, Lezlie, et al. "Dignity down the toilet: Public bathrooms as a human right." Ideas (March 6, 2019) ["Public bathrooms are an amenity we all need. Yet few of us talk about them openly, and cities often get them wrong. So how should governments and businesses provide for this most basic bodily need – and what does it mean for citizens when they have no place to go? Contributor Lezlie Lowe flushes out the answers on a road trip, with many bathroom breaks, across North America."]

Lydon, Christopher. "Noam Chomsky: Neoliberalism is Destroying Our Democracy." The Nation (June 2, 2017)

Marx, Paris. "Data Vampires: Sacrificing for AI." Tech Won't Save Us (October 21, 2024) ["Sam Altman is clear: he’s ready to sacrifice anything for his AI fantasies. But are we? We dig into why generative AI has such extreme energy demands and how major tech companies are trying to rewrite climate accounting rules to cover how much their emissions are rising. AI isn’t just churning out visual slop; it’s also being used to transform how our society works and further reduce people’s power over their lives. It’s a disaster any way you look at it. This is episode 3 of Data Vampires, a special four-part series from Tech Won’t Save Us."]

Massey, Jonathan and Brett Snyder. "Occupying Wall Street: Places and Spaces of Political Action." Places (September 2012) ["What is the layout of this place? What are its codes and protocols? Who owns it? How does its design condition opportunities for individual and collective action? Looking closely at these questions, we learn something about the possibilities for public life and political action created at the intersection of urban places and online spaces."]

Maxwell, Richard. "Greening the Media." Team Human #2 (January 2016) ["Playing for Team Human today is Professor Richard Maxwell. Richard Maxwell is a political economist of media. His research begins at the intersection of politics and economics to analyze the global media, their social and cultural impact, and the policies that regulate their reach and operations. Richard has published on a wide array of media topics. Recent work includes The Routledge Companion to Labor and Media (Editor) Media and the Ecological Crisis (co-editor) and Greening the Media with Toby Miller. In this episode of Team Human, Professor Maxwell provides an eye opening account of the environmental damage caused by media technology, the myth of a “Post Industrial” society, and what we must do create a world sustainable for people."]

Mayer, Danny. "Let Them Eat Art!: The 21c public/private partnership." North of Center (December 5, 2012)

---. "Northside Gentrification." (Posted on Youtube: December 18, 2017)

Mayer, Jane. "Dark Money and the Rise of Conservative Orthodoxy." On the Media (May 31, 2019) ["William Happer, the man tapped to head Trump’s new climate review panel, is not a climate scientist. And yet, in recent years, William Happer has made a mission of attacking climate science, including at events hosted by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. Heritage has long worked to redirect public sentiment and policy-making away from addressing climate change and towards deregulation — which is itself part of an even bigger decades-long goal: the propagation of a conservative ideology that preserves capital for rich people. Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, walks Bob through the history of the modern conservative intellectual framework."]

Mazur, Laurie, et al. "Population Control or Population Justice?" Making Contact (June 19, 2012)

McKibben, Bill. "Falter: In New Book, Bill McKibben Asks If the Human Game Has Begun to Play Itself Out." Democracy Now (April 15, 2019) ["Thousands are taking to the streets in London today to demand radical action to combat the climate crisis. Protesters with the group Extinction Rebellion have set up encampments and roadblocks across Central London and say they’ll stay in the streets for at least a week. It’s just the beginning of a series of global actions that will unfold in the coming days, as activists around the world raise the alarm about government inaction in the face of the growing climate catastrophe. The London protests come just days after schoolchildren around the globe left school again on Friday for the weekly “strike for climate” and as the push for the Green New Deal continues to build momentum in the United States. The deal—backed by Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey—seeks to transform the U.S. economy through funding renewable energy while ending U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. We speak with climate activist and journalist Bill McKibben, who has been on the front lines of the fight to save the planet for decades. Thirty years ago, he wrote “The End of Nature,” the first book about climate change for a general audience. He’s just published a new book titled Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?" Part two: "Bill McKibben: Green New Deal Is a Chance to 'Remake Not Just a Broken Planet, But a Broken Society.'" and Part three: "Climate Change, Artificial Intelligence & Genetic Engineering Threaten to Destroy Humanity."]

Merchant, Brian. "93 Harvard Faculty Members Call on the University to Divest from Fossil Fuels." Motherboard (April 10, 2014)

---. "A Drone's Eye View of the Latest Oil Train Explosion." Motherboard (May 1, 2014)

Merchants of Doubt (USA: Kim Roberts and Robert Kenner, 2014: 93 mins) ["Merchants of Doubt looks at the well established Public Relations tactic of saturating the media with shills who present themselves as independent scientific authorities on issues in order to cast doubt in the public mind. The film looks at how this tactic, that was originally developed by the tobacco industry to obfuscate the health risks of smoking, has since come to cloud other issues such as the pervasiveness of toxic chemicals, flame retardants, asbestos, certain pharmaceutical drugs and now, climate change. Using the icon of a magician, Merchants of Doubt explores the analogy between these tactics and the methods used by magicians to distract their audiences from observing how illusions are performed. For example, with the tobacco industry, the shills successfully delayed government regulation until long after the health risks from smoking was unequivocally proven. Likewise with manufacturers of flame retardants, who worked to protect their sales after the toxic effects and pervasiveness of the chemicals were discovered. This is all made analogous to the ongoing use of these very same tactics to forestall governmental action in regards to global climate change today."]

Miller, Andrew. "'Our House Is On Fire': Brazil Faces Global Outrage as Massive Fires Spread in Amazon Rainforest." Democracy Now (August 23, 2019) ["The United Nations is calling for the protection of the Amazon amid fears that thousands of fires raging across Brazil and some parts of Bolivia are rapidly destroying the world’s largest rainforest and paving the way for a climate catastrophe. The fires have spread a vast plume of smoke across South America and the Atlantic Ocean that’s visible from space. They’re unprecedented in recorded history, and environmentalists say most of the fires were deliberately set by illegal miners and cattle ranchers. Indigenous people in Brazil have accused far-right President Jair Bolsonaro of encouraging the destruction. Bolsonaro has worked to deregulate and open up the Amazon for agribusiness, logging and mining since he came into office in January. We speak with Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch."]

Miller, Daegan. "Toward a Useful Ignorance: From Connection to Coexistence." The Point #18 (Winter 2019) [Powerful philosophical/environmental/literary/nemophilist meditation ... Check out the link to the extensive bibliography linked at the end of the essay.]

Miller, Daniel. "Is Disney Paying Its Share in Anaheim?: The Money Battle Outside the Happiest Place on Earth." The Los Angeles Times (September 24, 2017) [Bob Garfield reports on Disney's unsuccessful retaliation against The Los Angeles Times for this article in "Who Won the Disney Boycott."]

Miller, Todd. "The Border Industrial Complex." Against the Grain (October 4, 2017) ["In the wake of the devastation of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, and while wildfires continue to rage across the West, it would seem like the perils of global warming are self-evident. And in fact, there’s one part of the U.S. government that, unlike President Trump, sees climate change as an undeniable danger: the military and Homeland Security. But not surprisingly, as journalist Todd Miller illustrates, their solution to the dislocations of climate change is a militarized one, imperiling all of us."]

Mirsky, Elizabeth. "The Dormant Killer: Plastic’s Dirty Little Secret." Dialogic (April 18, 2012)

Mishan, Ligaya. "Frogs are Disappearing. What Does That Mean?"The New York Times (October 18, 2018) ["For ages, they have been symbols in human culture — of fertility, gastronomy and now the alt-right movement. But these noble amphibians are declining in numbers."]

Mueller, Gavin. "Liberalism and Gentrification." Jacobin (September 26, 2014) ["Gentrification isn’t a cultural phenomenon — it’s a class offensive by powerful capitalists."]

Needham, Andrew. "On Electricity and the Southwest." Who Makes Cents? (November 3, 2014) ["
Andrew Needham discusses his new book, Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest. Power Lines shows that we can't think of the modern southwest without the energy that makes such places possible. Through this, he knits together a metropolitan geography that connects Phoenix with the places where it got its electricity--most prominently, coal from the Navajo Nation."]

Nestle, Marion. "Food and Politics." Conversations with History (March 20, 2017) ["Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Marion Nestle Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition at New York University. Professor Nestle reflects on the evolution of her thinking on the interplay between nutrition studies and the politics of food. She discusses the environment of the food industry emphasizing its dilemma of producing too much food in an environment in which profits are paramount and the competition with other food producers is intense. She analyzes the arsenal of tools at its service—advertising and lobbying and talks about the role of food activism in creating a structure of choice in which health, the environment and social justice are determining factors in what is produced and what we eat. Finally, she identifies the role of government in entrenching the status quo and the possibilities of it assuming a different kind of role. Finally, she offers advice to students preparing for the future."]

Ng, Alan. "Rodents of Unusual Size." Film Threat (September 12, 2018)

Olsson, Tore C. "What Red Dead Redemption II Reveals About Our Myths of the American West." Literary Hub (August 28, 2024) ["This near-universal decision to foreground the game’s western-ness was not inevitable. Of the ninety-six main story missions in Red Dead Redemption II (by my count), only a thin majority of fifty-one take place in a western setting, while forty-five are set in the Deep South, Appalachia, or the Caribbean. Why then is the game almost exclusively classified as a western? It is due to the simple fact that in American popular culture, there are no established genres called “southerns,” “Appalachians,” or “Caribbeans.” But for more than a century, there have been a jaw-dropping preponderance of “western” films, TV series, comics, novels, and, of course, games. Both the producers and reviewers of Rockstar’s game knew that of all the regions it showcases, only one is a deep-rooted genre and a national obsession."]

Peet, Richard. "Finance Capital." Unwelcome Guests (September 28, 2012)

Pinkerton, Nick. "Leviathan: Sea lives meet amphibious cameras meet a hulking, devastating war machine: welcome to a documentary like nothing you’ve seen (or felt)." Sight and Sound (December 6, 2013)

Popova, Maria and Sandra Steingraber. "Silent Spring, 60 Years Later." Open Source (December 1, 2022) ["How’s to rescue the Earth from us people? Rachel Carson’s way – 60 years ago – was to write a book, and call it Silent Spring. She’d been a shy but defiant biologist in government service. Her book had science behind it, and the rhythm of poetry all through it: one woman’s outcry—as she herself was dying of cancer—against pesticides, most notoriously DDT, what she called “the chemical barrage” being “hurled against the fabric of life.” She was hurling her prose at not just DDT but Dupont, Monsanto, the big business of agriculture, and the slick ad slogan: “better living through chemistry.” Silent Spring became a historic bestseller and a rallying cry for the twentieth century. It’s an unmet challenge for the twenty-first. A troubled world is tuning in on Rachel Carson again, for lots of good reasons, and so are we. She was a hard scientist of the environment who could speak bluntly—about her masterpiece Silent Spring, for example: she called it the “poison book,” or sometimes “Man Against the Earth.” She was a common-sense crusader who won sweeping victories. She wrote high-flying prose about oceans before she’d seen one, and about the love of her life, as time was running out. Her opening chapters of Silent Spring can sound today, it is said, like “God calling the world into being” back in Creation time."]

Potter, Will. "From Tim DeChristopher to Tar Sands Protests, the Environmental Movement Steps Up Civil Disobedience." Green is the New Red (September 2, 2011)

---. "Indiana Bill Would Make It Illegal to Expose Factory Farms, Clearcutting and Fracking." Green is the New Red (April 2, 2013)

---. "What is the "Green Scare." Green is the New Red (2011)


Powers, Richard. "Richard Powers with Tayari Jones." Lannan Podcasts (February 27, 2019) ["Richard Powers is the author of 12 novels. These works employ multiple narrative frames to explore connections among disciplines as disparate as photography, artificial intelligence, musical composition, genomics, game theory, virtual reality, race, business, and ecology. He has said, “Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual condition of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtler than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery.” His novels include Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance (1985), inspired by German photographer August Sander’s 1914 image of the same title; The Gold Bug Variations (1991), a double love story of two young couples separated by a distance of 25 years; and The Echo Maker(2007), whose main character, Mark, suffers a traumatic brain injury in a car accident and becomes convinced that the woman who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister Karin is actually an imposter. His most recent book, The Overstory (2018), is a tale of activism and resistance, about the secret language of trees and the people they bring together to save the last few remaining acres of virgin forest. In the New York Times Book Review, author Barbara Kingsolver called it “monumental… The Overstory accomplishes what few living writers from either camp, art or science, could attempt. Using the tools of the story, he pulls readers heart-first into a perspective so much longer-lived and more subtly developed than the human purview that we gain glimpses of a vast, primordial sensibility, while watching our own kind get whittled down to size… A gigantic fable of genuine truths.”"]

Prakash, Varsini, Sean Sweeney and Elizabeth Yeampierre. "Green New Deal, Yellow Vests." The Laura Flanders Show (January 30, 2019) ["Is the climate movement heating up? This week on the show, activists at all levels of the climate justice movement discuss how inter-generational, cross-coalition, and global organizing is taking control of the future without waiting for anyone. Can the U.S born Green New Deal learn from yellow-vested workers’ agitation in France? And who’s new Deal is it anyway? In this episode: Elizabeth Yeampierre, co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance; Sean Sweeney,Director of Cornell Global Labor Institute’s International Program for Labor, Climate & Environment; and Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement."]

Price, Wayne. "The Ecological Crisis is an Economic Crisis; the Economic Crisis is an Ecological Crisis." NEFAC (July 8, 2010)

Publius, Gaius. "Big Oil Seeks Billions from U.S. Government to Protect It From…Climate Change." Down With Tyranny (September 10, 2018)

---. "The Building Is Burning and All the World’s Babies Are In It — Using Force to Fight Climate Change." Naked Capitalism (November 28, 2017)

Rabinowitz, Alan. "A Voice for the Animals." On Being (October 13, 2011)

Reich, Robert, et al. "Fighting for a Green New Deal." Best of the Left #1242 (January 18, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the groundwork for a Green New Deal as it's being laid and the fight that is heating up around the policies, not just between political parties but between the separate wings (and generations) of the Democratic Party."]

Reicher, Dan W. "Forget Trump’s Border Wall. Let’s Build F.D.R.’s International Park." The New York Times (March 14, 2019) ["A joint U.S.-Mexico park along the Rio Grande would send a message of cooperation when the loudest words are of division."]

Reyes, Oscar and Tamra Gilbertson. "Carbon Trading: How it Works and Why it Fails." New Left Project (December 18, 2010)

Ribakoff, Sam. "Whose Utopia Gets to Be Built?: An Interview with Eric Nusbaum." Los Angeles Review of Books (February 6, 2020) ["The Story of Chavez Ravine, the hilltop neighborhood that was destroyed first with a promise of public housing projects, and then sold to build Dodger Stadium, is a well-known local civic shame. In his first book, Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between, Eric Nusbaum fills in the details of the story by closely tracing the stories of the characters involved; from the Aréchiga family, the last family to be evicted from their homes in Chavez Ravine, who only wanted to live in peace in their slice of utopia, to Frank Wilkinson, a Westside L.A. rich kid turned fervent public housing activist and politician who fought to build a public housing utopia in place of the communities of Chavez Ravine, to Walter O’Malley, the visionary New York owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who dreamed of building the perfect stadium of the future for his beloved game of baseball. Throughout the book, Nusbaum contextualizes the characters’ stories by illuminating the historical forces that put the tragedy into motion; from rising racist backlash against immigrants, to the Red Scare’s fight against leftists, to Los Angeles’s civic hysteria for the prestige of big sports games, and, of course, the history of baseball and how the Brooklyn Dodgers came to be the Los Angeles Dodgers. This chain of events still reverberates through the families involved."]

Rich, Nathaniel. "Authenticity All Right: Lee Friedlander’s New Orleans." New York Review of Books (May 16, 2014)

---. "Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change." The New York Times Magazine (August 1, 2018) ["This narrative by Nathaniel Rich is a work of history, addressing the 10-year period from 1979 to 1989: the decisive decade when humankind first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change. Complementing the text is a series of aerial photographs and videos, all shot over the past year by George Steinmetz. With support from the Pulitzer Center, this two-part article is based on 18 months of reporting and well over a hundred interviews. It tracks the efforts of a small group of American scientists, activists and politicians to raise the alarm and stave off catastrophe. It will come as a revelation to many readers — an agonizing revelation — to understand how thoroughly they grasped the problem and how close they came to solving it."]

Richardson, Chris. "Reimagining Livelihoods." This is Not a Pipe (December 26, 2019) ["Ethan Miller discusses his book Reimagining Livelihoods: Life Beyond Economy, Society, and Environment with Chris Richardson. Miller is an activist-scholar committed to co-creating resilient and liberatory forms of collective livelihood. He is an interdisciplinary lecturer teaching in politics, anthropology, and environmental studies at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, a board member of the Community Economies Institute, and has worked for the past twenty years with an array of grassroots organizing and popular education projects. Ethan lives at the Wild Mountain Cooperative (formerly JED Collective), a collective subsistence homestead, and works as an organizer for Land in Common community land trust, focused on land justice and cooperative forms of land tenure. His research and teaching focuses on solidarity economics and postcapitalist livelihood, intersections of economy and ecology and, most recently, land justice. His first book, Reimagining Livelihoods: Life Beyond Economy, Society, and Environment was released in March 2019 by the University of Minnesota Press."]

Roberts, David. "In Which CNN Devotes 7 Hours to Climate Change." On the Media (September 6, 2019) [MB -- I'm hoping this will be a tipping point in the way in which we conduct the investigation of candidate positions and, hopefully, a move away from the soundbite candidate forums of the two major parties. Fascinating example of the power of informed citizens asking pertinent questions of candidates who are allowed the time to unpack their positions ... as opposed to the media bobbleheads prompting pithy comments in the hope of a viral moment. Could you imagine the Twitter-in-Chief trying to survive a few of these 40 minute intense question-and-answer sessions?  "... CNN hosted a town hall forum with ten Democratic primary candidates discussing their policy proposals for addressing the climate crisis. The DNC declined requests from climate activists to host a themed debate for the issue, so CNN had the candidates on back-to-back for 7 hours as moderators took turns asking questions with an audience of activists, PhD students, and professors.  According to David Roberts, who covers energy and climate change for Vox, it was actually a meaningful event. The questions from audience members were personal, informed, and incisive and the candidates were surprisingly specific in their answers. Roberts tells Brooke what he learned from the town hall about different frames for discussing climate change, and how journalists are still catching up on the conversation."]

Roberts, Neil. "Race, Injustice, and Philosophy: An Interview with Tommie Shelby." Black Perspectives (January 2, 2018)

Robin, Marie-Monique. The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World's Food Supply. Trans. George Holoch. NY: The New Press, 2010.

Roshi, Susan Murphy. "Earth as Koan, Earth as Self." Emergence (April 1, 2024) ["What becomes possible when we open and orient our consciousness towards uncertainty, emptiness, and a sense of relationship with the world beyond the self? Australian writer and Zen teacher Susan Murphy Roshi immerses us in the tradition of Zen koan and the power of the not-knowing mind to open a treasury of resources for navigating the climate crisis."]

Roy, Arundhati. "Capitalism: A Ghost Story" We Are Many (March 26, 2014 at The New School in NYC) ["From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India’s gross domestic product. Capitalism: A Ghost Story examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India, and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism has subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation."]

Sainato, Michael. "'Coal is over': The miners rooting for the Green New Deal." The Guardian (August 12, 2019) ["Appalachia’s main industry is dying and some workers are looking to a new economic promise after Trump’s proves empty."]

Santiago-Blay, Jorge Alberto. "Down the Redbud Rabbit Hole." In Defense of Plants #413 (March 19, 2023) ["When it comes to plants, there are more unknowns than knowns, even for very familiar species. You never know where even seemingly simple questions can lead you. Such was the case for Dr. Jorge Alberto Santiago-Blay when he decided to ask a question about the beloved redbud tree (Cercis canadensis). What followed was multiple years of collaborative research projects aimed at understanding the life history of this species in more detail."]

Schulman, Sarah. "AIDs and Gentrification." Against the Grain (November 20, 2012)

Schyler, Krista. "Butterflies, Bison and the Border Wall." She Explores (2019)
["Conservation photographer Krista Schlyer describes the almost 2,000-mile border between the US and Mexico as a vibrant landscape teeming with life. Raising awareness for its biodiversity has become an integral part of her life’s work and is the focus of a new documentary film she directed, Ay Mariposa, which came out in May. We hear a lot about the border wall in the news, but we don’t often talk about the wildlife and landscape that its construction impacts.
Note: We want to emphasize that while there’s a lot of talk about flora and fauna in this episode, it’s not to discount the very human elements of the US/Mexico border – it’s simply to highlight what exists alongside it."]

Scialabba, George. "Back to the Land: Wendell Berry in the Path of Modernity." The Baffler (January 2020)

Scofield, Jerri-Lynn. "Plastic Watch: First Ocean Cleanup Array to Launch Tomorrow." Naked Capitalism (September 7, 2018)

Scott, James C. Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play. Princeton University Press, 2012.

Shapiro, Art, et al. "Working with the Earth." The Point #18 (Winter 2019) ["This fall and winter we invited people who work with the land—farmers, ranchers, foresters, ecologists and others—to tell us what they think the earth is for. What follows is a selection of the responses we received."]

Sheldrake, Merlin. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures. Random House, 2020. ["A mind-bending journey into the hidden world of fungi that will change your understanding of life on earth. "A dazzling, vibrant, vision-changing book . . . I ended it wonderstruck at the fungal world--the secrets of which modern science is only now beginning to fathom."--Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave. In Entangled Life, the brilliant young biologist Merlin Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. Sheldrake's vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the "Wood Wide Web," to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.
Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life's processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms--and our relationships with them--are changing our understanding of how life works."]

Sheldrake, Merlin and Barney Steel. "Mycelial Landscapes." Emergence (February 12, 2024) ["Mycologist and writer Merlin Sheldrake joins Marshmallow Laser Feast creative director Barney Steel and Emergence Magazine founder Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee in conversation about the mycelial webs that infiltrate and sustain the landscapes we inhabit. Tracing these underground networks, they explore how fungi challenge our traditional conceptions of individuality, intelligence, and life itself."]

Shermer, Ellie. "On Local Elites Creating a 'Good Business Climate.'" Who Makes Cents? (December 5, 2014) ["Ellie Shermer discusses her book Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics. On this episode, we speak to Ellie Shermer about how local elites in Phoenix crafted a “business climate” that made Pheonix hospitable to industry and shaped both the modern sunbelt and contemporary politics."]

Shiva, Vandana. "Prop 37, GMOs, Food Sovereignty, and More." Uprising Radio (October 31, 2012)

---. "The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply."  Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000: 5-20.

Sigal, Clancy. "Blair Mountain and labor's living history." The Guardian (November 11, 2011)

Simons, Marco. "Supreme Court to Decide Whether U.S. Corporations Can Be Sued for Abuses Overseas." Democracy Now (February 24, 2012)

Smith, Victoria L. "The Heterotopias of Todd Haynes: Creating Space for Same Sex Desire in Carol." Film Criticism 42.1 (March 2018) ["Using Foucault’s concept of heterotopia (an “other space”), this essay contends space is key to understanding Haynes’s Carol. It examines how Haynes, through his meticulous attention to framings, textures, color, and spatial relations, creates a queer counter space, time, and look—a rejection of early 1950s social and sexual propriety."]

Sisk-Franco, Caleen. "The War Dance of the Winnemem Wintu." Making Contact (May 13, 2009)

Springer, Claudia. "Shadow Films: Picturing the Environmental Crisis." Jump Cut #58 (Spring 2018) ["For the powerful forces invested in preserving the status quo, even limited environmental protections that threaten traditional modes of corporate profit-making provoke fierce opposition. Corporate stakeholders wield political power through lobbying and donations, and, increasingly, they hold government positions. A 2016 study by the Center for American Progress Action Fund found that 34% of American Congress members denied climate change and had been paid over $73 million in contributions by oil, gas, and coal companies. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who famously claimed that climate change is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," has reportedly accepted more than $2 million from the fossil fuel industry (Herzog). The fallout from political inaction means that people have lost their lives in the U.S., China, Nigeria, Ecuador, and Peru, among other countries, because of the oil, gas, and mining industries' toxic practices and attacks on opponents. The propaganda battles fought with images inflame a war with catastrophic consequences."]

Stein, Julia. "Gentrification Kills: Race, Inequality and the Death of American Cities." Counterpunch (January 10, 2018)

Stern, Andrew. "Real Estate Wars: Inside the class and culture battle that's tearing San Francisco apart." Business Insider (Posted on Youtube: February 19, 2016) ["America's biggest cities are experiencing a land rush, with the wealthiest residents buying up property and squeezing out the middle and lower classes. In San Francisco, the battle has reached crisis levels, in part due to factors unique to the area. The booming tech industry, with its high-paid workers, casts a singular power over this city. There's the geography: a peninsula of just 46 square miles surrounded by beautiful waterfront. Then there are the city's artistic heritage and progressive values, which affect politics and policies and inform the worldview of nearly every resident. In this special report, Business Insider's Andrew Stern talks to evictees, homeowners, activists, renters, and policymakers at the center of this fight over the future of this city."]

Stokes, Leah. "This Is Climate Change”: West Coast Fires Scorch Millions of Acres & Blot Out the Sun." Democracy Now (September 10, 2020) ["The skies of the Bay Area and Northern California turned a dark orange as 90 major fires burn in the western United States, from San Diego to the Canadian border. At least seven people have died as a result of the fires, which have already burned 2.5 million acres in California alone. Despite heavy coverage in the mainstream media, however, few outlets are highlighting the link between the blazes and the accelerating climate crisis. “The fact is that TV news is completely abdicating its responsibility when it comes to telling the truth of what the West is dealing with right now,” says Leah Stokes, assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a researcher on climate and energy policy. “This is climate change. It’s not rocket science. And when will the media start calling it that?”"]

Sustainable World Coalition. Sustainable World Sourcebook. Berkeley, CA: New Society Publishers, 2010.

Suzuki, David. "On the Environment with a Focus on Climate Change." Lannan Podcasts (November 13, 2012)

Teutsch, Matthew. "The Problem with Confederate Monuments in Public Spaces." Black Perspectives (July 26, 2017)

Thigpen, Ricky, et al. "The Greening of America: A New Deal for Everyone?" Making Contact (June 24, 2009)

Thomas, Dana. "Fashion Kills." The American Scholar (September 6, 2019) ["How our hunger for more clothes is killing the environment and exploiting workers."]

Thompson, Derek. "The Post-Pandemic American Marketplace." On the Media (May 1, 2020) ["Coronavirus has prompted the shutdown of the American marketplace as we know it. Shops are boarded up, restaurants have shifted to a take-out only model, and tens of millions have been laid off. Eventually, some semblance of our economy will return — but what kind of economy will it be? Derek Thompson, staff writer at The Atlantic, expects that the pandemic will radically reshape American consumption — from the components of our diets to the composition of our cities."]

Thunberg, Greta. "Greta Thunberg Slams COP25, Says Response to Climate Crisis Is 'Clever Accounting and Creative PR.'" Democracy Now (December 12, 2019) ["At the U.N. climate summit in Madrid, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed world leaders Wednesday, hours after she was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year. Thunberg came to the talks after a trip to meet with climate leaders across North America in anticipation of the scheduled climate conference in Santiago, Chile, before the talks were abruptly moved to the Spanish capital. In her address, Thunberg warned that the planet’s carbon budget is down to just eight years, and urged bold action. “I still believe that the biggest danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like real action is happening when in fact almost nothing is being done apart from clever accounting and creative PR,” Thunberg said."]

---. "How Dare You! Greta Thunberg Slams World’s Focus on Economic “Fairy Tales” While Ecosystems Collapse." Democracy Now (September 24, 2019) ["Scores of world leaders gathered in New York on Monday for the U.N. Climate Action Summit, but the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters announced few new measures to address the climate crisis. President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence briefly attended the summit but left after just 14 minutes. At the beginning of the summit, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered an impassioned address to world leaders, explicitly naming their inaction on the climate crisis. “People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing,” Greta said. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”" Part 2: "In Landmark UN Complaint, 16 Children Accuse Nations of Failing to Protect Them from Climate Change." Part 3: "Meet Brazil’s Indigenous Leader Attacked by Bolsonaro at U.N. over Efforts to Preserve the Amazon."]

---. "'We Are Striking to Disrupt the System': An Hour with 16-Year-Old Climate Activist Greta Thunberg." Democracy Now (September 11, 2019) ["In her first extended broadcast interview in the United States, we spend the hour with Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who has inspired millions across the globe. Last year she launched a school strike for the climate, skipping school every Friday to stand in front of the Swedish parliament, demanding action to prevent catastrophic climate change. Her protest spread, quickly going global. Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren around the globe have participated in their own local school strikes for the climate. Since her strike began in 2018, Greta has become a leading figure in the climate justice movement. She has joined protests across Europe. She has addressed world leaders at the U.N. climate talks in Poland and the European Union Parliament. She has even met the pope. And now she is in New York to join a global climate strike on September 20 and address the U.N. Climate Action Summit on September 23. Greta has refused to fly for years because of emissions, so she arrived here after a two-week transatlantic voyage aboard a zero-emissions racing yacht. She is also planning to attend the U.N. climate summit in Santiago, Chile, in December."]

"Trump Science Job Nominees Missing Advanced Science Degrees." Stat (December 5, 2017)

Turner, Lane. "Is weather becoming more extreme?" The Big Picture (June 20, 2011)

Upholt, Boyce. "Monuments Upon the Tumultuous Earth." Emergence Magazine (March 28, 2023) ["For thousands of years, the southern Mississippi River has been shaping the land it traverses—and the structures humans have built along it. Over vast stretches of time, Indigenous societies were building hundred-foot pyramids, fifty-acre plazas, and intricate clusters of hillocks along this wild waterway. In this narrated essay, Boyce Upholt charts the shifting course of the river and the civilizations that have emerged alongside it. Beholding the 2,200-mile levee system that now curbs the river’s torrent, he wonders: what do our monuments say about who we are—and the crises we face?"]

Urbina, Ian. "Politics Seen to Limit E.P.A. as It Sets Rules for Natural Gas." The New York Times (March 3, 2011)

Vaidya, Anjali. "Mining the Hurricane." Los Angeles Review of Books (October 3, 2018)

Ward, Chip. "How the ‘peaceful atom’ became a serial killer." Grist (March 27, 2011)

Webb, Laura. "Landmarks and memory: On the “When separate is not equal” bus." North of Center (November 7, 2012)

Werbe, Peter. "Green Scare Crackdown and Monsanto Political Prisoner Marie Mason." Law and Disorder Radio (August 12, 2013) ["Long time activist in environmental and labor movements Marie Mason continues to serve out a harsh 22 year prison sentence based on her involvement in two attacks of property damage and arson. Marie Mason is considered an eco-terrorist and is serving the longest sentence of any convicted animal rights or environmental militant. In one of the attacks, Mason and her husband Ambrose set fire to a Michigan State University building, targeting a Monsanto funded office in charge of a genetically modified crop research program to create moth resistant crops for Africa. Marie Mason was later set up by her husband who recorded their conversation that led to her conviction. As we continue to report, since 9/11, environmental radicals have been labeled terrorists, and charged with overly long sentences. This is part of what’s known as the “Green Scare” campaigns that seek to put a chill on dissent."]

West, Stephen. "Is Killing Animals for Food Morally Justifiable?" Philosophize This! #71 (October 31, 2015) ["We see this in our culture all the time. Go to the supermarket: there’s beef. There’s chicken. There’s duck, lamb, anything you want. Are we patronizing a cause that is inherently immoral? Not talking about factory farming. Even if you went out and hunted, is it morally justifiable to kill animals for food? Now, I want to say something right off the bat. I don’t know what the answer to this question is, alright? Just because I’m giving arguments as a podcaster refuting people’s criteria does not mean that I think I somehow know the answer and that I’m pompously attacking how other people choose to behave. Really, I have no idea if there is an answer here, seriously. What I want to do is illustrate the games that we play in our heads, how easy it is to keep two sets of books when it comes to these moral criteria that we have. And I want to do it in an interesting context, so this conversation is a good one."]

White, Courtney. "Conservation's Radical Center." The Point #18 (Winter 2019) ["I was a conservationist, which supposedly put me on one side of this fight, yet the conflict had the hallmarks of tragedy. Both sides, and all of us in between, seemed destined to lose what we all valued: the health and diversity of the West’s open spaces. The hardheadedness of this fight also reflected other divides in the nation—the red and blue split that would soon engulf our national politics."]

Wilson, Jake. "Trash And Treasure: The Gleaners And I Senses of Cinema #23 (2002)

Wisner, Brent. "Historic Ruling Against Monsanto Finds Company Acted with 'Malice' Against Groundskeeper with Cancer." Democracy Now (August 14, 2018) ["California jurors have awarded $289 million in a historic verdict against Monsanto in the case of a school groundskeeper who developed cancer after using its weed killer, Roundup. We speak with Brent Wisner, the lead trial counsel for Dewayne Lee Johnson, who has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Doctors say he is unlikely to live past 2020. Johnson’s was the first lawsuit to go to trial alleging glyphosate causes cancer. Filed in 2016, it was fast-tracked for trial due to the severity of his illness."]

Wolf, Kathleen. "The Impact of urban trees on human health and wellbeing." Tree Lady Talks 5.23 (November 29, 20240 [" Dr. Kathleen Wolf, a research social scientist, discusses the profound impact of urban trees on human health and well-being. She shares her journey from biologist to researcher, emphasizing the importance of nature in urban settings. The conversation explores various themes, including the health benefits of living near trees, the significance of tree canopy for neonatal care, and the role of nature in child development. Dr. Wolf highlights the correlation between tree cover and improved mental health, social connections, and even lower crime rates, while expressing frustration over the lack of action taken by authorities despite the compelling research. In this conversation, Kathy shares her extensive experience in research translation and the importance of integrating nature into urban environments. She discusses the optimism surrounding the uptake of research in policy and community practices, emphasizing the role of forest bathing and experiential learning in reconnecting individuals with nature. The conversation also highlights the significant benefits of green spaces in educational settings and the economic advantages of urban tree canopies, ultimately calling for a more profound integration of nature in our daily lives and policies. This conversation explores the multifaceted benefits of urban forests and nature in various settings, particularly focusing on their impact on community health, urban planning, and the integration of nature into healthcare. The discussion highlights personal anecdotes, research findings, and the importance of young scientists in advancing this field. It also touches on innovative approaches like virtual reality to enhance nature experiences for those unable to access the outdoors."]

Wong, Felicia. "California Today, America Tomorrow." Boston Review (May 30, 2018) ["Political lessons from the state of resistance."]

Zirin, Dave. "Brazil’s World Cup Will Kick the Environment in the Teeth." The Nation (April 22, 2014)